Anni Albers: constructing textiles

Abstract

"Anni Albers (1899-1994) has long been revered as a trailblazing weaver, textile designer, and visual artist; she also was an insightful and eloquent writer, and her books On Designing and On Weaving are canonical writings in design history. Anni Albers: Constructing Textiles explores the ideas of materiality, construction, and architecture across her body of work, establishing her legacy as a thinker, theoretician, and innovator. The book's essays include essential writings by Albers herself on the making and meaning of textiles, as well as new pieces by Glenn Adamson on her relationship to architecture, Karis Medina on the material and technique of her weavings, Amy Jean Porter on her writing, and Jeffrey Saletnik on East Asian influences in Albers's work and thinking. Among the book's hundreds of beautifully reproduced images are works held in private collections that have never before been published. An essential volume in the literature about modernism, this book reinforces Albers's position as a leading figure in twentieth-century art"--publisher's website.

Contents

Foreword / Stella Rollig, Nina Zimmer -- Preface / Nicholas Fox Weber -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction / Brenda Danilowitz, Fabienne Eggelhöfer -- Becoming Anni Albers: in words, in weaving / Amy Jean Porter -- Parts and wholes: Anni Albers and architecture / Glenn Adamson -- Weaving light: cellophane to lurex / Karis Medina -- Constructing textiles, 1946 / Anni Albers -- The pliable plane: textiles in architecture, 1957 / Anni Albers -- Tactile sensibility, 1965 / Anni Albers -- Anni Albers, East Asia, and the practice of attentive passiveness / Jeffrey Saletnik.