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Threading Through The Interwar: Nomadism, Tapestry, and the Rediscovery of Marie Cuttoli
Abstract and Figures
Tapestries have long been considered an ornamental art form. This thesis aims to complicate that perception through an analysis of the blurring of lines in terms of fine arts versus craft in the interwar period through the tapestries produced by Marie Cuttoli’s Maison Myrbor atelier. Weaving is emphatically different from a painting as its material is the same throughout: wool may be stained with dyes, but it remains wool nonetheless. Moreover, the simultaneous creation of background and foreground separates weaving in its very construction from painting, the approach to which is chiefly comprised of a layering of pigment upon pigment. A tapestry can be created anywhere through a multitude of processes, and can therefore travel with its nomadic owner. Nomadism, given its most influential and notably poststructuralist definition by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his psychoanalyst collaborator Félix Guattari, provides the main source of theoretical heft to my argument. I examine this connection between weaving and nomadism. The tapestry is nomadic because it is horizonless; it has the ability to be endless, to stretch in all directions. Modern nomads cling to and rely on objects such as the tapestry because their domestic space is not the interior, but instead, what nomads can carry with themselves. Their version of domesticity can be found in objects that lend themselves to transport. Simply put, my key claim is that weaving should be placed at the forefront of nomadic art. Tapestries can offer insights into the applied arts and modern life. In fact, tapestries offer a rare opportunity for new scholarship regarding this fascinating phase of production, during which the boundaries between fine and decorative art became hazy in the interwar interior.
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A contemporary of Picasso, Matisse and Kandinsky, Goncharova is now recognized as one of the leading Russian artists of the twentieth century. This book traces the development of her art from its impressionist origins, through a provocative phase of 'primitive' style paintings on peasant themes to highly innovative abstract works that rivaled the most daring experiments of the Cubists and Futurists. As a woman artist she was galvanized by gender issues and addressed these directly in her work. In both her paintings and her behavior she questioned accepted conventions and scandalized Russian society. Arrested in 1909 on the grounds of the 'pornographic' content of her paintings, accused of heresy against the Orthodox Church in 1914 because of her religious work and branded a Futurist because she walked about in public with a painted face, her large-scale retrospective in Moscow in 1913, in which she exhibited over 700 works, demonstrated to public and critics alike that she was, unquestionably, one of the greatest painterly talents that Russia had ever produced.
In 1914 Diaghilev, the director of the famous "Ballets Russes" invited Goncharova to make designs for The Golden Cockerel which was staged at the Paris Opera. The staggering success of this production opened up new creative horizons for her and she remained in Paris to become one of Diaghilev's 'resident' designers. Her work of this period reveals her gifts not only as a superb stage designer but also as a designer of women's fashions for the haute-couture industry of Art Deco Paris. Her work is now in the collections of museums and galleries across the world and is so highly sought that she has achieved the highest sale price ever recorded at auction for a woman artist.
Contents: Life and work in Moscow, Impressionism and Symbolism, Goncharova and gender, Neo-primitivism, Abstraction, futurist books, life and work in Paris, designs for the stage, fashions and textiles, graphic work, later paintings.
In the "Translator's Foreward," Brian Massumi explains what Deleuze and Guattari are attempting in their famous work A Thousand Plateaus. He points out Deleuze and Guattari's opposition to representational thinking he calls "State philosophy." He also expounds upon Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the nomad thought, which moves freely about the cognitive terrain, free of identity. He also uses the metaphors of brick and tool box to describe a concept. The tool box metaphor comes directly from Deleuze, who has no problem borrowing ideas from other people and fitting them in new contexts to see if how they work in the new situation. Ultimately, Massumi likens A Thousand Plateaus to listening to a record. He urges the reader not to attempt to understand it but rather to take a step back and let the concepts wash over the reader much like music would wash over a listener.
A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era presents a collection of new historiographic essays covering the years between 1877 and 1920, a period which saw the U.S. emerge from the ashes of Reconstruction to become a world power. The single, definitive resource for the latest state of knowledge relating to the history and historiography of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Features contributions by leading scholars in a wide range of relevant specialties. Coverage of the period includes geographic, social, cultural, economic, political, diplomatic, ethnic, racial, gendered, religious, global, and ecological themes and approaches. In today's era, often referred to as a "second Gilded Age," this book offers relevant historical analysis of the factors that helped create contemporary society. Fills an important chronological gap in period-based American history collections.
The story of textiles in mid-century America was enriched by differing opinions about their multi-dimensional role as objects of art, design, and handcraft, and by the revival of pictorial tapestry, especially French imports. This paper examines the Cuttoli Tapestry edition of French-produced tapestries, named after its éditeur, Marie Cuttoli (1879–1973), and explores how these tapestries emerged as a middle ground between painting, mural, and textile, bringing to the forefront recurring tensions between fine and applied art hierarchies, third-party producers, and the concept of reproduction. While these pictorial tapestries, which varied in size from medium to large scale, functioned much as easel paintings did, earning the name “easel tapestries,” they were decidedly different from easel paintings due to the materials, production processes, and resemblances to the original design. The Cuttoli project gave artists the opportunity to explore alternatives to painting and to reach new patrons and methods of display; through the marketing of limited editions, the tapestries remained luxury art objects, although never as celebrated or expensive as “the original.” This paper documents the complicated chronology and provenance of a seminal twentieth-century pictorial tapestry project by exploring how the Cuttoli Tapestries were perceived and understood by critics and patrons during their debut and subsequent display in pre- and postwar America.
For a century and a half, women have been proving their passion and talent for building and, in recent decades, their enrollment in architecture schools has soared. Yet the number of women working as architects remains stubbornly low, and the higher one looks in the profession, the scarcer women become. Law and medicine, two equally demanding and traditionally male professions, have been much more successful in retaining and integrating women. So why do women still struggle to keep a toehold in architecture? Where Are the Women Architects? tells the story of women's stagnating numbers in a profession that remains a male citadel, and explores how a new generation of activists is fighting back, grabbing headlines, and building coalitions that promise to bring about change. Despina Stratigakos's provocative examination of the past, current, and potential future roles of women in the profession begins with the backstory, revealing how the field has dodged the question of women's absence since the nineteenth century. It then turns to the status of women in architecture today, and the serious, entrenched hurdles they face. But the story isn't without hope, and the book documents the rise of new advocates who are challenging the profession's boys' club, from its male-dominated elite prizes to the erasure of women architects from Wikipedia. These advocates include Stratigakos herself and here she also tells the story of her involvement in the controversial creation of Architect Barbie. Accessible, frank, and lively, Where Are the Women Architects? will be a revelation for readers far beyond the world of architecture.
Historically, European tapestry making involved collaboration among artists, designers, draftsmen, cartoon makers, spinners, dyers, weavers, patrons, dealers, and other professionals. This specialized system of labor continued in modified form into the twentieth century in certain European weaving studios. This paper explores the negotiations involved and results achieved in the design, creation, and marketing of a group of twentieth century tapestries, in which painted imagery was translated into the handwoven textile medium.
A case study based on the Gloria F. Ross Archive of unpublished letters, contracts, sketches, invoices, photographs, and other materials is presented. Serving as editeur (analogous to a film “producer”), the late Gloria Frankenthaler Ross worked with thirty American and European artists and orchestrated over one hundred tapestry designs from 1965 to 1996. Weavers in New York, the Navajo Nation, Scotland, France, and China, contributed to approximately 450 tapestries, woven as single panels or in editions of five to seven.
An examination of the roles of the artists, weavers, and editeurs in tapestry-making leads to a discussion of authorship, authority, and authenticity. Specific issues include the varied contexts in which artists create or approve designs for the tapestry medium; how an editeur negotiates with artists and weavers and between artist’s designs and woven products; the naming of works and acknowledgment of participants; gallery and museum representation of the work; and collectors’ rationales for acquiring and displaying the work. In such discussion, the shifting relationships between collaboration and appropriation can be explored.