Semester:
Offered:
Maria Gough
This workshop-style seminar, which will be taught in the Study Center of the Harvard Art Museums, foregrounds the pioneering role of textiles and other artisanal media produced by women in the development of modernist art, especially abstraction, Dada, constructivism, productivism, and the Bauhaus and its diaspora. The course opens with an examination of modernism’s so-called tapestry aesthetic in the later 19thC. We then turn to the 20thC, considering the work of Sonia Delaunay, Sophie Taeuber, Hannah Höch, Liubov’ Popova, Varvara Stepanova, Loïs Mailou Jones, Gunta Stölzl, Anni Albers, Lena Bergner, Otti Berger, Howardena Pindell, Ruth Asawa, and Mary Lee Bendolph and other quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend. Readings will include the most recent art-historical literature. Requirements include class attendance and participation, weekly response papers (1-2pp.), and short essays on specific objects in Harvard collections. In addition, a field trip may be scheduled. Open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates by permission of the instructor. Limited to 10.