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Whispering Frills October 15 - November 19, 2007 |
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The story behind Annet Couwenberg's attraction to the stitch as a fundamental artistic element in her work is well known by now. Numerous art historians and critics have recorded how the artist spent hours as a child in the Netherlands with her mother, grandmother, and aunts as they gathered weekly to sew.1 I imagine Couwenberg observing these women's competent hands as they pinned paper patterns to fabric, cut the cloth, threaded needles, and proceeded to push those needles repeatedly through panel after panel of fabric. Stitch after stitch after stitch. I image Couwenberg closely following this trail of rhythmically moving fingertips while listening to her female elders' voices exchange stories about their homes, their families, their desires - stories no doubt seasoned with secrets.
The secret and the stitch are the conceptual building blocks of "Whispering Frills," Couwenberg's 2007 installation at the Villa Julie Gallery. Tracking the dynamics of the stitch and secret through the four works that comprise the installation reveals issues of urgent importance to the artist. For this viewer, those issues, as well as the stitch and secret that convey them, are at once pleasant, enlightening, troubling, and funny.
| Entering the gallery, one encounters the exhibition's titular piece. The words "Whispering Frills" appear on the wall as if embroidered straight through it by a seamstress of brobdingnagian proportion. These pleasantly whimsical thoughts are | |
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quickly dashed, however, as one draws nearer and it becomes clear that the stitches are not stitches at all, but facsimiles. Couwenberg scanned and digitized illustrations of late seventeenth-century Dutch sampler letters to create the words that together comment on what she refers to as "the constrained opulence" of seventeenth-century Dutch art and culture (the painintings of Johannes Vermeer or Pieter de Hooch come to mind).2 It was thought in that period and to a degree subsequent periods, that "frills take away from the basics, from the sanctity of God," Couwenberg asserts.3 By choosing to include the word "Frills," depicting it in frilly fashion, and fancifully blowing it up big, she indeed signals a departure from the basics. At the same time, she remains true to the tradition of constraint, for the words on the wall ultimately appear as said, crisp monikers. As if to bridge the difference between these opposing forces, Couwenberg chooses the word "Whispering" to round out her title. Whispering is defined in Webster's Dictionary as the uttering of language without "sonant breath." Whispering is not the saying of words, then, but the breathing of them, the forgetting of the larynx, and the embracing of exhalation as the force capable of carrying meaning. Whispering is also, of course, a carrier of secrets. |
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The secret in "Wanted Straight Hair," "Wanted Curly Hair," and "Wanted Wavy Hair" links the viewer to a troubling moment in history. Couwenberg's inspiration for this trio of works was the sort of eugenics charts the Nazis used in their misguided attempts to determine the physical characteristics of the ideal human. These types of charts were included in the recent exhibition "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race," which orginated at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., in 2005 and is still traveling.4 One level of secret that Couwenberg's piece points to, then, has begun to whither. As New York Times writer Edward Rothstein indicated in his review of "Deadly Medicine," much of what is on view in this traveling exhibition "has been little known and little acknowledged, even in Germany, where in the 1990s, psychiatric institutions were still finding traces of this unsavory past . . . and where many Nazi eugenicists enjoyed prosperous later careers."5 By virtue of this exhibition and those by artists like Couwenberg who draw on it, one level of secrecy is forced to yield to basic historical truth.
| The shape of each head in Couwenberg's trio of "Wanted" images is the same, as is the diagram of the single eye that appears beneath the head, the shapes of the paired rectangles at the bottom of the frame and the bifurcated sphere floating at the top. | |
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The only different among the three images is the dispotion of the hair - straight, curly, or wavy - which is depicted clearly inside the outline of the head and more abstractly in the two rectangular shapes at the bottom and the bifurcated sphere at the top. Significantly, it is the backs of the straight-haired, curly-haired, and wavy-haired heads that viewers see. By not having visual access to the face, from which one's personality is projected, the original viewers of eugenics charts - the idealistic founders of eugenics theory in the late nineteenth century, followed by Hitler's staff who took that theory into practice to a corrupt extreme in order to rationalize racial and thenic cleansing - could more easily objectify their subjects. Without face-to-face interaction and the possibility of empathy taking root, the subject could more easily be fit into a neat graphic display and individual difference kept a secret. Couwenberg duplicated this back-of-the-head view in her own work, maximizing the controlling and objectifying function of neatness by circumscribing the field of images in the "Wanted" trio with predcise outlines and by hanging the finished pieces on stainless steel rods that have a sterile, medical feel. |
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The images in "Are We Perfect Yet?" are from the same eugenics charts source. But here, Couwenberg contravenes the extortion of the secret by reintroducing the stitch. To create the images for this piece, she scanned line drawings into a computer, digitized every line, blew up the image into a digital print, imported all this into a sewing machine, and set the machine to embroider the images (the number of stitches is stamped in the upper right corner, as is the date and time that the job ran). Couwenberg does not reintroduce the stitch here in a romanticized sense of heightened tactility, however. Rather, she reintroduces the stitch as a signifier of touch, not its direct manifestation. As such, Couwenberg more accurately represents the history of fabric art and design dating to at least the sixteenth century. It was in that period, following on the heels of the invention of the printing press the century before, that the demand for wider distribution of samplers and patterns led to the printing of the first pattern book in England in 1523.6 One could argue, then, that fabric arts were the first art form in which practitioners understood the complexity of that with which mid- to late-twentieth century thinkers struggled as they questioned the real and its relationship to representation. Since the sixteenth century, practitioners of fabric arts have increasingly understood that what they create by hand (sometimes thought to be more real by virtue of tactile interaction) is already a representation - indeed, a representation of a representation, a copy of its own copy, which is already printed in a pattern book. The stitch, then, arguably makes it impossible to keep the real a secret. What is real and what is representation is crystal clear to the fiber artist who understands the history of his or her craft, allowing them to grapple with larger social concerns, as Couwenberg does in her "Whispering Frills" installation. These larger issues grow larger still and even more relevant to the current moment in Couwenberg's juxtaposition of the "Wanted" trio and "Are We Perfect Yet?" These two works share the same basic image, but the structure of the latter differs from the former significantly, as does its meaning. Each of fifteen images in "Are We Perfect Yet?" is mounted in an oval wooden frame, and the set of fifteen is arranged in a precise configuration within a colossal field measuring approximately 40' x 21'. This configuration replicates a chart commonly used in the linebreeding of rabits that can easily be accessed online.7 Pink and blue outlines around the top two frames of Couwenberg's piece signify the parent female and male, respectively, while broken or solid lines and different eye colors signify the expected transmission of genetic traits. While linebreeding, which brings together somewhat distatly related animals is considered less risky that inbreding (in which closely related, often sibling, animals are mated), experts warn that just as the process allows for an increase in good qualities, it can also increase bad qualities. One breeder asserts that, "the only way to offest the intensification of undesirable traits in a linebreeding program is to ruthlessly cull the undesirables from the herd."8 |
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Clearly, Couwenberg included both the "Wanted" trio, which recalls a travesty in the history of the twentieth century, and "Are We Perfect Yet?" which replicated a genetic process for animal breeding still used in the twenty-first century, to make the point that we have yet to learn from history: Messing around with genetics can lead to breaches in human decency and humane behavior.
The fourth piece in the show, "Dutch Shotgun Chaps," departs from the rest by bringing pleasure back into the picture, at least upon first glance. Couwenberg has attached hundreds of paper doilies, hand-rolled into conical shapes, to an armature made of stiff lining material (blackout curtain material produced by the local Rockland Industries) and shaped like cowboy or cowgirl chaps. The chaps, much larger than any average human could actually wear, again conjure up a fantasy figure of brobdingnagian proportion, their size accentuated by being hung well off the ground. The effect is, well, funny.
| The humor of the "Dutch Shotgun Chaps" is the viewer's treat after contemplating the artists' otherwise serious messages. But, of course, not all is as fanciful as first meets the eye. Many of the points Couwenberg makes in her other three pieces are made here, too. Just as the other pieces serve as reminders that art is not only a representation but often a representation of a representation, so does this piece. The doily is a consummate example of this phenomenon, or of what Couwenberg refers to as "metadata." A circular piece of paper cut in such a way that it mimics the looks of lace, the doily is made to protect the surface on which it sits from the friction of anything put atop it. The innovative quality of the paper doily, which came along after centuries of production of ornate lace doilies, was that rather than |
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| have to clean good lace if stained, the paper doily could simply be thrown out or recycles. Since "Dutch Shotgun Chaps" with all their frills seem to signify a female presence, the provocative connection between the female and dispensable goods plants the piece squarely in the very same discourse the artist has sustained throughout the installation. We are forced to think very hard once again and to open ourselves to being enlightened and troubled, while being treated to a pleasant and even fun experience. | |
Couwenberg has achieved in "Whispering Frills" a potent synergy between the serious and the fanciful, challenging the negative aspects of keeping certain secrets, while mining the beauty of its more positive aspects through the power of the stitch.
KATHY O'DELL, PH.D.
October 2007
Kathy O'Dell is Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences at University of Maryland Baltimore County and Associate Professor of Art History and Theory in the Department of Visual Arts. An art historian and critic, Dr. O'Dell has lectured and published widely on contemporary art and performance, with writing appearing in Artforum, Art in America, Arts Magazine, Art & Text, Lusitania, Performance Research, and TDR. She is one of the founders and editors of LINK: A critical Journal on the Arts in Baltimore and the World. Her book, Contract with the Skin: Massochism, Performance Art, and the 1970's was published in 1998 by the University of Minnesota Press. She is currently working on a book, Art Since 1947 and the Ideology of the Star System.
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ANNET COUWENBERG, an artist born in The Netherlands, received a MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI and a MFA in Textile Arts from Syracuse Univeristy, Syracuse, both in the USA. Couwenberg has been the chair of the Fiber department at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD since 1989. She has received individual artist awards from the Maryland State and Ohio State Art Councils. Telos Art Publishing published a Monograph of her work in 2003. Her work is in numerous collections, among them the Textiel Museum in Tillburg, The Netherlands. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including The Museum of Art & Design, New York; Belger Arts Center, Kansas City; Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE; 28th Street Stuido, New York, NY; Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, MD; City Gallery, Atlanta, GA; Maryland Art Place, Baltimore, MD; The Arkansas Art Center, Decorative Arts Museum, Little Rock, AK; Textiel Museum, Tillburg, The Netherlands. Annet's work has been reviewed and featured by the Washington Post, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Baltimore Sun, City Paper, The Atlanta Consitution, Philadelphia Inquirer, Fiberarts, NO (Nouvel Object), Le Monde, Surface Design and Sculpture Magazine. More information may be found at www.annetcouwenberg.com. Artist's Acknowledgements: A special thanks to Diane DiSalvo, Director of Cultural Progarms and the Villa Julie College Gallery for her generous help, unconditional support and patience. I would like to thank Kathy O'Dell, Associate Dean, College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, UMBC for her illuminnating insights and Rockland Industries for their generous donation of Roc-Lon fabirics. |
1 For example: James Elkins, "The Object Stares Back," in Portfolio Collection: Annet Couwenberg. v.26, ed. Elissa Auther, Adam Lerner, and Debra Rubino (Winchester, U.K.: Telos Art Publishing, 2003), 7, and Sarah Schaffer, "Clothes Encounters in Art," The Sun, sec. E, September 2, 2003, 1.
2 Annet Couwenberg, interview with the author, August 2007.
3 Ibid.
4 See the exhibition catalogue by Kieter Kuntz and Susan Bachrach, Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race. Washington, D.C.: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2005.
5 Edward Rothstein, "The Tainted Science of Nazi Atrocities," New York Times, 8 January 2005.
6 Despite this development, the use of samplers continued until printing and distribution of pattern books became more practicable and fiscally viable. See "A Brief History of Embroidery Samplers by Sharon B," http://inaminuteago.com/articles/samplerhist.html (accessed 15 September 2007). Also see Pamela Parmal, Samplers A to Z. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 2000.
7 "Linebreeding, Crossbreeding, Outbreeding: Quick Reference Guide," http://www.geocities.com/michiganjerseywoolyfanciers/linebreeding.html (accessed 20 September 2007).
8 Ibid.