Notes from Anni Albers: Tate Modern

When I pulled back the blinds this morning everywhere was bathed in golden light, it was as if the world was floating in a sea of gold. I ran to the back of the house to see the sunrise but the light had gone by the time I got there and now, minutes later, it is raining heavy perpendicular rain.

It was dry and overcast, very mild, the day I went to see the Anni Albers exhibition at Tate Modern. I was in a raging fury. Every review I had read, the exhibition guide itself, talked about how, at the Bauhaus, that bastion of progressive thought, Anni Albers had been turned away from the workshop she wanted to do and directed towards weaving - the women's workshop.

I raged at having to go and see this exhibition, which didn't sing to me, by a woman artist, rare enough in itself, but one who engaged, not with paint or sculpture, but with fibres and yarns. I raged that it was such an arduous and labour and time intensive art, unlike Picasso, turning out masterpieces in a day, and, when the loom became too hard, Albers turned to printmaking, while Picasso had craftsmen churning out ceramic ashtrays in the south of France.

The exhibition was spare, disciplined, some aspects brutal - the interior designs for the Harvard Graduate Centre (1950) were stylish and modern, but looked far from comfortable.

Source Student interior for Harvard Graduate Centre. From an article by Craig Berry, junior designer at VBAT.

The audience was smaller and quieter than at the big painterly exhibitions (Burne-Jones at Tate Britain the next day was jammed as tight as any Black Friday sale, people coo-ing over the extravagant soulless subjects of a million birthday cards). Many were women, younger than me but not young, I would guess artists, and all with the same searching expression.

I raged before the exhibition, all through it and for some time since. The more I understood about how innovative and creative she was, the more I raged. I recognised it was extraordinary that, even while still studying, she invented a sound-proof, noise-absorbing, light reflecting fabric to cover the walls of an auditorium incorporating a new material, cellophane. I was so angry I could hardly take in her brilliance.

Source La Luz I (1947), Anni Albers. The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Bethany, Connecticut. © 2018 Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/DACS, London. From an article by Tanya Harrod.

It is only weeks later, starting to engage with her works and ideas through drawing and making my own knitting and crochet samples, that some of those emotions are starting to fade. Even while I was there, and in spite of my rage, I understood the luminescence of some of her pieces, which seemed to capture the golden light I saw this morning.

Gazing at the postcards or catching sight of them upside down, lying on the floor where I've left them, I start to see the many influences and effects.

Even in my rage, as I left the exhibition I was struck by the luminescence and resonances with Ancient Writing (1936) of the London night sky. My journey begins.

Tate Exhibition Guide