The Social History of Quilt Making in America
The Social History of Quilt Making in america In his seminal book, The Shape of Time: “Artistic production, whilst distinct, belongs to the ‘whole range of Remarks on the History of Things (1962), man-made things, including all tools and written’ and ’such things George Kubler expressed the view that the mark the passage of time with greater accuracy than we know, and concept of art should be expanded to include they fill with shapes of a limited variety’… ‘Everything made now is all man-made objects. His approach either a replica or a variant of some thing made a little time ago and eliminates the distinction between artifacts so on back without break to the first morning of human time’. and “major” art – architecture, painting, (.Kubler, 2007: 1) The demarcation between art and craft, an invention sculpture. Drawing on the fields of of the Renaissance mind, therefore, becomes unimportant when anthropology and linguistics, Kubler replaced considering objects of utilitarian nature. This suggests that quilts, and the notion of style as the basis for histories specifically American quilts, rightfully deserve the distinction of art, of art with the concept of historical sequence without qualification. and continuous change across time. Quilts of Gee’s Bend When the exhibition of the quilts of Gee’s Bend * first opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2003, an article in the Wall Street Journal began, in part: “Museum curators have a lot to worry about in these tough times: attendance, security, damaged art. And now…bedbugs. Created by four generations of African-American Some of the biggest blockbuster exhibits of recent years have nothing to quilters from the isolated hamlet of Gee’s Bend, do with Van Gogh and Vermeer – they are all about quilts.
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