Jennifer Higgietalks to Sheila Hicks About the 60-Year Evolution of Her
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Fibre Is My Alphabet Jennifer Higgie talks to Sheila Hicks about the 60-year evolution of her artistic language Atterrissage, 2014, pigments and acrylic fibres, 4.8 × 4.3 × 2.6 m Courtesy the artist, Galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris, Alison Jacques Gallery and Michelle D’Souza Fine Art, London; photograph: Zarko Vijatovic 128 FRIEZE NO. 169 MARCH 2015 129 I first saw Sheila Hicks’s work at the 30th Jennifer Higgie: How did your work, Baôli Bienal de São Paulo in 2012 and it stopped me (2014), at the Palais de Tokyo come about? What could be better than in my tracks: it was like nothing I had ever Sheila Hicks: I was given a free rein to seen. Combining weaving, found objects and do what I wanted in the Grande Rotonde for to sit and weave and think wood, along with notebooks and research a year. The museum is open until midnight; material, it was at once textural and sculptural, it’s a gathering venue. I wanted to create a feel- and then not to think, to just sombre and wildly colourful. I wanted good space for the community, a place to which to touch it as much as I wanted to look at it. everyone is invited for concerts, receptions, interlace yarns and amass Hicks was born in Nebraska, usa, in poetry readings or to do as they please – hang 1934, studied painting under Josef Albers at out, meet friends or sleep while the children networks of threads? Yale between 1954–59, travelled extensively play. It was partially inspired by my time in through South America, taught Albers’s India, where people socialize on the steps lead- Bauhaus course at a university in Chile, ing down to well water. The curator, Gallien To go back to the beginning: you studied at Yale founded textile workshops in various countries Dejean, helped me title the environment after School of Art under Josef Albers from 1954–59. including Mexico and South Africa, worked the famous stepwell in India, Rajon Ki Baoli. Was he a big influence? with weavers in India and Morocco, and made Baôli is comprised of many components, which Yes. I studied painting with him and was monumental tapestries and wall hangings for shift and change every three months, when the under the influence and pressure of him. companies from Ford to Fuji. She moved to shows at the Palais de Tokyo change. To create At that time, there were no women teachers at Paris, where she still lives, in 1964. Hicks shows it, I primarily used synthetic fibre. Yale School of Art and not many women stu- no sign of slowing down. Her major retrospec- dents, although Eva Hesse and I overlapped in tive, ‘Sheila Hicks: 50 Years’, which debuted at How is synthetic fibre different to what you had some crit sessions. Mark Strand, who became the Addison Gallery of American Art in 2011, been using previously? the Poet Laureate of the us, was also there has travelled to the ica, Philadelphia, and the It’s pigmented acrylic fibre; it’s feather- studying painting. But he spun off into poetry. Mint Museum, Charlotte. In 2014, her work weight, light friendly and weather resistant. was included in the Whitney Biennial in New I also used it in the work I made for the Was Hesse making interesting work then? York, while in Paris she created a major sculp- Whitney Biennial last year, Pillar of Inquiry/ Our school was so much about perception ture for the Fondation Louis Vuitton and her Supple Column (2013–14). of colour, and colour wasn’t her thing. But installation at the Palais de Tokyo will be Albers’s teaching was very much about analyti- in place until April. Last year, her work was I recently visited the Sonia Delaunay cal perception, so there was something to be featured in the group show ‘Fiber: Sculpture retrospective at the Musée d’Art Moderne de learned by everyone. He would always ask me: 1960–present’ at the ica Boston, currently at la Ville de Paris. She worked across genres and ‘Wass ist das, girl?’ What is that, girl? the Wexner Center for the Arts until 12 April disciplines, as you do. Do you admire her? before it tours to Des Moines Art Center in I met Delaunay in the 1960s in her How would you answer him? May. In London, her solo show at the Hayward apartment here in Paris: she was impressive. It was very important that we could Project space, ‘Foray into Chromatic Zones’, I went there at the invitation of Charles E. articulate our thoughts concisely. I had no precise runs until 19 April. She has also had recent Slatkin, a New York art dealer who was inter- answer because I was mining indescribable solo exhibitions at Galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris, ested in buying some of her gouache paintings territories and felt somewhat insecure. Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, and Alison to make into tapestries. At that point, she was Jacques Gallery, London. an aged grande dame: she was astute, very Was he a good listener? I visited Hicks at her atmospheric aware, extremely talented and a good busi- He certainly was, because he knew the right apartment in Saint Germain on a rainy day in nesswoman. When I moved to Paris in 1964, questions to ask, which are as important as the December. It’s full of the textiles, sculptures, conversion was the key word: the second- and answers. Perhaps even more so. paintings and wall hangings she has collected third-hand editing of works, whereby an artist over the years. We talked for hours, during would make a drawing and then give it to some- What inspired your interest in fibre? the course of which she drew diagrams in my one else who would become the editor; they George Kubler [author of The Shape of Time: notebook, gave me various fibres – from would then re-do the cartoon before passing Remarks on the History of Things, 1962] taught feathers to silk – to illustrate her ideas, it on to master dyers, weavers and so on. The an art history class at Yale on pre-Columbian discussed the provenance of what I was final product was so removed from the original art. I had written my term paper on pre-Incaic wearing, and fed me coffee and bananas. We that I objected to it. I had come to Paris from Andean Textiles and, at that time, there was then went downstairs to her warm, crowded Mexico, where I had lived for five years, and only one reference book, by Raul D’Harcourt, studio – located in the same building that there it was all hands on, not four or five or six which had been published in 1934 – the year the painter Balthus worked in – where she times removed. Whether an artist works I was born. Kubler was flashing slides of incred- pulled out books and showed me her works-in- directly with materials, or on the telephone ible weavings up on the screen and what caught progress, including a small weaving (a ‘minime’) or the computer and never touches materials, my interest was their colour, design and shape. that she was creating on the same hand loom colours my view. I began teaching myself how to weave because she’s had for half a century. It was one of the I was interested in how the pre-Incas structured most inspiring days I have ever spent. What does touching the materials add? thought with threads, with lines. The more I got The hand connected to the eyes and into it, the more I realized how sophisticated the brain. Hands, eyes, brain: it’s the magic these weavings were; more intriguing, in fact, triangulation. It comes from passion, heart than what we were learning in the Bauhaus pro- and intellect inseparably cemented to your gramme, where we were studying typography, times and to your emotional experiences. If lettering, photography and colour theory. The I gave my designs to someone else, it would be work I discovered that the tribes in the Andes The Double Prayer Rug, Atelier des Grand Augustins Paris, their interpretation of my idea. were doing – without a written language – blew 1970, silk, linen, cotton my mind. They were engineering in three dimen- and gold thread, 2 × 1.5 m Were you showing with Slatkin yourself? sions and creating their own materials; every Facing page He was doing a series of exhibitions tribe did its own thing and there was infinite and following spread courtesy around tapestry, although what I was making variety. Their language moved in a network of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York wasn’t quite tapestry or painting or sculp- lines that became pliable planes in their clothes ture. But he invited me to exhibit in his and ritual cloths. Later, when the Inca tribes gallery in 1974 – a kind of heretic show. It dominated the region, ingenuity declined. The was reviewed positively by John Russell, The richness of the pre-Incaic textile language is the New York Times critic. most complex of any textile culture in history. 130 FRIEZE NO. 169 MARCH 2015 131 Arc with Rose, 2012, Feeling Blue, Seeing White, Wed to Singular Paths, cotton and metallic fibre, 2013, cotton on Frequency Grid, 2011, 2013, cotton, linen, metallic fibre 24 × 13 cm bast fibre, 25 × 13 cm cotton, 24 × 15 cm and silk, 24 × 14 cm Port Bas Relief, Zapallar, Falcon and Eye (blue, gold), Kangaroo Haven, 2014, 2011, cotton and linen, 1957–58, wool, 2009, cotton, metallic fibres cotton, linen, paper, pineapple fibre 24 × 15 cm 23 × 12 cm and silk, 23 × 14 cm and silk, 24 × 14 cm 132 FRIEZE NO.