Josef and Anni Albers:
Designs for Living
Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
2 E 91st Street, New York City
October 1, 2004 - February 27, 2005
By SPENCER
BAKER
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clockwise from top: Anni Albers Wall hanging 1925, wool and
silk, 92-7/8 x 37-3/4 inches;
Josef Albers Fireplace 1955, off-white firebrick, 87 x 64
inches, North Haven CT, Irving Rowe House;
Anni Albers Necklace 1940, aluminum washers and beige grosgrain
ribbon, 42 inches long;
Josef Albers Set of four stacking tables 1927, ash veneer,
black lacquer, and painted glass, 24-1/2 x 23-1/2 x 15-3/4 inches
all images ©2003 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York |
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"Josef and Anni Albers:
Design for Living" at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
is a tour de force of what I'll call 'restrained intimacy'. Both were
students at the Bauhaus where they took the best their teachers had
to offer, and through their intense dialogue with one another created
something no artistic movement could contrive: actual love of material
form.
Viewers are likely drawn to one or the other of this couple: They couldn't
appear to be more yin/yang, male/female. Bet the truth is, they both
show a great deal of slippage when broken down in such terms. One remembers
Josef for his ominously dull and fascinating "Homage to the Square"
series that he made after coming to America; the curators decided to
omit those works in favor of emphasis on his early design and furniture
works. While at first looking overtly rectangular and manly, Albers
as a furniture designer looks like a handmade and more austere version
of Marcel Breuer. His rectangular forms seem to predict Donald Judd,
only his emphasis on intimate detailing makes me feel as if Judd would
have dreamt these objects as opposed to have made them. Anni Albers
is known for her quilts, but really her target is painting. While at
the Bauhaus she was encouraged to take weaving instead of painting.
It seems obvious to me, that she never really stopped painting. Her
tapestries, supremely rich in color and form, are a shockingly powerful,
in their sense of efficacy that seems to have left the Bauhaus imitators
in the dust. As both an advance on the Klee's whimsy and as a precursor
to minimalism, Anni Albers was by no means feminine and quaint.
But what really makes this
show work is the comparison between these two artists. The curators
have done an excellent job balancing them. The first room is dominated
by Anni's weavings, including two outrageous masterpieces (1925 and
1926). Through color and form, there exists no painting equal to the
power of Anni's subtle shifts in fabric. This is balanced with Josef's
asymmetrical brick fireplace (1955) and a few pieces of early furniture.
While there is a cute play back and forth between these two in asymmetries,
the real kick lies in the next room where we see the basic color scheme
of Anni's wall hanging (1925) reappear in Josef's set of four stacking
chairs (1927).
The comparisons get even
more striking when in the next room we have Josef's early glass designs
paired with Anni's watercolor design drawings. This is the room where
the most surprises lay. Josef's glass works look almost bohemian and
funky such as in "Grid Picture" (1921) and "Park"
(1924). Anni in her two rug designs from 1927, a psychedelic interplay
of shapes and forms that let loose her unbridled sense of sheer creativity.
While Josef in "Upward", a glasswork from 1926, draws from
Anni's subtle forms and imbues it a sense of cool restraint. And as
revolutionary as Anni was with weaving, Josef explorations with glass
are similarly 'touchy-feely'.
The last large room is filled
mostly with Josef's furniture and design objects, many dating from a
commission for the Mollenhoff apartment in Berlin. They are surrounded
by Anni's later tapestries as screens, set up to look like paintings
in an apartment. Again, there is an extraordinary merger of the two
sensibilities. There is also a standout display of Anni's handmade jewelry,
made out of simple industrial materials: ribbons, washers, paperclips
and bobby pins. Josef's bed and night tables from 1927 really did it
for me. In such simple details such as the night table round handles
turned inward to face the bed, one really gets the sense of intimacy
and sensitive feelings present in both these artist's oeuvre.
The curators here have given
us a special gift in this show, and that is quite simply, the Albers'
sensitive gift of love.
