The Fiber Game

Abstract

Fiber art in the early 1970s has received little attention from art historians, despite its evident affinities with the much-studied field of Postminimalist sculpture. The article provides an overview of this moment, describing a divergence among practitioners between several strains: designers for production (exemplified by Jack Lenor Larsen); tapestry weavers, who often worked to cartoons heroic installation artists (such as Sheila Hicks and Magdalena Abakanowicz); and those who wished to preserve textiles as a modestly scaled “craft.” This was a politically tinged set of distinctions that played out in the actual usage of work and display spaces. Using Ed Rossbach's 1974 article “The Fiber Game” as a focal point, the article examines the available positions of this moment. It reviews key exhibitions of the period, including “Deliberate Entanglements” (1972); and concludes by suggesting continuities with the present state of affairs in contemporary art, using the example of Anne Wilson.

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