A Quilting Bee Bounty

0.cached.png

By Peter Plagens

See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.

America is a nation of quilters--20 million of them, in fact, which is probably more than the number of people who go to see exhibitions of modern art in museums. But quilters and modern-art fans need not be mutually exclusive groups, especially when they could be joyfully united by "The Quilts of Gee's Bend," an exhibition at the Whitney Museum in New York that opens next week. (There's also a gorgeous catalog from Tinwood Books.) The 70 quilts in the show are no less than the equals--in unconventional color, bold and surprising composition, and subtle visual invention--of just about any abstract painting made by any trained artist living in one of the world's great cities. Gee's Bend, Ala., on the contrary, is a remote, dirt-poor riverside farm town of fewer than 1,000 people. And its contemporary quilters are all African-American women with no art schooling. Maintaining a local tradition handed down from their great-grandmothers, they've made their art objects from salvaged cloth that includes old hankies and their husbands' worn work jeans. It's as if something in the local water has produced a whole villageful of Paul Klees who create their vibrant work on a bed-size scale instead of in tiny watercolors.

Take the informal grid design in maroon and dark blue by Annie Mae Young (b. 1928). Of course there's a pattern to it--patterning is the heart of quilt making. But where does the visual wit come from to distribute the maroon shafts in such a clever way (with, for instance, one on the left balanced by a sudden insertion of railroad denim)? Not from Bauhaus Design 101, but from the artist's own sophisticated imagination. The same holds true for the unique and painterly (think Helen Frankenthaler) glimpse of turquoise at the bottom of Young's masterpiece. "Gee's Bend" is filled with artists who have the liveliness and style to match Young: Mary Lee Bendolph (b. 1935), Jessie Pettway (b. 1929), Flora Moore (b. 1951) and 42 others. The only down note about the show is that quilting in Gee's Bend--which may get regular ferry service soon, ending its artistically fertile isolation--is on the wane. That's a pity. When something this good is produced by a single community for so long and so consistently, it ought to be nurtured to the max. Let's hope that this exhibition can help--but without somehow ruining the earthy way of life in Gee's Bend that seems essential to its remarkable art.

Read More on News