Welcome to One Fine Show, where the Observer highlights a recently opened exhibition at a museum outside New York City—a place we know and love and that is already getting a lot of attention.
All of art history can be viewed as one long conversation: ideas are proposed and then responded to, driving the discussion forward while breaking new ground in rhetoric. When it comes to contemporary art, we find ourselves at one of those stalled points in the discussion where many of its earlier contributors have begun checking their phones because it’s getting late. American folk art is appealing in such moments because it seems to exist outside of the conversation, offering a glimpse into another universe of purer creativity…or at least one that’s more accessible.
A new exhibition at the High Museum of Art, “Patterns in Abstraction: Black Quilts from the High’s Collection,” attempts to outline a different discussion. The museum began collecting such material in 1982, but in the past six years it has more than quintupled its holdings of quilts by black women, and many examples of these are on display in this exhibition. Among them are works by well-known quilters from Gee’s Bend, Alabama, such as Mary Lee Bendolph, Louisiana Bendolph and Lucy T. Pettway, as well as pieces by Atlanta quilters such as Marquetta Johnson.
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These are excellent examples of folk art, but share many ideas and conventions. Of particular focus are the themes of “Birds in the Air” and “Housetop,” two centuries-old quilt patterns that demonstrate the language of the medium. These are geometric building blocks for those who wish to represent the natural world and the built environment, respectively, and they allow for profound variation. Lucy T. Pettways Birds in the air (1981) succeeds in personifying and animating triangles of color rising against a yellow and black sky. Compare this to another work by a now-unknown artist from the 1930s, in which the triangles are expressive and static, staring head-on at the viewer in cool blue, only disintegrating near the ground.
Some of these conventions were store-bought. A 1934 edition of the Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog invited housewives to take their place “among the geniuses of the world, for quilt-making has regained importance and is once again one of the ‘fine arts.'” Kits and patterns could become the building blocks for new styles. In the housetop method, sewers are built inward, in rows, but whatever they want to do from there should work in this flexible vernacular. One by an unknown artist –Untitled (roof quilt with multiple borders)from the 1940s – is predominantly in pastel colours, with beautiful, subtle variations within the rows.
One of the best works in this exhibition is a variation on the housetop style, also by a lost-in-time artist who worked in the 1940s and built several housetops, all variations of the American flag. This predates Jasper Johns’ work with flags, but implies a subtle, similar message about iconography, obsession, and patriotism. Folk art is good because you can trust it, but this exhibition shows that it is not as far removed from the broader discussion as one might assume.
“Patterns in Abstraction: Black Quilts from the High’s Collection“ is on display at the High Museum of Art until January 5, 2025.
