Linen and bamboo
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/lenore-tawney-24528" aria-label="More by Lenore Tawney" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Lenore Tawney</a>
King I
Presented by the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation (Tate Americas Foundation) 2016
abstraction
contrast
countries and continents
emotions, concepts and ideas
formal qualities
geometric
non-representational
Peru
places
suspension
symmetry
texture
weaving
<p><span>The King I</span> 1962 is a large hanging sculpture that combines natural and black linen threads, woven together and suspended from bamboo rods. The warp threads are divided into two equal sections, one black and one natural, giving the work a balanced, symmetrical look. Hanging over three and a half metres from the floor, the piece begins with tab fringes, divided into eighteen sections; these run down to a point around the middle where there are only two sections, which later divide, then join again. Also in Tate’s collection is the related work, <span>The Queen </span>1962 (Tate L03874), made in the same year, which has a more complex woven structure but a simpler colour scheme, being woven entirely of natural coloured linen thread. The works’ titles are suggestive of companion pieces, but they can be displayed together or separately. A third work dating from 1962, <span>Lekythos </span>1962 (Tate L03875) is also in Tate’s collection.</p>
relief linen bamboo
15 May 2017 – 4 November 2018
2018-11-04
15 May 2017 – 4 November 2018
2018-11-04
2017-05-15
Tate Modern (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
2017-05-15
Beyond Craft
Collection based display
The King I
object: 3759 × 955 × 20 mm
Presented by the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation (Tate Americas Foundation) 2016
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<i>The King I</i> 1962 is a large hanging sculpture that combines natural and black linen threads, woven together and suspended from bamboo rods. The warp threads are divided into two equal sections, one black and one natural, giving the work a balanced, symmetrical look. Hanging over three and a half metres from the floor, the piece begins with tab fringes, divided into eighteen sections; these run down to a point around the middle where there are only two sections, which later divide, then join again. Also in Tate’s collection is the related work, <i>The Queen </i>1962 (Tate L03874), made in the same year, which has a more complex woven structure but a simpler colour scheme, being woven entirely of natural coloured linen thread. The works’ titles are suggestive of companion pieces, but they can be displayed together or separately. A third work dating from 1962, <i>Lekythos </i>1962 (Tate L03875) is also in Tate’s collection.</p>
<p>Tawney was a pioneer of ‘fiber [sic.] art’ in the United States. Having practiced initially as a sculptor, she turned to weaving in 1954 when she studied tapestry with the Finnish weaver Marta Taiple at the Penland School of Crafts. In 1957 Tawney occupied a studio in Lower Manhattan’s Coenties Slip where she became part of a community of artists including Robert Indiana (born 1928) and Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015). In particular, she developed a close friendship with the abstract painter Agnes Martin (1912–2004), and it was Martin who named the series of works that includes this sculpture, choosing allusive titles such as: <i>The King</i>,<i> The Queen</i>,<i> The Bride</i>,<i> The River</i>,<i> The Foundation</i>,<i> The Veil</i>,<i> The Arc</i>, etc.</p>
<p>1961 and 1962 were very productive years for Tawney as she prepared intensely for her solo exhibition at the Staten Island Museum, where <i>The King I</i> and <i>The Queen </i>were likely first exhibited. She began to work off the loom and in three dimensions for the first time, using a special linen yarn which had been made to order in black and natural. Inspired by her study of Peruvian gauze weave, she invented a technique that would allow her to work organically and with tall pieces that were not limited in their upward growth toward the ceiling. Tawney combined three techniques: split tapestry, double wefting and her invention of a new reed or comb that allowed her to shape her weave by spreading the warp and constructing it with a narrower width. She described this body of work as ‘sculptural’. In a statement written for the Staten Island Museum exhibition catalogue, Agnes Martin foregrounded the originality of Tawney’s vision:</p>
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</p><blockquote>To see new and original expression in a very old medium, and not just one new form but a complete new form in each piece of work, is wholly unlooked for, and is a wonderful and gratifying experience …With directness and clarity, with what appears to be complete certainty of image, beyond primitive determination or any other aggressiveness, sensitive and accurate down to the last thread, this work flows out without hesitation and with a consistent quality.<br/>(Agnes Martin, <i>Lenore Tawney</i>, exhibition catalogue, Staten Island Museum, New York 1961–2.)</blockquote>
<p>In 1963 <i>The King</i> and <i>The Queen</i> were also exhibited with other pieces in the seminal <i>Woven Forms</i> exhibition at New York’s Museum of Contemporary Crafts (now the Museum of Arts and Design), a show which also included works by Alice Adams, Sheila Hicks, Dorian Zachai and Claire Zeisler. The exhibition took Tawney’s name for her group of twenty-two works as its title. In his introduction to the catalogue, curator Paul J. Smith described the ‘sculptural shapes of interlaced threads’ in Tawney’s work. He continued:</p>
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</p><blockquote>In these hangings, not only the created surface but the created shape becomes an expressive formal element. This is the result of a re-evaluation of the weaving process as implemental in varying the shape of the finished object … Form is determined by distortion of the set pattern of the warp and weft while the piece is still on the loom. Thus, the artist’s search for form is reflected in the finished hanging.<br/>(Paul J. Smith in Museum of Contemporary Crafts 1963.)</blockquote>
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<b>Further reading</b>
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<i>Woven Forms</i>, exhibition catalogue, Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York 1963.<br/>Mildred Constantine and Jack Lenor Larsen,<i> Beyond Craft: The Art Fabric</i>, New York 1973.<br/>Kathleen Nugent Mangan (ed.), <i>Lenore Tawney</i>, <i>A Retrospective</i>, exhibition catalogue, American Craft Museum, New York 1990.</p>
<p>Ann Coxon<br/>March 2016</p>
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Summary
2019-01-15T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
abstraction contrast countries and continents emotions, concepts and ideas formal qualities geometric non-representational Peru places suspension symmetry texture weaving