Magdalena Abakanowicz.
A vast exhibition of Magdalena Abakanowicz’s towering textile sculptures in the Blavatnik Building at Tate Modern is showing until 21st May 2023. I went along for my birthday, and this is what I thought and felt throughout it.
Entitled ‘Every tangle of thread and rope’, the exhibition allows you to meander through Abakanowicz’s life and her development from smaller scale artworks to the large scale sisal shrouds that have been hung forest-like in the concrete gallery.
I had only recently come across this artist; a black-ish hairy sculpture hung at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and I wasn’t surprised when the information plaque said that previously Abakanowicz would allow exhibition visitors to stand or sit inside the works. Walking through the Tate galleries with all these highly textured natural fibre shapes, I wanted to get up close - to touch, to smell, to feel the darkness inside (or the light, as it dappled through the weave).
Beginnings.
The exhibition begins with the development of Abakanowicz’s practice during 1955 to 1965 when she had graduated from the Academy of Plastic Arts in Warsaw. {The name of this institution was never explained, so I’m unsure if other students were actually working with plastic, but Wikipedia says: “Less often the term may be used broadly for all the visual arts".”}. Post-Stalin there was an opening for experimentation, particularly with craft and folk art due to support from the state-sponsored Association of Polish Artists.
Though it is stated that critics were shocked to know of Abakanowicz’s improvisatory weaving style, meaning she didn’t use a template, this exhibition showcases painted works and collages that do present inspiration for the large-scale works. Polish avant-garde developments at the time were influenced by ‘informel art’ [sic], which was concerned with matter, and by constructivism, which was concerned with spatial and geometric concepts).
Images: 1. ‘Green Composition’, 1956-7 (Gouache on cotton canvas); 2. ‘Composition’, 1960 (Gouache on linen); 3. ‘Untitled’, 1965 x 3 (Ink and gouache on papers on paper); 4. ‘Untitled’, c.1960 (Oil paint on canvas); 5. ‘Design for ‘Tapisserie 21 brune’.’ 1963 (Ink and gouache on papers on paper); 6. ‘Tapisserie 21 brune’, 1963 (Wool).
The painted fabrics - gouache on linen (Composition, 1960), and gouache on cotton canvas (Green Composition, 1956-7) - reminded me of modernist Horrockses prints of the same period due to their crispness, but the rounded forms were both ghostly and natural reminiscent to me of Kandinsky. The collages and oil painting that were then reflected in the tapestry Tapisserie 21 brune draws me to Georges Braque’s early 1900’s work.
Organic world.
“I see fibre as the basic element constructing the organic world on our planet… It is from fibre that all living organisms are built, the tissue of plants, leaves and ourselves… our nerves, our genetic code, the canals of our veins, our muscles… We are fibrous structures”.
Weavings and tapestries adorned the walls in sisal, horsehair, cotton, wool - and artificial silk (which could be rayon?). Coarse and strong, longlasting, resilient. Though they retained a traditional rectangular format in size and shape, partially as Abakanowicz participated in state-run craft programmes where artist would become designer (to produce something more industrial), the construction was seemingly haphazard.
I feel an affinity with Abakanowicz for the collections of natural materials; the exhibition had cases of animal horns displayed in a room where face casts and hessian objets were also shown (works from the 1980s and 1990s in response to being labelled a ‘fibre-artist’). This continued collecting and experimentation of materials helped her to analyse herself as an artist, it seems.
This room signalled the end of the small-scale works so that you felt the full force of the larger three-dimensional forms to come, though the flat works clearly paved the way for these more unconventional fibre pieces; we start to see forms inspired by the order of insects ‘diptère’ that use only one set of wings to fly - later in the exhibition witnessed as huge 3D forms - and accompanied with later-life charcoal drawings of flies. Explanation that Abakanowicz grew up in a seventeeth-century manor house deep in the Polish forest confirms why the forms and tableaus are dark and heavy, with rounded knolls and a variety of textures.
Images: 1. Close up of ‘Helena’, 1964-5 (Wool, sisal, cotton and horsehair); 2. ‘Cocoon’, 1987 (Animal horns and steel {cabinet}); 3. ‘Diptère’, 1967 (Hemp, sisal and horsehair); 4. Two drawings from the cycle ‘Flies’, 1994 (Charcoal on paper); 5. Showcase with ‘Pink faces’, 1996 (Iron, glass and polyester). 6. ‘Textural composition white’, 1961-2 (Sisal and cotton).
A fibrous forest.
We had a fabric and haberdashery shop in Preston, where I went to study for my fashion degree, named ‘Abakans’. I now realise why it had such a name; in 1964 an art critic first coined the term ‘Abakans’ - after the artist’s surname - to give Abakanowicz’s ambiguous style a frame of description. The three-dimensional works are an amalgamation of environments that Abakanowicz placed in situ herself to provide an immersive and performative space; dramatic shadows would appear on walls from the imposing sculptures, distance between the works would offer a dialogue, and they were physically a place of safety.
“The Abakans were my escape from categories in art, they could not be classified. Larger than me, they were safe like the hollow trunk of the old willow I could enter as a child in search of hidden secrets”.
Works in the fibrous forest were presented by the Tate curation team to echo Abakanowicz’s previous exhibitions; wandering around you would gain a sense of scale or of closeness, depending on the proximity of other hanging works. Each part of the piece offered a new texture and you feel the exploration Abakanowicz had with the raw materials. The titles were not ambiguous however, with ‘Tuba (Tube)’ simply being a tree-like form in brown, or ‘Ubraine czarne VI' (Black garment VI)’ being a black coat-like shape. I guess though, how else could you describe and organise them?
You could almost uncover what material was used for the varying textures, but without touching you could only surmise if it was in fact a soft hairy bit, or if there was some coarseness in the fibre. Chunky rope would coil up, parts would protrude, there’d be necks as if you could put your arms through (or were they simply evocative of tree trunk boles), and tight or loose bits.
Images: 1. Female initiation mask from Papua New Guinea, received as a gift from Abakanowicz’s friend who travelled with her to the region and met the Sepik peoples; 2. Close up of ‘Abakan Vert’, 1967-8 (sisal); 3. Close up of ‘Black Garment VI’, 1976 (sisal); 4. Room with ‘Abakan Brown IV’, 1969-84 (sisal) viewed in full; 5. Close up of ‘Black Garment’, 1968; 6. Close up of ‘Black Garment VI’, 1976 (sisal). {May not be accurate, I didn’t take full photos of each piece and used the key to remember where works were hung and used their title for assistance}.
Petrified organism.
It was in 1967 that Abakanowicz first started making the 3D forms, and participated in international exhibitions with these works. Throughout the 1970s the sculptures were grouped differently for the exhibition spaces, with rope used to direct visitors in connection to the works and throughout the space. This was exemplified by ‘Set of Black Organic Forms’, 1974 (rope, canvas and sisal), two huge lurching garment-type forms sprawling rope as if intestines onto the gallery floor. But unfortunately it was roped off so you couldn’t actually walk around it to view from all sides and recognise the connection for yourself.
Rope was also used to connect people; ‘Red Rope’, 1972 was featured as part of the Edinburgh International Festival where the artist and others carried a rope through the city.
“The rope to me is like a petrified organism, like a muscle devoid of activity. Moving it, changing its position and arrangement, touching it, I can learn its secrets and the multitude of its meanings … It carries its own story within itself, it contributes this to its surroundings”.
When raw materials were less readily available, Abakanowicz would use the sisal from discarded ropes found along the Vistula River in Poland. I appreciate this action; of sourcing a material with its own history and giving it a new life - this was something I did for my MA Fashion and the Environment collection, alongside buying new rope (nylon fishing rope is pretty hard to untangle).
Images: 1-2. ‘Abakan Situation Variable II’, 1971 (sisal and rope); 3. Photo of ‘Red Rope’, 1972; 4. ‘Set of Black Organic Forms’, 1974 (rope, canvas and sisal).
Abakany.
This 1969 film - ‘Abakany’ - made in collaboration with film director Jarosław Brzozowski and experimental composer Bogusław Schäffer (but completed by cinematographer Kazimierz Mucha) helped the visitor understand the situations in which Abakanowicz wanted you to explore the three-dimensional works. Filmed in the sand dunes of the Slowiński National Park in Łeba on the Baltic coast of Poland, the Abakans are supported by wooden armatures and blow in the wind as if with a life of their own. Especially as a large majority of the works appear as garments, it is as though they contain spirits.
As film stills, the lunar-esque landscape harks back to the collages and gouache or oil paintings of previous works, again with the Kandinsky palette and forms.
Images: Photos of the projection at the Tate Modern showing the film ‘Abakany’.
Invented anatomy.
In the 1980s Abakanowicz started experimenting with materials other than fibres as a retort to being labelled a ‘fibre-artist’; the initial launch from smaller to larger works seemed to be an exploration in the self, to understand what forms and spaces and materials rang true to the soul. We were given a taste of this in the earlier rooms with showcases of the face casts (using polyester resin) and trophy animal head hessian objets (using burlap sacks) that seemed to give anthropomorphic life as opposed to being a nice picture.
In this penultimate room we find a sprawl of more-figurative pieces that demand attention. They’re bigger, more pronounced, more vibrant in colour. We see bright yellow, bright red, dark black. They’re almost more purposeful in their being. It’s an assumption that the Tate curation team put these works together based on images of past exhibitions or studio views, so these rooms are in fact examples of what Abakanowicz would’ve wanted, but retrospectives are often a curation of a curation to shed a new perspective, almost like therapy (what did the artist mean?). So we aren’t privy to whether this is a realistic curation or not.
Images: 1. View of room showing from L-R {partially} ‘Black Ball’, 1975 / ‘Abakan Orange’, 1968 / ‘Abakan Red’, 1969 (middle) / ‘Abakan Yellow’, 1970 / ‘Abakan Orange’, 1971 (bottom right corner); 2. ‘Abakan Yellow’, 1970 (sisal); 3. ‘Abakan Orange’, 1968 (sisal); 4. Another view of the room; 5. ‘Abakan Orange’, 1971 with drawings ‘Embryology’ and ‘Untitled’, 1971 (ink or ink and charcoal on paper); 6. ‘Abakan January-February’, 1972 (sisal).
Curators and writers would see Abakanowicz’s work as emblematic of feminism, even though the artist never described herself as such. The forms suggest lungs (as seen with ‘Abakan January-February’, 1972), something vaginal (as experienced with ‘Abakan Orange’, 1971), or a face and nose (as with ‘Abakan Red’, 1969). As the Tate exhibition guide explained, the series of forms started in 1978 and made under the banner ‘Embryology’ was a wider idea that the soft matter of all her works were alive, that they were a soft landscape of interrelated objects made in order to fulfil a physical need of inventing anatomy.
The main ‘Embryology’ series was 800 forms shown together at the Venice Biennale in 1980 in the Polish national pavilion. Made from a combination of natural fabrics and fibres, and stuffed too, they look soft and squidgy but I imagine they’re actually weighty in the hand and coarse to touch. They feel old; that they’ve been carted around and held and handled. They’re mummified beings - and in fact one of the Biennale rooms was full of headless torsos sat hunched over (‘Backs’, 1980) made from plaster casts that were given texture through draped fabric and resin.
These forms remind me of making sculptures for school costumes out of my mum’s old tights and scrunched up newspaper. Uncertainty of whether they were deliberately mended-looking, or if it was simply to use up any found materials, though this adds to the sensation that they are forms constantly being added to - the ‘organic’ and ‘alive’ description Abakanowicz was meaning when she stated it was soft matter.
Images: 1-3. ‘Embryology’, from 1980; 4. Montage showing photos of the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 1980 with ‘Backs’ {bottom left} and ‘Embryology’ {bottom right}.
Human/Nature.
From the 1980’s Abakanowicz’s work started to relfect on the violence humans acted upon each other and upon the natural world. ‘Embryology’ and the other burlap casts mentioned seemed to be the beginning of another exploration of lifeless beings in a life-full space. In the closing exhibition room we are treated to a timeline wall with photos of the artist in her studio/outdoors, and of the installation works.
Encountering felled trees in the Masurian Lake District in Poland, Abakanowicz creates a series of 21 huge forms that suggest both weapons and bodies for the ‘War Games’ series, 1987-1995. They utilise the same materials as before including burlap, yet with the addition of wood and more iron, evoking a heaviness not present in the pure fibre works. Moving into architecture, she designed ‘Arboreal Architecture’ as a sort of living city, but unrealised, she was instead commissioned to create a permanent installation in Hiroshima to commemorate the victims of nucelar destruction and so ‘Space of Becalmed Beings’ was installed in 1993.
The experimentations continue throughout this period, with‘Sarcophagi in Glass Houses’, 1989 in New York state presenting wooden casting engine forms encased in glasshouse structures, and ‘Space of Unknown Growth’ in 1998 presenting 22 ovoid forms in a Lithuanian forest now covered in moss. Finally, ‘Unrecognized’ in 2002, there is an installation of 112 two-metre tall headless iron figures striding off each in their own direction in a Polish park, of which a film at the showed the process - but, what came first, this or Antony Gormley?
Images: 1. Photo of Tate exhibition showing inset image of Abakanowicz in the forest; 2. ‘Marrow Bone’ from the War Games series, 1987 (wood and iron), photo from Marlborough New York; 3. ‘Space of Becalmed Beings’, 1993 in Hiroshima, photo via Rog01 on Flickr; 4. Space of Unknown Growth’ , 1998, photo from Europos Parkas; 5. ‘Sarcophagi in Glass Houses’ , 1989, photo from Storm King Art Center; 6. Photo of video screening at the Tate of ‘Unrecognized’, 2002 in Park Cytadela in Poland.
Overall it was useful to encounter an exhibition that took you on a journey of the artist’s exploratory progression. It was vast, in terms of scale and amount shown, to highlight key points in Abakanowicz’s work life; upon further research I can see so many additional adjoining works, such as drawings and burlap casts, along with the later installations, but the exhibition seemed to select the character of each exprimentation so that you as the viewer could properly imagine the artistic process.
A variable artist; one that didn’t seem to be afraid to move on and explore other materials or methods, yet appeared to stay true to the forms and motifs that she connected with.
Magdalena AbakANOwicz: Every Tangle of Rope and Thread is on at the Tate Modern until May 21st 2023.
All images unless otherwise stated were taken by me at the exhibition.