Description
[G/C] From commissioned luxury items to homemade objects of utility, textiles are pervasive across human cultures, time periods, and social stations. This course will cover a selection of textile traditions from regions around the globe, including Europe, West Africa, East Asia, and the Americas. We will discuss how artists have deployed techniques such as weaving, embroidery, and block printing in the creation and decoration of textiles and how these processes inform function as well as visual and textural qualities. Our exploration will interrogate the lack of textiles in the traditional art historical canon and consider methods for interpreting these objects in their cultural and historical contexts. Given the timely exhibition, Weaving Splendor: Treasures of Asian Textiles, at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the class will also investigate how global trade and the availability of materials have influenced developments in production and artistic exchange over time.