Anni Albers: From Black Mountain to Chelsea
“Life today is very bewildering,” writes Anni Albers at the beginning of an essay published in a 1938 issue of the Black Mountain College Bulletin. The bulletin sits neatly in a case among her other writing works in the lobby of David Zwirner. Artist types, gallery-goers, and older New Yorkers not new to the scene fill the lobby. The young employees behind the desk are cracking jokes while older women discuss co-op issues at their Park Ave apartments. It’s the first Autumn-feeling Thursday of the season and the vibe at the gallery is just right. In the front room, a weaving is displayed like a table runner — the tapestries on the walls like guests about to pull up chairs. A Last Supper-esque scene with Anni placed prominently in the middle.
One evening this past summer, I fell in love with a place, surprising unfamiliar to me at the time, called Black Mountain College. It all started with a series of photographs that felt as though someone had hijacked my dreams; artists in tattered 1930’s and 1940’s clothes in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Every photograph left me nostalgic for a time I didn’t know, a Midnight in Paris sort of wish. In one, a woman sits at a weaving loom; her hair pulled back with a polka dot scarf, she’s wearing a plain sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up over her elbows. The woman in the photo is Anni Albers.
Anni Albers in her studio at Black Mountain College, 1937(© 2018 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation)
Anni Albers played an influential role at Black Mountain College. After studying at Bauhaus, Anni and her husband, Josef Albers, were invited to establish creative programs at Black Mountain College, a newly established school just outside Asheville, North Carolina. The couple, both well known in their fields, moved to North Carolina and stayed there for sixteen years. The college was active from 1933 to 1956, during which some of the most influential artists created, taught, and lived on the campus.
It is no surprise that I was immediately drawn to the photographs of Anni in the front room since my love of Black Mountain College began with photographs. They are the only chance you have during the show to see Anni. In the photographs, she rarely looks directly at the camera; her face turned and seemingly captured mid-sentence. The small contact sheet-like cutouts pasted on craft paper resemble a family scrapbook. Simplistic wood frames hung on the starch white walls of the gallery display her work. A case in the back room displays small samples of textiles. A small cream label stapled to the board with “Anni Albers Fabrics” in a toasty red. In the final room, a large scale painting, “Camino Real,” hangs the back wall. The light beams in from the frosted skylights. On a rainy day, the room would be darker, and the works would produce a different feeling, but today they’re bright.
When you look at Anni’s art, you want to sit next to her, have her teach you how to turn something so simplistic as twine into a feeling. She’s a teacher by nature, each piece an experiment. Curator, Brena Danilowitz, understands Albers ability to teach. The show introduces you to her work, takes you through her thought process, and leaves you starving to learn more. You watch as Anni introduces new practices into her work as you walk through the gallery space - a timeline of material and maturity. Her work strikes a nostalgic bone, a longing for a time when the material had the power to evoke emotion, and not everything was behind glass. “Life today is very bewildering” indeed.
This show was on display at David Zwirner from September 10—October 19, 2019.