Research - Richard Tuttle on Textiles

My own notes from Video of Richard Tuttle in conversation with Chris Deacon

Refers to his meeting with Agnes Martin
Textile Scholar - Mary Calumberg
Ad Reinhardt
Creative energy directed towards finding "the origin of things"
Pre-columbian textiles - greatest textile cultures on earth
1967 - Using canvas as the material of his work
The irregular octagon
Agnes Martin - "The only thing you have is your direction"
Invisible side of things










https://www.artbasel.com/-/media/ArtBasel/...2012/transcript_tuttle.pdf

Excerpt from interview also on Vimeo

Richard Tuttle: Yes, and one of the aspects of weaving is that everybody in this room is wearing a textile but it’s put in a zone where you could even call it invisible. It’s put into the invisible side of things. But it can be taken out, when you dress in the morning you make certain choices and then it’s another thing. So, the textile inherently has this movement between the invisible and the visible. I know Chris and I feel quite edgy because normally the textile is put on the side of the applied art and it’s diminished in value. But what I would wish, for example in the so-called fine arts, is to see something which could pass as freely between the invisible and the visible.

Chris Dercon: Let’s come back to that. It seems to me that textiles right now is almost like, I’m sorry, I hate to use that word in your presence, is like a trend. We see in Paris that the Musée Guimet is going to do Asian...

Richard Tuttle: Well, I started the trend!

Chris Dercon: You started the trend. The Musée Guimet is preparing an exhibition of Asian textiles with contemporary art, the Musée d’Art Moderne is preparing one, there was just one in Toulouse which was fascinating, about textiles and cinema, Seth Siegelaub, the conceptual art contractor, he showed his collection at Raven Row, the private Kunsthalle in London and suddenly conceptual artists are fascinated by textiles. What is that fascination all about, you think? We jumped now from ’67,

Richard Tuttle, canvases, back, front, against the wall, we jumped to forty years later, you started a trend, you’re much in demand. But why that fascination? Does it have to do with romanticism, with love, textiles as an expression of love, the very word ‘textile’ meaning ‘writing with the body’? What is the fascination about? Is it that we need now new collectables? New forms of investment?