Art & textiles : fabric as material and concept in modern art from Klimt to the present / edited by Markus Brüderlin ; with contributions by Hartmut Böhme [and 11 others] ; translations, Amy J. Klement

Includes bibliographical references

Introduction to the exhibition: the birth of abstraction from the spirit of the textile and the conquest of the fabric space / Markus Brüderlin -- Mythology and aesthetics of the textile / Hartmut Böhme -- Cloth and consciousness: our deep connotions: on the social and spiritual significance of the textile / Beverly Gordon -- ON the cultural anthropology of the textile / Ulrich Heinen in conversation with Bazon Brock -- Architecture in the age of disentangled authorship: textile impulses since the sixties / Emmanuel Petit -- Unfolding textile spaces: antiquity/modern period / Tristan Weddigen -- Catalogue : From Klimt to Matisse: painting wants to become textile, textile wants to become painting, circa 1900, Art Nouveau and the fertile interweaving of art and applied art ; The birth of abstraction from the spirit of the textile, 1914-33: Weaving and invention before and during the Bauhaus period ; The "un-winding": liberating the thread from the image into space, the fifties and today: art informer and the birth of fiber art ; Joseph Beuys and the fabric of the social, the sixties and seventies: felt, Fluxus, anti-form ; Soft bodies and inner textile worlds, the sixties, seventies, and today: soft art and Arte Povera ; Texture: the surface of space, the sixties and seventies: minimal art and postminimalism ; Global art and the universality of the textile: Africa, the Americas, Asia, the Orient, and the West: between cultures ; Spiderwomen: Bourgeois, Trockel, Hatoum, Amer ; Fabrics between material and spirit: the preserving, healing, and maltreated canvas ; ArchiTextile: clothed walls from the middle ages to today ; Networks: from mummy shroud to the world wide web -- Essays : Fabrics and painting: the interaction between fine and applied art around 1900: a European movement / Marie-Amélie zu Salm-Salm -- Spiderwomen: violability, vulnerability, and analogous stitching: the reevaluation of gender-specific clichés / Julia Wallner -- Textile turning points: on the role of material and concept in contemporary art / Uta Ruhkamp ; Caught in the tangle of the net: on a history of the network metaphor / Birgit Schneider -- Global art: how can intercultural dialogue be staged in an exhibition context? / Markus Brüderlin -- The thread running between textile art and painting: an exhibition curator's journey among cultures / Jean-Hubert Martin -- Glossary

The digitalization of the world seems to require manual compensation. Everywhere, people are crocheting, embroidering, knitting, and weaving. The boundary between arts and crafts appears to be blurring. As early as 1878, Gottfried Semper referred to textiles as the original art form. Interdisciplinary essays provide extensive discussions of the materials and ideas utilized in work with textiles.

Catalog of an exhibition held at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, October 12, 2013-March 2, 2014; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, March 21-June 22, 2014