THE ART IN QUILTS

© Margaret Rolfe

Ozquilt Network Newsletter Issue #34 1999

There is much debate at the moment about 'art' quilts. A dichotomy is being set up between 'art' quilts and 'traditional' quilts, to the latter's detriment, I fear. I would like to take a different view, one based on a long vision of both art and quilts.

I believe that all quilts are art. Quiltmaking is an art form. To me, art is all human creative expression, and it takes many, many forms. Painters make art, children make art, sand paintings are art, glass making is art, sculptors make art. The list could go on and on.

Yet there is a further dimension. Do we look at painters and ask the question: are they, or are they not, making art? We accept that they make art. Yet not all painters make art that should be hung in the National Gallery. Or art which can be hung in a contemporary gallery in a fashionable part of Sydney. There are many styles of painting, many places where it can be hung, from domestic interiors to different kinds of galleries, from hotels and board rooms to great national and international collections.

Cannot the same be said about quilts? Many, many people make quilts, but few quilts will ever be represented in the National Gallery of Australia. The fact that some quilts are in the National Gallery says that quilts are indeed an art form worthy of recognition alongside other art forms, such as painting, sculpture, pottery, and other textiles. When the Hampson sisters sat down to make their quilt in Westbury, Tasmania almost one hundred years ago, they would never have dreamed that they were making art that one day would hang in the National Gallery. They sewed their little patches of red fabric, embroidering their lives and their thoughts onto each one. It took several years of work before the quilt was finished. The quilt was eventually sold, perhaps they were short of money during the Depression. It was hung in a local hotel, a matter of local interest only. But the quilt was a great one, and its qualities were recognised long years later. Now the quilt has a proud place in the National Gallery's collection of quilts.

I was in Amsterdam recently, doing what I call the 'Van Gogh shuffle'. Thousands and thousands of us queued up to see Van Gogh's paintings in the newly-opened Van Gogh Museum. Long lines shuffled quietly past the paintings, objects of reverence, with spotlights highlighting them in dim rooms. All the while I was thinking "this was the painter who did not, could not, sell his pictures". He even had a brother who was an art dealer, but the pictures still did not sell. There was a huge art market at the time, and salons were hung floor to ceiling with paintings.

To be hung in the salon was the mark of approval. But where are those salon paintings now, and where are the Van Goghs? Art that is popular and well received at the time is not necessarily the art that is recognised in later times.

As to traditional, what is most Aboriginal art but traditional? Do not we value it because of its wonderful traditional qualities? The use of a palette of colours in earth tones, the dots and cross hatching that are so characteristic, don't these derive from ancient traditions? Yet how expressive these traditions are in the hands of someone like Rover Thomas or Emily Kngwarreye. Again here, not all Aboriginal art is of equal commercial value, as a painting by Emily Kngwarreye commands a high price, and a painting bought down the main street in Alice Springs sells for less. But both surely are art.

To my way of thinking, traditional or contemporary in quiltmaking is about style, and even then there are no hard and fast lines between the two styles. It is becoming increasingly hard to define where traditional ends and contemporary begins. A quilt in the traditional style can be totally original, while quilts considered contemporary can be traditional blocks in bright new fabrics. Tradition itself is created by repetition, and traditions have always changed and evolved through this repetition.

What is important to me in a quilt is that one hears the voice of the person who has made it. The style is not important. What did the quiltmaker intend to do, and how well did they achieve what they set out to make? I want to see quilts from the heart, not 'art' quilts.

© Margaret Rolfe 1999