Last time we talked about the CACP, we focused on a group exhibition of prints. Today, let’s circle back to a single-artist show by exploring FAP #351, Ruth Reeves Textiles.
Historical Background
Ruth Reeves (1892-1966) was a painter, textile designer, and expert on Indian handicrafts. Originally from California, she studied at the Pratt Institute, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the Art Students League. During the 1920s, she traveled to Paris to study with modernist painter Fernand Léger. While there, she innovated the use of vat dyes and screen printing for textiles. Through her Parisian connections, her design aesthetic developed a Cubist sensibility. After returning to the United States in 1927, she continued traveling to new places for design inspiration. In 1934, for instance, she traveled to Guatemala as a Carnegie research fellow. The designs she created in relation to that trip were later exhibited in 1935. She spent the last decade of her life in New Delhi.
In addition to creating her own designs, Reeves also developed ideas for other projects. Together with Romana Javitz, curator of the picture collection at the New York Public Library, she pitched what would become the Index of American Design. Long interested in folk art, she wanted to develop a compendium of historical American designs across different media to inspire contemporary artists and designers in producing a national aesthetic. While its nationalist overtones are unsettling to 21st-century sensibilities, and the selections definitely favor whiteness in terms of representation, the Index remains an impressive collection of American material culture.
FAP 351 appears to be one of two exhibitions featuring Reeves’ textiles; the other was FAP 265. Since I only have the checklist for 351 though, we’ll focus on this exhibition today.
What’s in Ruth Reeves Textiles?
Ruth Reeves Textiles featured fifteen different works. The checklist included a mixture of works inspired by Reeves’s 1934 trip to Guatemala as well as other works made beforehand. Some of the titles include Costa Rica, Guatemala, Figures with Still Life, and Breakfast Print, among others. Most of the pieces appear to have included bright colors. One of the pieces, Carnival, was a black-and-white work that had gotten so threadbare it had to be removed from the exhibition.
Such damage was not unique to Reeves. Extant correspondence mentions broken crates, mosaics missing tesserae, and other damage. Overall, the exhibition materials held up surprisingly well considering they were traveling cross-country by train to art facilities with varying environmental and staff conditions. Nevertheless, sometimes the art got hurt.
My Thoughts on Ruth Reeves Textiles
As with many of the FAP shows, I haven’t been able to positively identify most of the works in FAP 351 yet. What familiarity I have with Reeves and her work, then, comes from seeing other pieces either online or in person. The VMFA included a Reeves wall hanging with abstracted guitars in its guitar exhibition, for instance, so I have seen her work in person. Despite the faded state of the colors, you could still appreciate the composition’s vibrant all-over composition.
Beyond the striking visual qualities of her work, Reeves’s textiles remind me of two concurrent things happening in the 1930s and 1940s. The first in the interest that modern artists, particularly women, took in textiles as creative media. Just as people today have reclaimed embroidery, knitting, and other crafts traditionally dismissed as feminine as powerful means for expression, Ruth Reeves, Marguerite Zorach, and other artists explored the creative potential of textiles during the interwar period.
The other is the interest the United States took in developing its relationships with Latin America. During the 1930s and 1940s, the federal government pursued positive interactions with their southern neighbors. The reasoning was that in the event of war, the US would want allies beyond Europe. Latin American artists traveled to the US to produce murals and other works. Exhibitions of Latin American art and material culture traveled around the US during the 1930s, including FAP shows (Aubrey Hobart, my immediate sucessor at Roswell, wrote about these in her dissertation).
The US also produced materials intended for Latin American audiences. Arguably the best-known examples of these goodwill productions are Disney’s Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros. Combining animation and live action, these films introduced viewers to Donald Duck’s two Latin American friends: José Carioca of Brazil, and Panchito Pistoles, from Mexico.
Next Month’s Exhibition
So that’s it for Ruth Reeves Textiles. Next time we circle back to the CACP, we’ll look at the Index of American Design shows that circulated the country, thanks in no small part to Reeves and her ideas. See you then!