Until Feb 7th, there is a retrospective of Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) at MoMA in New York.
There is a wonderful video produced by the MoMA about the life and art of this famous American sculptor of Japanese descent. She is best known for her wire sculptures, although she worked with many different materials, including paper. She studied at Black Mountain College (NC), where she met Josef Albers. During his Preliminary Course (also known as the Vorkurs) Albers challenged his students to experiment with simple materials such as paper, cardboard, and wire. Ruth Asawa produced her first modules and tessellations while studying at Black Mountain, and as you can see in the video, they were highly innovative at the time (late 1940s.) The curator who introduces the video makes some very interesting remarks, such as: “What Albers was talking about was abstracting from the material rather than being concerned with your own design ideas and forcing something onto it.” This echoes what I have heard about the way Joel Cooper treats paper when he folds his famous masks, always allowing the tensions to produce the volume instead of forcing the paper to behave in a certain way. You can see examples of her paperwork in the following links from the video: https://youtu.be/kOZC9X97-fQ?t=33 https://youtu.be/kOZC9X97-fQ?t=68 https://youtu.be/kOZC9X97-fQ?t=83) https://youtu.be/kOZC9X97-fQ?t=235 https://youtu.be/kOZC9X97-fQ?t=237 https://youtu.be/kOZC9X97-fQ?t=245 https://youtu.be/kOZC9X97-fQ?t=250 https://youtu.be/kOZC9X97-fQ?t=251 https://youtu.be/kOZC9X97-fQ?t=259 https://youtu.be/kOZC9X97-fQ?t=683 The curator who introduces the video makes some very interesting remarks, such as: “What Albers was talking about was abstracting from the material rather than being concerned with your own design ideas and forcing something onto it.” This echoes what I have heard about the way Joel Cooper treats paper when he folds his famous masks, always allowing the tensions to produce the volume instead of forcing the paper to behave in a certain way. Laura Rozenberg
