Anni Albers: On Weaving (1965–)

“In this book, Anni Albers develops the thoughts on the history and design of weaving which she put forward in her collection of essays On Designing, published in 1959. Although On Weaving is not meant to be a technical reference book, it conveys a fundamental understanding and appreciation of the craft, both to the textile expert and to the interested layman, and is written in uncomplicated language, illustrated with clear diagrams.

In chapter 5 Anni Albers says: ‘Though elaborations are usually thought to be an advance of stage of work, they are often an easy expansion from basic concepts. Intricacy and complexity are not, in my mind, high developments. Simplicity, rather, which is condensation, is the aim and the goal for which we should be heading. Simplicity is not simpleness but clarified vision–the reverse of the popular estimate.’

This methodically intellectual approach has been applied in the composition and writing of this book and has enabled the author with her expert knowledge to condense into a small space the very quintessence of designing woven fabrics and the many facets and intricacies of this craft. But at the same time Anni Albers is able to excite and inspire the reader’s imagination and unravel the romantic story of weaving.

The technical side, which includes tapestry and carpet weaving, weaves and their derivatives, cloth constructions and materials is extremely well documented with drawings and photographs. The artist-designer will find delight in the many illustrations of ancient and modern weaving.” (back cover)

First published by Wesleyan University Press, Middletown/CT, 1965
Reprint, Studio Vista, London, 1974
ISBN 0289370043
204 pages
via x

Review: Irene Emery (American Anthropologist, 1968).

WorldCat

PDF (1965/1974, 30 MB, no OCR)
HTML (New Expanded Edition, 2017, added on 2017-10-30)

Morehshin Allahyari, Daniel Rourke (eds.): The 3D Additivist Cookbook (2016)

“The 3D Additivist Cookbook is a compendium of imaginative, provocative works from over 100 artists, activists and theorists.

The accompanying 3D Additivist Archive contains 3D .obj and .stl files, critical texts, templates, recipes, (im)practical designs and methodologies for living in this most contradictory of times.”

Publisher Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 4 Dec 2016
Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 International License
ISBN 9789492302106
[356] pages

Editors

Cookbook: PDF, PDF, IA, Scribd (460 MB)
Archive: torrent, magnet (6 GB)

Alfred H. Barr, Jr.: Cubism and Abstract Art: Painting, Sculpture, Constructions, Photography, Architecture, Industrial Art, Theatre, Films, Posters, Typography (1936)

The catalogue of the first MoMA’s retrospective of modernism, held 2 March-19 April 1936, laid the theoretical foundation of the museum. Its jacket contains a notorious chart of modernist art history, the Diagram of Stylistic Evolution from 1890 until 1935.

“The catalogue remains an important historical document (as does that for Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism). It set abstraction within a formalist framework that—ignoring the intellectual byways of French symbolism, German idealism, and Russian Marxism of the previous thirty years—was shaped by the scientific climate that had started a century before. … The exhibition together with the widespread dissemination of its influential catalogue, established Cubism as the central issue of early modernism, abstraction as the goal.” (Sybil Gordon Kantor, 2003)

The exhibition later traveled to another 7 cities: San Francisco, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Baltimore, Providence, and Grand Rapids.

Publisher Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1936
249 pages
via MoMA

Commentary: Meyer Schapiro (Marxist Quarterly, 1937), Susan Noyes Platt (Art Journal, 1988), Astrit Schmidt Burkhardt (Word & Image, 2000).

Publisher (incl. master checklist and press releases)
WorldCat

PDF (47 MB)