Critical Issues in Contemporary Art: Kiki Smith

2 December 2019

Year 2 undergrad critical essay

Michelle Tjahjono

When Kiki Smith’s prints and sculptures were exhibited in Whitechapel in the UK in 1995, her work was primarily focused on the human body, both depictions of the exterior human body and also exploring its internal organs and component parts. That focus on the human body, especially that of the female form, is what she is well known for, but more so represents a certain part of her career (the late 80s and early 90s) that she has now fully shifted focus from. In 1994, she moves from the human body to a very different analysis of looking at animals. In particular, the political urgency surrounded by the disconnect with the natural environment leading to the destruction of the ecosystem and marginalised beings (modernartoxford.org.uk, 2019). Although, she does not abandon her feminist dialogue as it is clear she embeds her natural and spiritual motifs in her work with a consistent feminine mythological presence often referencing ancient representations found in fables, folk tales, biblical stories or creation myths. For instance, in Lying with the Wolf (2001) (khanacademy.org.uk, date unknown), a female character embraces a wolf, an animal typical in myths and fables to be a symbol of evil, temptation or downfall. Here, one can almost see the redemption of humans and nature where a woman and a dangerous animal or (perhaps more applicable to today’s environmental downfall), the dangerous human and the animal can easily co- exist (khanacademy.org.uk, date unknown).

Kiki Smith, Lying with the Wolf, 2001, ink and pencil on paper, 88 x 73 inches

In 2019, Smith’s exhibition in Modern Art Oxford called “I am a Wanderer” exhibits (as well as sculptures, photographs and prints) twelve large scale highly intricate Jacquard tapestries depicting the natural world, which began with birds and grew into art that was more folkloric and mythological (modernartoxford.org.uk, 2019). As this material is very new, I have been unable to find a wide range of sources in the library beyond the online but Smith has offered much of her knowledge and material through various interviews and talks.

Photos from Gerald Peters Contemporary

This substantial change in subject matter from the human body to the subtle political urgency towards what is occurring with the natural environment, was prompted by conversations she was having with scientists in the United States about climate change. There was already a great deal of documented climate science about the impact of our various actions and the catastrophic consequences for the environment.

“I went to Harvard to the Peabody museum and drew and there was a woman scientist there who was telling me about what the projections for the loss of habitat and therefore the loss of mammals would be in the next 50 years, 25 years few years and I had this idea of an image of a death barge… I was asked to make a show in Washington which was when the Kyoto treaty was … you know I made this whole room of this brown rain and earth you know disastrous scenario that we’re walking into but it was a moment then that I stopped working with the body or being interested in the body as a subject matter and started making more images just of animals and birds, insects. These also, this was a show in 1997 which was based on the destruction of birds and the opposite of the creation of birds in the Bible…before this, since 1970, they said in the newspaper the other day that we’ve lost 3 billion birds in the united states because of environmental change.” (Smith, 2019)

As a result of speaking to scientists and understanding that humans are undoubtedly past the tipping point for our long-term permanent impact on the planet, she decided that it was no longer ethically or morally possible to continue to make work about the human body and isolation. When talking about her work on the body, being younger, she claims to have invested much effort and thought into finding out who she was. However, being older, she grapples less with the meaning and complexities of being in a body and places more significance towards exploring the world we live in- looking “outside of one’s body, to the universe”. (France 24 English, 2019) Smith wanted to think about a more holistic depiction of the world where animals and humans are connected, in dialogue with each other and the impact that one action or the action of one has. The tapestries are the latest result of that change of focus for the past twenty-five years where that fragile ecosystem that humans have created have begun destroying. After a couple years of making solely animals or plant sculptures, she began to interject mythological stories, fairy tales and fables into her practice as she believed that was where the “intersection with humans and animals” were and emphasised our relationship to animals as critical to the construction of our own identity. (France 24 English, 2019 “I thought our identity is so interwoven with nature” (Smith, 2019).

As one looks closely at the pieces, it seems like a relatively old-fashioned medium, material or a medieval version of visual culture but in fact, these tapestries are only produced as a result of the most sophisticated advances in digital technology. It is essentially a marrying of medieval inspiration and subject matter, particularly the gigantic multipart tapestry in France which Smith makes references to when reflecting on the potential destruction and suffering of all living things in our world (Benhamou-Huet, 2019). ‘The Apocalypse Tapestry’ (1382) which was woven in the late 14th century, shows the story of the Apocalypse which includes vivid imagery of the Battle of Armageddon and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the Biblical Book of Revelations by Saint John the Divine (Wright, 1996) Smith describes seeing that work in her late twenties as being one of the most important artistic experiences in her life, describing the apocalypse in our current lives as a complicated inheritance that does not help us make decisions in the modern world, particularly in mythology with this idea of ending. She goes on to say that while this mentality does not work with trying to find solutions to world issues, the iconography remains extremely rich (Benhamou-Huet, 2019).

Jean Bondol, The Apocalypse Tapestry, 1377-1382, thread, gilt and silver woven into wool and silk, 78-foot (24 m) wide by 20-foot (6.1 m)

While this remains the visual inspiration for creating Smith’s multipart tapestry, it meets with very sophisticated digital technology that allows these works to be woven with the degree of detail seen in her tapestries. However, rather than being woven on hand, a double- headed electronic jacquard loom that is fed the information for the weaving is used from a digitised file. This file is produced as a result of producing a one to one scale cartoon which is a renaissance sense of a mock-up for the finished work. Smith used a collage of many different types of paper and prints and looking closer, one can see that they are made up of different horizontal bands of visual information. These all originate from different types of prints that the artist has cut up and collaged together to create the cartoon which has been scanned at high resolution and then passed back and forth between her and the company- Magnolia Editions (Gerald Peters Contemporary, 2016). The company weaves the tapestries as well as colour correcting and updating in terms of the image variations until she is happy with the file, which is then woven digitally on a Jacquard loom. The cyclical relationship between Jacquard weaving computers and Jacquard weaving (using the original punch card designs) inspired the forerunner of computing technology which has since developed, then allowed the looms themselves to be updated to create this type of visual detail. The options available at the present time for the artist with this kind of technology are more appropriate for the amount of surface detail that would not be possible for someone weaving by hand to achieve. A choice of over three thousand colour swatches can be selected to create exactly the right type of colour combination that Smith wants for the tapestries to reflect the original print, original work or collage. This is only possible due to a double headed loom which allows 17,800 more threads than is possible in traditional weaving. (Ainley, 2016). The variation from one texture or one surface to the next, is almost imperceptible to the human eye and so that kind of richness of surface detail is very much a homage or spectacle pageantry of the way visual culture was promoted in medieval times and often in the service of the particular king or court. ‘The Apocalypse Tapestry’ was commissioned by the Duke of Anjou in the late 1370s which enforces that idea of a piece being viewed and possessed by someone who was incredibly rich, wealthy and open to that certain class of royalty or very upper class who were able to access that type of rich visual culture. There is a translation between how that was embedded in the court with one of the lieges and how Smith is now bringing an element of medieval ritual or ceremony into a public realm which Smith does identify with in medieval art history (modernartoxfordblog, 2019).

One can also make comparisons with one of Grayson Perry’s exhibitions, The Vanity of Small Differences who similarly uses the technology of the jacquard loom to create six large scale tapestry works. Perry’s tapestries are inspired by the narrative of William Hogarth’s moral tale, A Rake’s Progress which he updates for a contemporary society and contains details such as product placement and other cultural references from the anti-hero’s journey into the decline through the social classes. For instance, pieces like Cans of Red Bull, a Cath Kidston bag and iPhones highlight his humorous commentary on our modern consumer culture, unaware or in denial that we are conforming to a set of norms set by our social classes and entirely convinced we are expressing our uniqueness by buying things (especially brands) (Art Fund, 2016).

“I thought it refreshing to use tapestries- traditionally status symbols of the rich- to depict a commonplace drama (though not as common as it should be): the drama of social mobility.” (Art Fund, 2016)

Though Perry occupies himself with ‘safe’ mediums such as ceramics and tapestry, he is doing so ironically and subversively where he wants to energise and revitalise those traditions. Moreover, whilst Smith would appear a conservative artist, a traditionalist interested in enchantment and myths, she makes a conscious embrace to the radical, political, meaningful and structural. Whilst Smith and Perry may not share specific references, inspirations or even perhaps similar processes of making, it can be agreed that they both share their enthusiasm for storytelling and clearly have an understanding of the tapestries being a symbol or a privilege that only those of a higher social class can have access to.

One of the ten feet high tapestries from the collection titled ‘Congregation’ (2014) features a nude woman resting on the trunk of a fallen tree, surrounded by a variety of woodland creatures. Squirrels scurry along branches towards a pair of owls while a deer sits by her feet. Some bats hover above her head while others below her side. Lower down, more animals reveal themselves under a dense collage of fragmented shapes with each creature’s eyes projecting slender, branch- like forms creating a surreal webbed structure (Porter, 2019).

Kiki Smith, Congregation, 2014, cotton jacquard tapestry, 113 x 75 inches, edition of 12

Smith views her experiences in a trans historical way where she also looks at her peer group of artists who took place in the 1970s, making work in a particular way that was a response to the AIDS crisis as it was emerging in the 1980s in New York as well as reacting to the violence caused and affected by the US’s political intervention in other countries within Latin and South America (Smith, 2019). These also contributed to the context of her work. The other context is certainly her fascination and deep love of medieval life which is undoubtedly seen through references to medieval visual culture throughout her practice from the tapestries and the way they engage both with scale and content. Ideas contained in ‘The Apocalypse Tapestry’ re-tell sections from the book of Revelations which is a Christian text and, in this case,, she was raised as a Catholic, so again, this identification in certain art from the medieval period is rooted as well in the religious context (France 24 English, 2019).

“I have drawn a lot from being Catholic…for me it was the first representation I saw of humans and nature and the formality of spirituality how spirituality is configured or in Catholicism, it is this belief in the physical manifestation of the spiritual world.” (France 24 English, 2019)

It is certain that Smith has been profoundly influenced by Catholicism’s language for spirituality which is a very vivid language or landscape that very much imprinted on her as an artist. As well as iconography, she is inspired by the idea that the physical can manifest in the spiritual and the suggestion of the idea that the spiritual world or the non- seen world is evident in all things visible. One figure, that inspired ‘Lying with the Wolf’ (2001) was Saint Genevieve (Saint of Paris) and the relationship between the wolf and the lamb (Benhamou-Huet, 2019).

Smith is very much an artist who takes spiritual matters seriously and often portrays a blurry line between the earthly realm and what might be above or below. This is why this subject matter that emerges from the tapestries is ever so prominent in for instance, ‘Underground’ (2012) which seems to be her version of the descent into hell. It calls attention to a naked man who appears trapped and held captive by tree roots. He is then overturned, tumbling down into intertwined tree branches and falling closer into the sediment of the earth and becoming part of the soil again. Meanwhile, a family of rabbits have dug their borrows next to his feet, indifferent to his fall. (Porter, 2019)

Kiki Smith, Underground, 2012, cotton jacquard tapestry, 119 x 78 inches, edition of 12

Other works such as ‘Spinners’ (2014) promote this ambiguous relationship between humanity and the spiritual world where humans are absent altogether. Rather, suspending spindly webs and willow covered in silk moths appear, completely spreading itself across the surface. If anything, this piece celebrates the union of cultures between the spinning and weaving both in the jacquard process, being able to produce such intricate detail and spinning from insects in the animal world. (Porter, 2019)

Kiki Smith, Spinners, 2014, cotton jacquard tapestry, 113 x 75 inches, edition of 12

That tension between light and shade in her work makes more sense because it is not a simple celebration of a deer in ‘Fortune’ (2014) prancing through the forest, which on first glance, could just be an innocent picture of a deer to be made into a tapestry, but it has more of a nuanced underpinning as to why there is tension when you begin to backtrack and contemplate this moment of environmental reckoning or catastrophe. (Porter, 2019)

Kiki Smith, Fortune, 2014, cotton jacquard tapestry, 113 x 75 inches, edition of 12

Smith’s interest in these states of tension or ambiguity between different conditions, goes back to her curiosities on the human body and emerging out of the interest of dismemberment, whilst looking at quite analytically, the body’s experience and its constituent parts. Her father was the American sculptor Tony Smith who was associated with abstract expressionism and minimalism. He made huge outdoor architectural constructions and his enthusiasm for processes of repetition and multiplication were present in his work where some are commemorating the processes of tessellation, repetition and fractalization which reinforced the construction of natural and man- made forms (Kanter, 2018). Although, despite all of that she chose not to follow her father into art college and forged an unconventional path towards art mediums and arguably, perhaps unconsciously, rejects her father’s “monolithic, system based” (Kanter, 2018) processes. Although, she talks about one of her earliest memories being with her sisters sitting around the kitchen table, being asked to make paper models of her father’s sculptures (complicated tetrahedrons and octahedrons) so essentially attempting to transform a flat two dimensional sheet of paper into a complex three dimensional form (Smith, 2019).

This fascination in shifting between two or three dimensions are starting to be seen in for instance, her silver sculptures which are all works that originally existed as prints, so like the tapestries which began as a collage of different printmaking surfaces, many of her sculptures are 3-D printed or cast in a more traditional bronze or metal casting technique from a motif that originates from a print. Smith emphasises the lack of distinction between fine arts and applied arts so she does not possess any sense of a hierarchy of materials or whether the piece of bronze sculptures have more importance than the silk scarf or a piece of jewellery. She considers those to all have equal weight and importance in her practice and takes that collapsing of distinctions between craft and art and art and design very seriously. As a result, that dedication of breaking down this boundary means she works with a lot of skilled artisans and craftspeople- producing her work in a very collaborative sense. Therefore, her tapestries were not weaved by herself, it was a four year process involving around twenty people and when she makes her sculptures she works with the foundry near her home in upstate New York with people who are skilled at casting and will cast the work on her behalf. She will go through every stage of the process with the crafts team. That respect to skill and what it means to work with a special certain material is something Smith is very respectful of with her work and in a way, that is medieval itself because it is a form of making work in a workshop for a guild set where there is always more than one person involved in that collaboration (Hentschel, M and Seifermann, E, 2008).

Overall, Kiki Smith claims she functions intuitively, being able to draw upon rich deep strands without rationalising her processes, believing her images hold a certain resonance and potency. However, though her imagery and techniques appear conservative and traditional, she has made a meaningful, structural and conscious embrace towards issues like the environment and views on politics. Influenced by her Catholic upbringing, she teaches us to pay more attention to what we are in the presence of- not just God the divine being, but His creations and humans being in the divine presence of the universe which is a privilege and a unique place to be in the world.

“…to learn from the dirt or rock, it’s a miracle that we get to be here” (Smith, 2019)

Bibliography

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Art Fund . (2016). Object of the month: The Vanity of Small Differences by Grayson Perry. Available: https://www.artfund.org/whats-on/more-to-see-and-do/features/object-of-the-month-the-vanity-of-small-differences-by-grayson-perry. Last accessed 20th November 2019.

Belvedere Museum. (2019). Kiki Smith: Procession. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IilOq2cSMAI. Last accessed 1st December 2019.

Benhamou-Huet, J. (2019). Interview - Kiki Smith. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdiEui18_dw. Last accessed 30th November 2019.

FRANCE 24 English. (2019). When fantasy meets popular folklore: Artist Kiki Smith’s work on display in Paris. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVKdSuNdk8g. Last accessed 26th November 2019.

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Porter, J. (2019). Kiki Smith. In: Phaidon Editors Vitamin T: Threads and Textiles in Contemporary Art. London: Phaidon Press Ltd. p156-157.

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