| I examine several women artists whose work, both creative and theoretical, pays serious attention to the presence of material culture, particularly textiles and dress. I extend current critical interest in the materiality of language by arguing for the inclusion of the work of craft theorists in these discussions, and by investigating how we might reconceive early experimental art and writing as intimately connected to and in conversation with material culture studies. The women artists I examine--filmmaker Maya Deren, Bauhaus weaver Anni Albers, and poets Laura Riding, Lorine Niedecker, and Gertrude Stein--all used writing and language in order to explore and articulate the relationship between humans and non-human objects, particularly objects of dress and bodily ornamentation. |
