The following excerpt is from an Immaterial podcast episode tracing the path of linen in garments from ancient Egypt to the present day: 


From the tombs of Egyptian rulers to the palaces of India, from the bedrooms of French chateaus to boardrooms of Wall Street, the opulence of linen communicates wealth. ..But as much as linen is recognized for its elegance, it is also marked by its capacity to oppress. In the nineteenth century, textile companies located in states like New York and Massachusetts—Brooks Brothers among them—manufactured linen and wool uniforms for enslaved and formerly enslaved people who served in roles like butlers, drivers, and doormen. Dr. Jonathan Square, a professor and research fellow in The Met’s Costume Institute, connects the many facets of linen—the coarse and durable, with the fine and affluent. Cora Harrington, “The Lingerie Addict,” blends her study of history, sociology, culture, and economics to reflect on the unseen importance of linen undergarments. Necessary for hygiene—as it separated the body from layers of costly clothing they wore each day—corsets, drawers, and more made linen an essential item in the day-to-day lives of nineteenth-century women. 




Linen. Linen? Linen!

Material Matters

An excited wave of a hand 👋, a resigned face palm 🤦‍♀️, or a smile of contentment 🤗 are all gestures and movements that one might find in a text thread or in an object from our collection. The figurative representations of people, deities, and other beings that span thousands of years are teeming with bodily signals that communicate emotions and opinions. This is a practice not unlike the emojis we use in place of text, an act that is itself tied to the compelling and enduring urge to use images to convey what words cannot.

Gestures, Signals, & Movements

Emojis

Security is a key aspect of blockchain technology, and a rather common subject in art across The Met’s collection. This week considered the many forms of security that artists explore in their work, including encoded diagrams, unicorn-resistant fences, puzzles, and guardian figures. Each object proposes a lens through which to understand the urge to protect assets or conceal information, connecting directly to one of the key functions of blockchain. Due to their decentralized nature and ability to trace attempts to tamper with existing data, blockchains are well regarded as powerfully secure, not unlike the chain and fence meant to enclose the creature in The Unicorn Rests in a Garden. 


Codes, Ciphers, & Security

From the World of Web3

Georgia O’Keeffe is an artist whose name, image, and art are amongst the most recognizable in the world, and for good reason. The artist’s large scale flower paintings changed the way viewers considered the shape of petals; Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue served as O’Keeffe’s vision of American patriotism while proposing a path forward for the stylistic development of modern painting in the United States; and O’Keeffe’s photographs of her home in New Mexico portray a landscape that she herself was simultaneously responsible for changing and dedicated to documenting. This week’s exploration of her practice provides an opportunity to consider O’Keeffe’s work amongst other objects in The Met’s collection that have similar aims but vastly different forms. Taken collectively, the examples of O’Keeffe’s work selected for this week exemplify the many ways that her vision shaped American modernism. 


America Made Modern: A Painter’s Vision

Collection Highlight

Why do artists use what others might discard? Sometimes the impetus is economics or convenience: this is just what was available to them at the time. But it’s often not so simple. Perhaps the material points to a deeper meaning, perhaps the artist was following a particular material fascination as Frank Gehry did in his experimentations with cardboard furniture, or perhaps it was just what was there in front of them, as was the case in Thorton Dial’s monumental History Refused to Die. Among the many reasons great art endures is the fact that we might never know and are invited to wonder.

Everyday Materials in Art

This week’s focus on red emojis was based on an interest in highlighting the pervasive use of the color both in the digital realm and in the objects in our collection. Artists and makers have tested and created various methods of extracting the vibrant hue from natural materials, such as cinnabar, ochre, and cochineal beetles, and advancements in synthetic pigments beginning in the nineteenth century are responsible for the plethora of shades that are commercially available today as dyes and paints. Red itself is a color often associated with strong emotions, like passion, love, or anger, and is often used in food company logos due to its ability to catch one’s eye and stimulate an appetite. As we consider the evolution of red—from natural pigments to digital icons—we’re reminded of how color continues to shape our perceptions and experiences, both online and in everyday life.


Seeing Red!

Technological innovation and the creation of art have existed hand in hand for thousands of years. This is in part due to the evolving needs of makers but also because some of the most creative scientific minds have also been artists. Leonardo da Vinci stands out as the most recognizable example of an artist-inventor, but the American painter John G. Rand is someone that might also be considered in this conversation. Rand’s invention of the first collapsible paint tube for artists revolutionized the portability of paint (which had previously been stored in pig bladders) and, according to the artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, became essential to the plein air painting (painting outdoors) of Impressionists such as Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, and Camille Pissarro. 

Technological innovation not only plays a role in the creation of art, but also in its conservation. One of the most stunning examples of this fact is the conservation of Tullio Lombardo’s Adam, which took a team of conservators, scientists, and curators twelve years to complete after shattering at The Met. Testaments to the prevalence and importance of innovation exist throughout the museum's galleries and behind the scenes in our conservation labs.



Art x Tech

Harlem is one of New York City’s most dynamic neighborhoods. It has existed in the public imagination as the heart of Black cosmopolitan artistic and cultural production since the heyday of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. Perhaps that is why artists from around the world, such as Tsuguharu Foujita (artwork above), depicted the neighborhood and the people, places, and sounds that make it so memorable. In the case of most of the artists in this week’s lineup, Harlem is a place that they called home, which lends to the personable, intimate portraits of a block or a building as seen in The Block and Street Story Quilt. There is also a musicality present in the lively photographs of couples swing dancing or the carefully orchestrated pageantry in Norman Lewis’s painting or James Van der Zee’s photograph. Although Harlem only spans forty-five city blocks, artists who consider it as a muse have carried the neighborhood’s essence and likeness far and wide. 


Harlem As Muse

Collection Highlights

Few would argue that any emoji has a single meaning. In many—if not most—cases, that’s also true of signs and symbols in artworks over time. Does your 😱 have the “existential horror” of Munch’s, or are you just playfully surprised? Maybe you need 🖐️ minutes, want a high five, or are asking someone to “stop!” We’ll play the “emoji” version of Art Links every 4 weeks, and continue to explore the messy nuances of icons, signs, symbols, and more. 👋

Iconic!

Making things appear to be something else has been of interest to artists for centuries. Whether creating highly realistic trompe l'oeil paintings or paper-like sheets of porcelain, many artists in the collection have created art meant to trick the eye. In some cases, such as the French Costume Armor and Sword in the Classical Style, the decision to use papier-mâché instead of crafting the helmet from metal, was both practical because of its temporary use as a costume and the cost of materials. Chakaia Booker’s Raw Attraction is less about disguising the found tires that compose her sculptures and more so a testament to their unrecognizable transformation. 
