Savaria - A Vas Megyei Múzeumok értesítője 9-10. (1975-1976) (Szombathely, 1980)
Művészettörténet - Beke László: Kísérleti textil
rather the task of aestheticians than of artists. It should be mentioned however, that the meaning of experimental textile is often nothing else than the introduction of a new form, resulting from new materials or new technics, or perhaps from the deliberate disregard to the differences of structure —texture —handling —pile. The appearence of synthetic fibres in textile art has introduced new forms, the meaning of which is synthetic material itself. In optimal cases it is the new technology that brings about the new material, and vice-versa, and so new form and new meaning come to life at the same time. FUNCTION. Besides material and technics, function is the third (and most problematic) criterion of textile. Most of the textile products have a function in everyday usage (clothes, sailcloth, thread, fishing-net, etc.). The most important principles of functionalist aesthetics are materiality and practicability; extreme functionalists reject all sorts of decorative function. Experimental textile has got rid of both practical and decorative function; research itself has become the function of it. It will not create objects for everyday use or for decoration; it will create "thinking" objects. It is first of all a mental activity. It would be a mistake to balme it for not being of "praetical use". On the other hand it is not impossible, that the difference between experimental and practical functions is going to disappear. Why not create "experimental technical textile"? INDIVIDUAL CREATION AND INDUSTRIAL MULTIPLICATION. The question of function has got a new meaning with the industrialization of textile production. The kilometerlong or muntiplied textile for everyday use has become completely different than the individual, hand-made decorative piece or the hand-made textiles serving both decorative and useful purposes, produced in a limited number. On top of all this the unique experimental textile, (sometimes multiplied in the same way as graphic works is meant, after all, for nothing but exposition. So far only preoparatory drawings or sketches have been used, and now models, maquettes, sample pieces or prototypes, sometimes even computer programes, are of equal function and importance. Experimenting has almost completely been exiled out of the industry on economic reasons, though industrial execution would often be necessary to accomplish experimental works, and permanent experimenting would be needed to continuously renew the scale of indus trial products. A division of labour has been introduced between the designer and the producer, between the "textile artist", the artisan, the manufacturer and the industrial worker. As a consequence of this division of labour the proportion ot the sexes in textile work has turned into sheer nonsense: most of the workers in textile industry and most most of the textile artists are women —consequently all the defects of textile art are usually interpreted as "characteristically female" qualities. The always higher rank of experimental textile is a pledge for the changing of this absurd situation. TEXTILE AND FINE ARTS. With the appearence of experimental textile the theoretical distinction of textile art and painting, sculpture or graphic arts has become problematic. Some similar cases occured in the past (e.g. figurative gobelins and embroideries) but now the only criterion left to decide whether a certaim piece is a picture or textile, is to find out if it was made by a painter or by a textile artist. Even traditional paintings may be considered as textiles with a surface of special handling (they are painted canvases, after all); but the recent developments of fine arts —photographies on emulsioned canvas, sérigraphies and lithographies printed on textile, theory-making tendencies in painting which analyse the relationship of the bearing surface and the paint —are directly forcing textile art to revise some of its fundamental points like textile printing, the relation of dying and printing onto the surface, etc. The appearence of threedimensional textiles —abstract spatial textiles, textile objects, textile sculptures —stands for a comparison to sculpture. It would be a mistake to blame these tendencies for "breaking" the laws of textile art. They are much rather illustrating that since the late 1960-ies the attention in textile art has also been focused on its own means and limits of, just as in painting and sculpture. One of 326
