A MOMENT IN THE SUN
With help from non-profit organization and fashion brand, Dorothea Rockburne finds new audience, Aleesha Harris writes.
At the age of 85, Dorothea Rockburne is having a bit of a renaissance.
While her abstract art — which is inspired by her unique personal history in mathematics, dance and philosophy — has long been celebrated in art circles, the Montreal-born, New York-based artist’s relatively solitary presence in her field has rendered her a well-kept secret.
That is, until now.
Through combined efforts of the Dia Art Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the arts, and the London-based fashion brand COS, Rockburne’s art is reaching new audiences — more than 60 years since she first set out with a solo art show in 1958.
“This side of the work has not been on view in 50 years,” Courtney J. Martin, deputy director and chief curator of the Dia Art Foundation, says of the pieces recently placed on display at the Dia: Beacon gallery, situated on the banks of the Hudson River in Upstate New York.
“For her, the right time was that we came to her, and we talked to her, and she was willing to work with us.”
The exhibition features several “larger-format” pieces created by the Canadian artist during the late ’60s and early ’70s, such as oil-andpaper works from the Ineinander Series dating back to 1972. Using principles of geometry, Rockburne combined folded, torn and whole paper with unconventional materials such as grease, tar and crude oil to create pieces that challenged the theories of physical space. And, set against the high, stark white walls of the Dia: Beacon gallery, the pieces force a viewer to pause, ponder — and snap a few photos to share after on social media, of course.
To Martin, seeing Rockburne’s work join the Dia collection has been a very long time coming.
“Dia is a place that Dorothea belonged in 1974. This work predates that,” she says. “She is a peer of every single artist that is part of the original 12 artists in our collection. So, she belongs here.”
While each piece in the Dorothea Rockburne exhibition is imagined by the designer, these aren’t her original works. Instead, each piece was painstakingly recreated by the Dia foundation’s team of art experts using the artist’s own personal notes and photographs as a guide.
“Dorothea was excellent. She kept diaries since the early ’50s, notes about works. She took her own photography and wrote on the photographs. She is so detailed about organizing her own archive,” Martin says. “Luckily, for both her and us, she moves to the studio that she currently occupies in 1976 — and she hasn’t moved since. It doesn’t get any better. You couldn’t pay for that kind of consistency.”
Martin says the recreation process took more than four months, with preparation beginning in January.
“We did tests and models,” Martin says of the process. “I don’t know how many new forms of oil, grease and paper combinations we have all seen because we have literally had to go and research how to go and remake her work.
“You have to remake it several different times in order to understand every possible variation of what can happen, because, the final time that you make it is your only time to make it correctly.”
And the foundation will open a second part of the installation before 2019.
“We have to remake it all,” Martin says with an anticipatory smile of the detailed work to come. “It’s pretty exciting.”
Rockburne’s creations will also be coming a little closer to home — potentially even to one’s own closet — with pieces from the springsummer 2018 collection from COS. The collection, which launched in select stores — including Toronto and Vancouver locations — earlier this month, sees the minimalist brand tap into Rockburne’s unique paper pieces for inspiration.
“We looked toward Dorothea’s work for quite some time,” says Karin Gustafsson, creative director for COS.
“We went for a research trip in 2013 when she had an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. And, ever since, we have sort of kept an eye out to see if we could see her art anywhere else.
“And we never did.”
Intrigued by the artist — and the seeming scarcity of her art on display — the COS team decided to look into her work further.
“We got a hold of her book, and it ended up in our bookshelf,” she recalls. “Then, two years ago, when we started creating this collection, for spring-summer, we brought the book back out again.”
It was at that point the design team renewed its fascination with Rockburne’s pieces, primarily her manipulation of paper.
“It is crisp and papery, but it also holds some beautiful fold lines. She works with some very different materials to change the nature of the paper, giving it a really interesting look to it. And that’s the element that we really liked,” Gustafsson says of the medium. “For us, it’s never literal. When we look to art for inspiration, we never look to replicate the pieces in the collection. It’s more what it makes us think or feel.
“So we explored different ways of changing cottons, for example, made them a little bit more starchy and papery.”
The COS design team also used physical paper to create many of its designs first, in order to explore the idea of folding — and the way that would translate to fabric on a garment. The outcome: voluminous garments in neutral hues such as beige and off-white, each one featuring unexpected elements such as draping, folds and even crinkles, as though someone had taken the piece, balled it up and then haphazardly shaken it back out again.
They’re the types of details the COS creative director is confident the brand’s customers will appreciate.
“Since Day 1, we always took inspiration from the world of art. The more creative you are in the process, the better product that you have in the end,” she says. “And we find that our customer shares that idea with us. We have a creative customer who appreciates an artistic tone to the collection.”
And, if the garments — not to mention the Dorothea Rockburne exhibition in New York — also happen to successfully introduce and captivate new fans to the world of art, well, that’s good, too.
“I think that art should be everywhere . ... We all have the potential to be creative, but not everyone gets to go to an institution, not everyone gets to go to a museum, not everyone understands that they have access to that,” Martin says. “I believe in showing art in as many different ways, as a kind of plurality.”
And that, of course, includes clothes.