BACK IN THE U.S.S.R.
There is a niche within West African wax print textiles of patterns incorporating mundane, mass produced commodities and they rarely appear in academic literature. If they do surface the associated commentary is that the commodities functioning as decorative devices within the patterns are aspirational - but this explanation strikes me as being either too obvious or not obvious enough. In West Africa, textile patterns are ascribed complex allegorical meanings which often correspond with the visual elements of the design in quite circuitous ways. In this cultural context, a straightforward ‘aspirational’ explanation feels overly simplistic and literal. It also strikes me as illogical - if owning a car is aspirational how do you explain the scarcity of designs with cars and profusion of designs with car components such as spark plugs, mufflers and petrol pumps? Granted laptops and iPods can be aspirational but shower heads, electric fans, batteries, hand mirrors and light bulbs hardly make the grade. My conclusion is the common denominator between these objects is all being mass-produced industrial commodities not necessarily, or crucially, signifiers of prestige.
“Collage de vie” Vlisco 2008
Personal collection
Via google images
Hitangent, c 2017
Personal collection
This theme has a direct parallel to agitprop: agitational propaganda graphics in early 20th century Russia. The Russian constructivist movement in art and design reinforced the politics of Bolshevik regimes under Lenin and Stalin. Prior to the revolution, floral designs obtained from Parisian pattern books were the prevailing fashion for textile design. The post war avant-garde viewed these French florals as bourgeois and anti-socialist thereby necessitating the creation of a new design style reflecting Soviet values and better suited to the needs of the Russian proletariat - illiterate farmers beginning the transition to urban factory workers. The objective of the new constructivist style in textile patterns was inspiring, educating and reorienting the political consciousness of the populace to the Soviet program via decorative motifs on dresses, pillowcases and drapes. Constructivist designs were intended to convert peasants into supporters of communist political ideals and function as walking advertisements of the communist agenda. In 1922 the All-Union Textile Syndicate was created to govern the Russian textile industry and it appointed an Artistic Council authorized to reject or approve every design prior to manufacture. The Council also sanitized factories’ previously established collections of designs, ultimately destroying 24,000 prints that were mostly floral.
The themes constructivist designers utilized to convey their message were: industry, manufacturing, transportation, urbanization, education and sport (personifying the ideal Soviet citizen of vigorous mind and body), technology and communication (both representative of modernization and functional transmitters of communist broadcasts) and nationalism. Common motifs included: factories, smokestacks, construction sites, gears, airplanes, trains, tractors, light bulbs, electricity transmission towers, ice skating, bicycles, and the hammer and sickle.
Lenin, light bulbs, electricity transmission towers, construction sites and factories on the cover of the November 7 1929 issue of We Build journal
MOTIFS & THEMES
FACTORIES
LIGHT BULBS
Russian constructivist textile. “Industry”, D Preobrazhenskaya 1930
Revolutionary Textiles Designs p45
African wax print textile by Vlisco
Russian constructivist textile. “Electric Bulbs”, S Strusevich 1928-1930
Revolutionary Textiles Designs p33
African wax print textile
EDUCATION
SPORT
Russian constructivist textile. “Education”. Printed cotton plain weave 1928-1933
Soviet Textiles p66
The classic “alphabet” African wax print by Vlisco
Russian constructivist textile. “Aquatic sports”, M Anufriyeva 1930
Revolutionary Textiles Designs p101
African wax print by Mitex
TRANSPORTATION
URBANIZATION
Russian constructivist textile.
R Matveyeva 1927
Revolutionary Textiles Designs p42
African wax print by Vlisco
Russian constructivist textile. Late 1920s - early 1930s
Revolutionary Textiles Designs p90
“Urban beat” 2009. African wax print by Vlisco
Art historian James Trilling defines the compositional elements of ornament in his book The Language of Ornament as comprising of three broad categories:
Freeform
Geometric
Representational
Floral (any aspect of plant life)
Figural (animals and people)
Objects (any objects, with an emphasis on artifacts that are decorative in their own right)
My purely anecdotal observation is that using objects as ornamental syntax is anomalous throughout textile history in general, therefore its prevalence in Africa is noteworthy and the subsequent lack of attention and consideration it receives is surprising. More strikingly, the objects in question - factories, batteries, faucets, flip phones – aren’t exactly ‘decorative in their own right’, in fact the nondescript, functional objects highlighted in these compositions are dependably visually dreary. The inconceivable absurdity of their selection is precisely what makes these textiles so intriguing and delightful.
Commemorative wax print textiles celebrating important political events and programs are the exception as they feature prominently in western history books and museum exhibits. These designs qualify as figural ornament (unremarkable from the vantagepoint of the vocabulary of design) but their aesthetic and socio-cultural messages are idiosyncratic.
COMMEMORATIVE WAX PRINT
Pope John Paul II and members of the Benin clergy. Cotton, printed in Benin 1993
Long Live the President! p59
Hamani Diori, President of Niger 1960 – 1974 and John F Kennedy, President of the United States 1961 – 1963. Archives of the Utex Africa factory in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo 2004
Wax p84
Agostinho Neto president of Angola 1975 - 1979. Cotton, printed in Angola
Long Live the President! p47
Mireille Kolinga first lady of the Central African Republic. Cotton, printed in Cameroon before 1998
Long Live the President! p26
Umaru Musa Yar’adua president of Nigeria 2007 - 2010. Cotton, printed in Nigeria 2007
Long Live the President! p21
The approach to ornament these textile patterns have adopted is the antithesis of modernism; the design movement which began in Europe in the early 20th century and still wields enormous influence today. The foundational tenet of modernism was truth in functionality and material and the modernist ethos called for the removal of decorative ornament from functional objects. The textile prints highlighted here turn the modernist imperative on its head by using functional objects as decorative ornament. This bold inversion of modernism is, in my opinion, both ingenious and subversive.
An academic background in design explains why I was able to notice connections between Russian and West African textiles (and position them within design history contexts of modernism, constructivism, and the vocabulary of ornament) unlike “official” authors of African textile history who tend to be grounded in the scholarship of anthropology and ethnology. I worry that confining the study of African clothing and textile history to such a small corner of learning estranges it from design history and theory because until now African clothing and textile history has strictly inhabited the pedagogical context of culture and has not engaged with design. This creates another form of other-ing because segregating Africa arts inside the academic knowledge system keeps it isolated from entire fields of thought.
A M Spencer, In Praise of Heroes: Contemporary African Commemorative Cloth, The Newark Museum, 1982
P Faber, Long Live the President! Portrait-Cloths from Africa, KIT Publishers, 2010
J Trilling, The Language of Ornament, Thames & Hudson, 2001
A M Bouttiaux, Wax, Hoëbeke, 2017
I Yasinskaya, Revolutionary Textile Design: Russia in the 1920s and 1930s, The Viking Press, 1983
C Douglas, “Russian Fabric Design, 1928-32” in The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant Garde, 1915 – 1932, Guggenheim Museum, 1992
J Allee, “Selling the Farm: Textile Design in Early Soviet Society”
P Kachurin, Soviet Textiles: Designing the Modern Utopia, Museum off Fine Arts Boston, 2006
L Zaletova et al., Revolutionary Costume: Soviet Clothing and Textiles of the 1920s, Rizzoli, 1987