Gee's Bend modern: the isolated Alabama community of Gee's Bend has long nurtured a quilting tradition that resonates deeply with aspects of modernist abstraction. Now the quilts are the subject of an exhibition that is touring U.S. museums - Critical Essay

Things, however, may have changed again, and this exhibition can be seen as one element of an expanded frame of reference for both the making and viewing of art. The art we look at now comes from far more places physically, conceptually and emotionally than it did before. This decentralization, evident in the diversity of image-based art, applies to abstraction as well; for abstraction, by virtue of its looser mimetic anchoring to the world around it, is particularly able to cast itself in a variety of forms, to entertain multiple readings. The Gee's Bend quilts are exemplars of that broadened approach to abstraction. Their allusive complexity--their scale, their reference to the body, to physical work, to social structures and to the land--greatly enriches our perception of them. But there is something else. The quilts are remarkably powerful and compelling visual statements. They declare themselves viscerally, directly, l believe that they are entitled, every bit as much as a Frank Stella or a Kenneth Noland painting of that period, to lay claim to an unfettered optical reading as well, in other words, to participate fully in the esthetics of modernism.

One of the things that makes ordinary quilts so likable is the way that they typically frame a wealth of detail in smallish, repeating patterns. You can look at a part of them and easily deduce the whole. Them may be some framing devices, but essentially the pattern could repeat endlessly. The Gee's Bend quilts don't do that. They are bounded, unique and rarely symmetrical. Even when symmetry is there, it is given a savvy, destabilizing push. In Gloria Hoppins's "Housetop" pattern quilt (ca. 1975), for example, she inserts one thin vertical red stripe on the left-hand side of the orange center portion of a set of off-kilter nestled squares. (3) That stripe snaps the quilt into place, as does the dark vertical denim band balanced by three smaller, similarly colored edge pieces in Lorraine Pettway's light gray medallion patterned quilt of 1974. Identified by three alternate pattern names, Loretta Pettway's "Log Cabin--Courthouse Steps--Bricklayer" (ca. 1970) juxtaposes a stepped series of vertical dark blue pieces edged in white with similarly sized light blue pieces on the horizontal. The pieces get smaller as they approach the center, creating the look of one point perspective. The bars, however, warp, and their thickness is never uniform. So instead of being locked-in and static, the composition opens up and moves. It displays the wit and whimsical variation of a Paul Klee architectural fantasy, with logic used, paradoxically, to subvert order. It is almost as if symmetry in the Gee's Bend quilts is a condition established precisely so that it may be creatively violated.

If symmetry, is important in traditional quilts, a more or less evenly weighted display of detail seems equally essential. Detail in the Gee's Bend quilts functions differently. Rather than being the substance of the quilt, it is, more often than not, an accent, a fillip or a formal destabilizer. Simple vertical and horizontal forms tend to predominate, and since quilting is an additive process, a reasonably straightforward design can be given piquancy and personality by sewing in something small and unexpected. In Arlonzia Pettway's "Lazy Gal (Bars)," ca. 1975, a motif of bold green and white vertical stripes is bordered at the top and bottom by just a hint of a delicate floral pattern. The change in formal and emotional scale is freely calibrated and tremendously satisfying. Irene Williams's "Bars" (ca. 1965) features a composition of four thick vertical bars hi solid cream and back, topped with a similarly sized horizontal in deep blue-green. Tiffs architectonic structure is offset by a flower-patterned border on both sides and the bottom. It is, however, the narrow top border that gives the quilt its kick. The right-hand half of the border is the same blue-green as the horizontal bar directly below it, while the left-hand half is divided into three sections--gray and cream, a small light-blue grid and a slice of vibrant red completely out of chromatic character with the rest of the quilt. That foot or so of crimson makes the quilt. It's a formal move that incorporates a sure sense of scale with a use of off-complementaries worthy of Josef Albers.