作者：T'ai Smith

译者：李深之

图①：Hedwig Jungnik, Tapestry, abstract design, 1921/22

(linen, cotton, chenille, artificial silk, wool, silver thread, 90x125cm)

collection of Kunstsammlungen, Weimar

Stölzl的评论提到了一个基本问题，这个问题在有关魏玛包豪斯织造车间和媒介的女性化地位的文献中没有受到质疑。根据最近的研究，由于沃尔特-格罗皮乌斯（Walter Gropius）的政治议程，织造车间主要由女性组成，他试图将大量的女性人口与学校的其他人员隔离开来[2]。例如，尽管画家Georg Muche担任了织造车间的造型大师，但他发誓永远不拿起一根纱线。纱和线被视为 "女性 "材料，比所谓的 "男性 "材料如金属或木材更容易处理。然而，这种解释性的叙述似乎并不充分。有关包豪斯织造车间的性别问题的文献，尽管非常有价值，但几乎倾向于重复，而非解结，把织造诠释为一种较低的、"女性 "的手工艺生产形式。

我认为，图画编织在机构中占据了女性化的地位，因为它与绘画相比有明显的不足：它同时存在着过度和缺乏。一方面，编织被看作是绘画的退化版本，其特点是过度的、费力的[3]从绘画设计到编织的转移。事实上，Stölzl的陈述强调了这些编织 的 "图画 "是 "由羊毛制成的"——也就是制造、编造的。织工的身体、织布机设备和工艺的体力劳动之间的特殊关系，威胁到早期包豪斯画家所追求的艺术的 "超越性 "或精神地位。鉴于纺织品的社会经济历史，工业的条款必然困扰着织造媒介。织造的历史与劳动的纠缠影响了被认为对其至关重要的语言。

另一方面，在魏玛包豪斯，这种媒介没有被理论化。与绘画或建筑不同，早期的包豪斯织品缺乏自己的学科定义。画家Johannes Itten在1923年之前一直负责指导包豪斯的初步课程，他只是将编织品视为绘画，而不是作为一种独立的形式。没有理论层面或目标，在包豪斯的大师们眼中，编织仍然是一种劳动形式。

换句话说，劳动的范畴是这个过剩和缺乏问题的核心，或者说媒介的女性化地位。

那么，在1919-23年期间，包豪斯纺织的劳动是什么？纺织生产的历史，作为与社会现代性和劳动分工的根本联系，是如何将这种媒介框定为 "女性"，与绘画的 "男性 "相区别的？本文将追溯纺织媒介的特殊条件，以便我们能够以不同的方式理解这些 "羊毛制成的图片"，从而看到它们的可能性，而不是它们的不足之处。

为了追溯性地发展早期包豪斯的编织理论，似乎有理由转向Itten的著作，他在1921年之前还担任过织造车间的造型大师（Formmeister，Master of Form）。然而，正如我在前面提到的，在他的教学理论中，编织工艺是明显缺位的。他的对比理论着重于绘画实践，因为它能够表达艺术家的内在灵魂。考虑到水彩画，比如Gunta Stölzl 1921年的作品[图②]，其描述了使用画笔的过程。

图②：Gunta Stölzl, watercolor, 1921

Gunta Stölzl Estate Photo Archive

Itten重视 "画笔"，因为它能够传达 "丰富的细微差别 "或手和身体相对于表面的运动和力量的 "变化"。在这种说法中，笔刷绘画实践优于木炭，因为它似乎允许无限的可能性，是对习惯或重复的否定。

相比之下，编织的实践明显不允许身体参与运动的 "细微差别"，正如我们在左边这张包豪斯织工在织布机上工作的照片中看到的那样。身体相对于织布机的定位明显更加结构化；身体必须纳入实践的物理习惯，或系统的织布机技术，以使作品得以产生。在编织的过程中，失去了一种无中介的 "表达 "的感觉。

图③：Lore Leudesdorff, wall hanging, 1923

Bauhaus-Archiv Museum Für Gestaltung, Berlin

值得注意的是，Itten坚持对整体的理解；形式和价值的对比只存在于整个画域的构成中。画布的空间先于画家的姿态标记的植入。因此，艺术家在任何时候都会关注整个表面，在整个领域内（相对）随机地添加构成元素。然而，织工并不是在一个已经建立的领域中工作。因为在绘画中，画布和颜料之间存在着材料差异，而在编织中，正如罗尔-卢德多夫（Lore Leudesdorff ）1923年创作的这幅壁挂[图③]所见，设计和表面是一体的，它们是由相同的材料和工艺制成的。设计只能通过构建编织的 "地面/范围（Ground)"（经线—垂直线—纬线—水平线）的实践而出现。我们可以进一步说，在建造纺织品之前，没有预制的领域存在[5]。

这样一来，编织的实践在结构上类似于建筑的过程，从基础开始工作，然后增加到基础上，正如Gertrud Arndt的这个纺织品样品中所显示的那样[图④]。通过一个系统的程序，通过经线来回编织纬线，图像从下往上浮现。Stölzl在1923年创作的一幅壁挂[图⑤]显示了水平过程是如何纵向建立的，像堆砌砖块一样将纱线分层。而层数的增加是以之前层数的完成为前提的。在绘画中，艺术家可以移动或返回到构图领域的某个区域，或者在表面上建立颜料，或者覆盖在之前建立的颜料上，而编织的技术实践必然是有顺序的。通过在经线上和经线下一点一点地增加纬线的过程，构图领域被真正地建立起来。就像建筑师构思建筑和工人建造建筑一样，织工在设计的同时也在制造表面。与绘画不同的是，在绘画中，形式上的想法被放在画布的支架上，而织布的图像设计则被嵌入到材料和制作过程中。换句话说，织工的 "画面 "是织物结构的组成部分。

图④：Gertrud Arndt, textile sample,

Bauhaus weaving workshop, 1925

绘画据称是不确定的和 "自由的"，而织布机则公开地构造和组织了织工的产品。被定义为手工艺的编织实践，永远无法像伊曼纽尔-康德（Immanuel Kant ）对艺术的描述那样，用想象力的自由 "游戏 "来升华其劳动。在《判断力批判》中，康德将艺术与手工艺区分开来。

图⑤：Gunta Stölzl, wall hanging or runner, 1923
(linen, wool, viscose, and cotton; 260 x 122 cm)

collection of Kunstsammlungen, Weimar

[艺术]被称为自由，另一种可称为工业艺术。我们把前者看成是只能证明最终（成功）的游戏，即一种本身就令人愉快的职业；但把后者看成是劳动，即生意，它本身就令人不快（苦役），只有通过它的结果（如报酬）才有吸引力……（第43页）

除了其系统化的过程之外，编织在社会经济史上的意义还将这种媒介与劳动的概念联系起来。在1923年出版的马克斯-韦伯（Max Weber）的《经济通史》中，这位德国社会理论家根据1919年冬天写的讲稿，追溯了资本主义发展过程中 "劳动 "的历史组织[6]。特别值得注意的是韦伯对劳动类别的界定方式：它可以根据机器或设备设定的参数在技术上进行定义，但其含义是社会学的，涉及阶级划分，最重要的是性别划分。关于医生和铁匠的 "男性 "工作，他注意到他们对精神或 "魔法 "的要求[7]。"男性的工作"，如治疗疾病或通过战争占有领土，被视为有 "目的"，通向一些更大的目标。相比之下，"妇女的工作"，如耕种土地或为家庭生产纺织品[8]，被认为是一种维持方式，一种 "纯劳动 "的形式，一种没有目的的手段[9]。妇女的劳动在历史上缺乏一种精神、魔法或其他理论的层面。 

韦伯的《经济通史》对从农业和家庭生产到行会，以及从商店到工厂生产的运动进行了说明，特别关注纺织业的发展。对韦伯来说，纺织是经济史上的一个典范案例，对现代性的社会理论来说尤其关键。韦伯认为，纺织生产是历史上第一个商店的社会组织因织布机设备而形成劳动分工模式的例子。甚至在现代技术将其机械化之前，织布就已经系统化了。韦伯简明扼要地指出，在第一批纺织店中，"工人与生产资料完全分离。"[10] 异化劳动的反面是文艺复兴以来的绘画学科史。与商店里的织工不同，画家（表面上）既控制了手段又控制了产品。

因此，编织作为一种劳动形式，以及作为妇女工作的历史，显然对媒介本身至关重要。绘画，作为 "自由游戏"，似乎超越了经济分工（就像铁匠或药师的 "魔法"），而编织的 "劳动 "则陷入了社会经济的决定中。当然，绘画确实占据了这一社会领域。然而，它可以被定义为男性化的，与女性化的、费力的编织实践相比。就阶级和劳动已经是性别化的术语而言，织布是女性化的，因为它的实践代表着劳动，仅此而已。

正如Stölzl所说的那样，在包豪斯的历史中，绘画性的编织或多或少是 "一种语言上的缺席 "[11]。因为编织实践一方面是 "女性的"——无法将身体及其劳动升华到绘画的超验领域，另方面是 "女性化的"——没有被理论化，或者没有话语参数。我的目的是给出一个关于编织的理论，以便可以根据它自己的条件来评估它。因为尽管以过程和劳动为基础，编织在其工艺的限度内还有其他可能性。就像Stölzl的壁挂的这个细节，对比性的材料特征，如丝质与粗糙，或闪亮与哑光，以及对比性的编织（垂直与水平），表明形式设计不仅仅是强加在材料上，而且本身也被过程中的不同编织和纱线所转化。图案形式、材料和织物的结构是相互纠结的。换句话说，编织的局限性并不是不足之处。相反，它们帮助我们理解织造作为一种媒介，与其他学科一样，产生自己的想法。

本文首次在艺术史研讨会上发表，该研讨会由the Institute of Fine Arts and The Frick Collection主办，于2002年4月13日在弗里克美术馆（The Frick Collection）举行。

T'ai Smith是罗切斯特大学(University of Rochester)视觉和文化研究项目的博士生，她的论文研究了在魏玛和德绍的包豪斯织造车间里的织造媒介。著书《包豪斯编织理论 》（Bauhaus weaving theory : from feminine craft to mode of design）以包豪斯学校织造车间妇女们的文本为对象，重新发现了她们作为写作者所做工作的新意义；本文摘自《可视文化》（IVC）第4期（2002年3月1日），源于其书中第一章《羊毛制成的图片：车间里的编织劳动 》（Pictures made of wool: weaving labor in the workshop）。

该文章译者李深之，选自复印info印行的试读本#004《关于编织》

“李深之”是艺术家子杰在复印info的翻译和出版项目，摘取当下重要学术著作章节或单篇完整的文章进行译介，在文本内容和工作方法上相互嵌套统一以讨论人机关系、技术和女性等话题；到现在为止已经印行了多本试读本小册子。这个项目也是他关于“中文文字处理机:写作、权力、资本及技术”的研究工作的一部分。

*复印info是武汉的一个信息站（infoshop）和印刷工作室。复印是info的音意互转，在方便邻里的打印的同时也方便知识的共享/流动/DIY；并以此为起点寻找联合的可能性。见https://fuyininfo.github.io/

延伸阅读：

感兴趣的朋友可以了解一下复印info试读本系列中围绕“编织”这一关键词制作的#002《未来在望：纺织机、织造妇女和网络技术》，以及收录了本篇译文的#004《关于编织》，同时，这两本册子也正在杭州纤维艺术三年展展出。

002，《未来在望：纺织机、织造妇女和网络技术》：电信革命也是一场性革命，其破坏了对于父权文化至关重要的基本假设。网络和信息技术的历史、当代和未来发展与女权主义、妇女和性别差异的过去、现在和未来交织在一起，并可由此发现机器和妇女之间的大量联系、相似之处和亲和力。作者Sadie Plant在这篇文章中从世界上第一个程序员即拜伦之女Ada Lovelace说起，讨论了女性、编织、计算机之间的关系。

004，《关于编织》：继续编织主题，收了两篇文章，第一篇是《织物的哲学》的简介，介绍了一些关于编织研究领域的人和书；第二篇是关于包豪斯学校长期以来被隐没的的编织工作和关于编织的写作，也是关于女性主义的主题，里面提到最开始学校的大师都把编织当作另一种材质的绘画，而要通过机器中介来表达而（因为女性的特质）更多被归入劳动而非创造，实际上编织更接近建筑形式。

*如需购买，请联系复印info邮箱：fuyininfo@disroot.org

以下为英文原文：

"Pictures Made of Wool": The Gender of Labor at the Bauhaus Weaving Workshop (1919-23)

Author: T'ai Smith

In 1926, one year after the Bauhaus had moved to Dessau, the weaving workshop master Gunta Stölzl dismissed the earlier, Weimar period textiles, such as Hedwig Jungnik's wall hanging from 1922 [Fig. ①], as mere "pictures made of wool."[1] In this description she differentiated the early weavings, from the later, "progressivist" textiles of the Dessau workshop, which functioned industrially and architecturally: to soundproof space or to reflect light. The weavings of the Weimar years, by contrast, were autonomous, ornamental pieces, exhibited in the fashion of paintings. Stölzl saw this earlier work as a failure because it had no progressive aim. The wall hangings of the Weimar workshop were experimental—concerned with the pictorial elements of form and color—yet at that they were still inadequate, without the larger, transcendental goals of painting, as in the Bauhaus painter Wassily Kandinsky's Red Spot II from 1921. Stölzl assessed the earlier, "aesthetic" period of weaving as unsuccessful, because its specific strengths were neither developed nor theorized. Weaving in the early Bauhaus lacked its own discursive parameters, just as it lacked a disciplinary history. Evaluated against the "true" picture, painting, weaving appeared a weaker, ineffectual medium.

Stölzl's remark references a fundamental problem that goes unquestioned in the literature concerning the Weimar Bauhaus weaving workshop and the feminized status of the medium. According to recent studies, the weaving workshop consisted mainly of women due to the political agenda of Walter Gropius, who sought to segregate the large female population from the rest of the school.[2] The (male) Bauhaus masters considered the practice of weaving to be domestic "women's work." Though the painter Georg Muche acted as the weaving workshop master of form, for instance, he swore never to pick up a piece of yarn. Yarn and thread were seen as "feminine" materials, easier to handle than the purportedly "masculine" materials of metal or wood. Yet, this explanatory narrative seems insufficient. The literature concerning gender at the Bauhaus weaving workshop, though extremely valuable, tends almost to repeat, rather than disentangle, the interpretation of weaving as a lesser, "feminine" form of handicraft production.

Pictorial weaving, I argue, occupied a feminized status at the institution for its apparent inadequacies in relation to painting: its simultaneous excess and lack. On the one hand, weaving is seen as a degraded version of painting, marked by the excessive, laborious[3] transfer from pictorial design to weaving. In fact, Stölzl's statement underscores that these woven "pictures," are "made"—that is manufactured, fabricated—"of wool." The particular relation between the weaver's body, the loom apparatus, and the physical labor of the process, threatens the "transcendental" or spiritual position of art that the early Bauhaus painters sought. Given the socio-economic history of textiles, the terms of industry necessarily haunt the weaving medium. The history of weaving's entwinement with labor subtends the language deemed essential to it.

On the other hand, in the Weimar Bauhaus, the medium was left untheorized. Unlike painting or architecture, early Bauhaus weaving lacked its own disciplinary definitions. The painter Johannes Itten, who directed the Bauhaus preliminary course until 1923, simply regarded the weavings pictorially, not as an independent form. Without a theoretical dimension or goal, weaving remained, in the eyes of the Bauhaus masters, a form of labor.

The category of labor, in other words, is central to this problem of excess and lack, or the feminized status of the medium.

What, then, is the labor of Bauhaus weaving during the years of 1919-23? And how does the history of textile production, as fundamentally bound with social modernity and the division of labor, frame the medium as "feminine," in distinction to the "masculinity" of painting? This paper will trace the particular conditions of the weaving medium so that we might understand these "pictures made of wool" differently, so that we may see their possibilities, not their inadequacies.

In order to develop retroactively a theory of weaving from the early Bauhaus, it would seem reasonable to turn to the writings of Itten, who also acted as Formmeister for the weaving workshop until 1921. Yet, as I mentioned earlier, the craft of weaving is conspicuously absent from his pedagogical theories. His theory of contrasts focuses on the practice of painting for its capacity to express the artist's interior soul. Considering watercolors, such as this one by Gunta Stölzl from 1921 [Fig. ②], Itten describes the process of using a brush:

The beginner becomes aware of the elastic point of the brush only when he…feels the form and is ready to follow this feeling. Brushes are superior to charcoal as expressive media because they achieve richer nuances. Charcoal always produces the same dark stroke whether it is applied with a right or a left slant. But the brush allows rich variation.[4]

The "brush" is valued by Itten for its capacity to convey "rich nuances" or "variations" in the movement and force of the hand and body with respect to the surface. Painting practice is superior to charcoal in this account because it seems to allow infinite possibilities, a negation of habit or repetition.

The practice of weaving, by contrast, would notably disallow the body to participate in the "nuances" of movement, as we see in this photograph of a Bauhaus weaver working at a loom, on the left. The positioning of the body with respect to the loom is significantly more structured; the body must incorporate the physical habit of the practice, or the systematic loom technique, in order for the work to be produced. A sense of unmediated "expression" is lost in the process of weaving.

Of note is Itten's insistence on a comprehension of the whole; formal and value contrasts exist only within the composition of an entire pictorial field. The space of the canvas precedes the implantation of the painterly gestural mark. Accordingly, the artist pays attention to the entire surface at all times, (relatively) randomly adding compositional elements throughout the field. Yet the weaver does not work with an already established field. For in painting, the material difference between the canvas and paint obtains, while in weaving, as is seen in this wall hanging by Lore Leudesdorff from 1923 [Fig. ③], the design and the surface are one and the same—they are made from the same material and process. The design can only emerge through the practice of constructing the woven "ground" (of warp—vertical threads—and weft—horizontal threads). No prefabricated field, we could say further, exists prior to the construction of the textile.[5]

In this way, the practice of weaving is structurally analogous to the process of building, working from the base and adding to it, as is shown in this textile sample by Gertrud Arndt [Fig. ④]. Through a systematic procedure of weaving weft through warp, back and forth, the image emerges from bottom to top. A wall hanging by Stölzl from 1923 [Fig. ⑤] shows how the horizontal process builds vertically, layering yarn as in the stacking of bricks. And the addition of layers is predicated upon the completion of previous layers. While in a painting the artist may move or return to an area in the compositional field, either to build up the paint on the surface, or to cover over the previously established paint, the technical practice of weaving is necessarily sequential. With the process of adding weft to weft, over and under the warp, bit by bit, the compositional field is literally built. At once analogous to the architect who conceives a building and the laborer who constructs it, the weaver develops the design in tandem with the fabrication of the surface. Unlike painting, where the formal idea is laid on top of the canvas support, weaving's pictorial design is embedded in the material and process of its making. The weaver's "picture," in other words, is integral to the fabric's structure.

While painting is purportedly uncontingent and "free," the loom overtly structures and organizes the weaver's product. The practice of weaving, defined as a handicraft, can never sublate its labor with the free "play" of the imagination, as in Immanuel Kant's delineation of Art. In the Critique of Judgment, Kant differentiates Art from handicraft:

[Art] is called free, the other may be called industrial art. We look on the former as something which could only prove final (be a success) as play, i.e., an occupation which is agreeable on its own account; but the second as labour, i.e. as business, which on its own account is disagreeable (drudgery), and is only attractive by means of what it results in (e.g., the pay)… (P43)

Together with its systematic process, weaving's significance in socio-economic history links the medium to a notion of labor. In Max Weber's General Economic History, published in 1923 from lectures written during the winter of 1919, the German social theorist traces the historical organization of "labor" within the development of Capitalism.[6] Of particular note is the way in which Weber frames the category of labor: it can be defined technically according to the parameters set by the machine or apparatus, but its implications are sociological, involving class divisions and, most significantly, gender divisions. Regarding the "masculine" work of medicine men and blacksmiths, he notes their claim toward spirituality or "magic."[7] "Men's work," such as curing illness or appropriating territory through war, is seen to have "ends," leading onto some greater goal. "Women's work," such as tilling the soil, or producing textiles[8] for the household, by contrast, is considered a mode of maintenance, a form of "pure labor," a means without ends.[9] Women's labor historically lacks a spiritual, magical, or otherwise theoretical dimension.

Providing an account of the movement from agricultural and domestic production to guilds, and from shop to factory production, Weber's General Economic History pays particular attention to developments within the textile industry. Weaving is, for Weber, an exemplary case in economic history, and particularly crucial for a social theory of modernity. Textile production, so Weber argues, is the first historical instance in which the social organization of the shop institutes a schematic division of labor, on account of the loomapparatus. Even prior to its mechanization at the hands of modern technology, weaving is already systematized. In the first textile shops, Weber puts it succinctly, "the worker was entirely separated from the means of production."[10] The obverse of alienated labor would be the disciplinary history of painting since the Renaissance. Unlike the shop weaver, the painter (ostensibly) controls both the means and the product.

Thus the history of weaving as a form of labor, and as women's work, became apparently essential to the medium itself. Where painting, as "free play," would seem to transcend the economic division of labor (like the "magic" of blacksmiths or medicine men), weaving's "labor" is caught within socio-economic determinations. Of course painting does occupy this social terrain. Yet it could be defined as masculine, in contrast to the feminine, laborious practice of weaving. Insofar as class and labor are already gendered terms, weaving is feminized because its practice represents labor, and nothing more.

As Stölzl's remark made clear, pictorial weavings are, more or less, "a linguistic absence"[11] in the history of the Bauhaus. For weaving practice is, on the one hand, "feminine"—unable to sublate the body and its labor into the transcendental realm of painting, and on the other hand, "feminized"—kept untheorized, or without discursive parameters. My purpose has been to give a theory of weaving so that it can be assessed on its own terms. For though grounded in process and labor, weaving has other possibilities from within the limits of its craft. As in this detail of Stölzl's wall hanging, contrasting material features, such as silky versus rough, or shiny versus matte, as well as contrasting weaves (vertical versus horizontal), show that the formal design is not merely imposed onto the material, but itself transformed by the different weaves and yarns harnessed in the process. The pictorial form, the materials, and the fabric's structure are mutually entwined. The limitations of weaving, in other words, are not inadequacies. Rather, they help us understand weaving as a medium, which, like other disciplines, generates its own ideas.

This paper was first given at A Symposium on the History of Art, sponsored by the Institute of Fine Arts and The Frick Collection, and held at The Frick Collection on April 13, 2002.

T'ai Smith is a Ph.D. candidate in the Visual and Cultural Studies program at the University of Rochester. Her dissertation looks at the medium of weaving as it was practiced at the Bauhaus weaving workshops in Weimar and Dessau.

References:

1. Gunta Stölzl, "Weaving at the Bauhaus" (1926), cited in Hans M. Wingler, The Bauhaus (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1969), 116. 

2. See Anja Baumhoff, "Gender, Art, and Handicraft at the Bauhaus" (Ph.D. diss., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1994). Sigrid Wortmann Weltge, Women's Work: Textile Artfrom the Bauhaus (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993). 

3. Labor is considered "excessive" insofar as it introduces the body, toil, and process. As well, the feminization of labor can be seen throughout the writings of Karl Marx or Siegfried Kracauer, for instance. Though Marx does not explicitly state the correlation between feminine and labor, his discussion of alienated labor in industrial society tends to position a "subordinated" subject-worker—a figure who is made object, or subjected to the workings of the machine. Kracauer's essay "The Mass Ornament" makes this analogy more explicit in the figures of the Tiller Girls, whose bodies are analogous to the abstract functioning of the Taylorized machine and the female office worker who files papers. 

4. Johannes Itten, Design and Form: The Basic Course at the Bauhaus (London: Thames and Hudson, 1965), 147. Emphasis mine. 

5. Thus the weaving is not a receptacle that receives the artist's expression or design imprinted on it. 

6. Max Weber, General Economic History, trans. Frank H. Knight, PhD (New York: Greenberg, Publisher, 1927). 

7. Ibid, 117. 

8. Weber writes: "As to weaving there are indeed characteristic exceptions. In Egypt, Herodotus was rightly impressed by the fact that men (servile) worked at the looms, a development which took place generally where the loom was very heavy to manipulate or the men were demilitarized." Ibid, 116. 

9.  Ibid, 26-27. 

10. Ibid, 159. 

11. The philosopher Luce Irigaray uses this phrase to refer to the discursive category of "woman." See This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985). Though weaving is indeed discussed, its implications for the Bauhaus have not been sufficiently explored. 

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