A RETROSPECTIVE

Brit Fuglevaag 1963 — 83

- a textile artist gathers his threads

In April 1966, the debutantes at the Statens Høstutstilling in 1965 gathered in Hammerlunds Kunsthandel, and on that occasion Magne Malmanger wrote in Dagbladet (24/8): "The best of all is naturally Brit Halldi's Fuglevaag Warsinski with his personal and living tapestries. At times, I think that her desire to experiment leads to certain missteps, especially when she runs after the effects of painting or working with materials... Mrs Warsinski has a fine practice with materials and a distinctive sense of color. The moment she (albeit reluctantly) accepts the simple fact that a carpet is a carpet, we have big things to look forward to." Today - 1 7 years later - however, we have long since accepted that a carpet is not necessarily a carpet at all, or to put it another way: Our perception of what textile art is and can be is completely different from 17 years ago. The development can be illustrated by a young critic's reaction to Brit Fuglevaag's exhibition during the Bergen Festival in 1980: "The first thing that struck me was how quickly traditions are formed. That idiom, which 10 years ago was shockingly new, is today well-known and well-used" (Jorunn Veiteberg, Bergens Tidende 21/5). Between these two criticisms lies a whole development - not only with Brit Fuglevaag himself, but in the attitude of the public and critics towards textile art. When it comes to technique and choice of materials, the textile artists of the 80s seem to be completely free, and a "Carpet" can just as naturally be designed as a relief or a three-dimensional sculpture. in Norway, Brit Fuglevaag has been the one that has been central when it comes to the development towards what we can call a free textile expression.

Towards a new expression.

If we look up Norwegian art history overviews, kri. ticks etc. then this development is primarily connected to Brit Fuglevaag's study stay in Warsaw 1963/64

The stay was fruitful because around 1960 she had already developed a less dogmatic relationship with the technical and pictorial possibilities of the tapestry. A short stay at Sellgren's factories in 1957/58 gave insight into an unconventional arrangement of traditional ryer, and she learned tapestry weaving from Jan Groth in Dan. mark in 1960. These experiences became important when she came to the Academy of Arts in Warsaw on the line for traditional tapestry. Here she learned a free technique with an emphasis on the possibilities of expression within the textile material itself. The new impulses for Brit Fuglevaag thus lay primarily in a new attitude towards the purely technical, and at the same time in a pictorial orientation towards a non-figurative idiom. This development is not particularly surprising. In the last years at the Statens Håndverks- og Artindustriskole there were Brit Fuglevaag, Siri Blakstad and others. in close contact with the visual artists at the Norwegian Academy of Fine Arts, and the pictorial and compositional aspects became just as much a challenge for them.

When Brit Fuglevaag returned from Poland, she made carpets in a non-figurative design language where deliberate combinations of tapestry, tapestry and kilim techniques created a living structure and varied surface. The nature associations were obvious, and placed her clearly within contemporary Norwegian modernism. It therefore seems natural that it is the visual art critics who write positively about her carpets around her debut in 1965/66. She also receives a clear response from visual artists, and the painting jury of the Board of Visual Artists (BKS) allows her to represent Norway at the Youth Biennale in Paris in 1967.

Further experiments.

The 1960s represent a breakthrough in Europe for an experimental textile, strongly stimulated by similar tendencies particularly within developments in American art. 1 1967/68 Brit Fuglevaag stayed in Paris, and drew new impulses from the works of artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Christo and others. who all worked with material images and material effects. The meeting with the French sculptor Iposteguy's marble sculptures was also important. She herself formulates it this way: "What happened in the visual arts could just as well have been done in textiles". She and many contemporary textile artists experimented in these years with materials such as plastic and sisal. The choice of such materials was clearly conditioned by the fact that they were reasonable to experiment with, but at the same time it was an expression of a desire to expand the boundaries of the accepted, both technically and material-wise. We know Brit Fuglevaag's results from exhibitions in 1969 and -70, where the sisal birds in particular made a strong impression. The carpets were often made under primitive conditions (could, for example, be woven between two tree trunks), and the technique was correspondingly simple. The material was lashed and knotted, forming strong structures that gave the carpets a relief character. In these golden sisal carpets, she worked not only to create a rich and vibrant surface, but also with spatial effects, e.g. in "Huldra" where the "tails" flow out of the carpet and conquer the audience's space.

In Norway, the sisal rugs have been perceived as some of the most Polish in Brit Fuglevaag's production, while in Poland (in 1971) they were described as unusual by Polish standards. Today we can see that the carpets in their choice of material and expression have more to do with general international tendencies. However you place them, they represent an important phase in Brit Fuglevaag's production because here she so consistently works through the idea of how a textile material can express growth and processes. It is the intense life of nature that is her inspiration and always recurring theme.

Carpets in rooms.

In the early 70s, Brit Fuglevaag starts working with color again, and thus returns to using wool. The result is a series of carpets that often goes by the name "Spindel" (a word she invented herself). The main point is colorful tangled wool stalks (spindles) that create a teeming life in and over the surface. These carpets are clearly conceived in conjunction with architecture, and in these years she receives a number of decoration commissions where this spindle theme becomes dominant.

Around 1980, she enters a new phase with the decoration proposal ("Søndeled") to the Supreme Court. In this rug, experiment and tradition come together to create something new. The spindles are still an important feature, but this time only as accents of the main motif, a frieze of elongated shapes that move rhythmically across the surface. She is clearly approaching the figuration in this rug, perhaps an unconscious tribute to our traditional Maiden rugs? It is clear that Brit Fuglevaag in the early 80s stands safely within a modern, free textile tradition, while at the same time she can now draw from our rich textile heritage, and on the basis of this create a new personal expression. Textile as language.

Brit Fuglevaag prepares a series of sketches before she starts work. This is surprising because the carpets give the impression of being freely formed in the weave - as pure textile expressions. In this lies the difference between her and international textile artists such as Magdalena Abakanowicz and Sheila Hicks. These two were originally painters who used textiles to shape objects and material images. Now they are both moving into materials other than textiles. Brit Fuglevaag - like Synnøve Aurdal - are pure textile artists where the textile is the language itself and the carrier of expression, and cannot be replaced by any other material.

Anniken Thue