Jhane Barnes‘ legendary shirts are just too beautiful to hide in a closet. I need a glassed-in mobile of shifting shirts that move close and recede. Failing that, after I wear one I leave it out to catch my eye and enjoy. (Now that she has has walked away from her canvas of the human form I don’t want to wear out my preciouses by over-laundering them.)
These are some of the artist’s more elaborate woven shirts. After seeing from a distance, these textiles are amazing to examine close-up and touch (ask first, her fans are usually happy to share); levels of detail tuned to your distance from the lucky wearer. The variations in the patterns evoke the imperfection in Agnes Martin’s hand-drawn pencil abstractions, but here they arise from being constructed in 3-D in the real world by Japanese master fabric weavers.
These are less elaborate textiles, with no loss of artistry. Again, the closer you look, the more you see. When Cézanne saw the shirt at the bottom of this photo, he said “That’s it, I’m out,” and took up snail racing instead.
I have 35 more of her artworks. (A fraction of her œuvre, she created four to six collections a year of multiple shirt designs for decades.) Jhane Barnes is simply the greatest abstract geometric artist and although she’s still making great designs for carpeting and signage in textiles and resin, there’s something magic when the art is something you wear about in the world.
