Anne von Freyburg’s practice rethinks textile and the decorative within the tradition of painting. It embraces and subverts the female gaze, the feminine and pretty. Historically, craft and decoration have been perceived as lesser than the “intellectual” fine arts. By combining them, von Freyburg challenges this underlying hierarchical system.
At the same time, the artist reclaims the female history of textiles, the feminine, the pretty, decoration, the domestic and female nude. “I paint with materials,” observes von Freyburg.
Embellishment has been associated with the feminine, frivolous, and excessive, and was thus repressed within the rhetoric of Modernism. Detailing and fabric were viewed as decorative extras. Through her work, she seeks a renewed significance and meaning of the decorative, detail and fabric while celebrating the feminine. Von Freyburg is part of a group of artists seeking a renewed significance and meaning around crafted materials.
By machine sanding the canvas, the artist opens up the painted surface then repairs it with thread and needle. This technique conveys what von Freyburg calls “the archaeology of the painting.” The embroidery expresses a form of nurturing and care and constitutes for the artist a reaction against the mass-produced products and fastness of our time, as well as her longing for a more sensory approach to the world.
Self-taught or art school?
In 2001 I graduated from the BA Fashion Design course at ArtEZ in Arnhem The Netherlands. During the course, I was interested in Fashion Design as an art form. After my graduation, I gradually integrated painting and embroidery into my practice. I started experimenting with machine sanding my paintings and restored them by employing embroidery techniques onto them. The techniques that I use in my work are in a way self-taught. I developed them by experimenting and using tools that were not considered fine art materials. In 2016 I received my Master in Fine Art from Goldsmiths University in London. During these two years, I learned to approach my work in a conceptual way and think about its contemporary art context.
If you could own one work of art what would it be?
There are so many artworks that I would love to live with.
At the moment I am obsessed with Sarah Slappey’s and Christina Quarles’s work.
How would you describe your style?
My style is definitely neo-Rococo and maximalism. More is more!
Besides the conceptual side behind the work, I find pleasure, playfulness and the sense of touch equally important as motivations to make these pieces. At the moment I am translating old master paintings from the Rococo period into hand-sewn fabric collages.
I see my work as paintings or textile paintings, which contain acrylic inks and various fabrics. The materials and the aesthetic have a meaning in relation to its painted subject.
Can you tell us about your artistic process?
With the neo-Rococo pieces, I begin with manipulating photo reproductions of old masters paintings in photo-shop. I change the colour and surface of the original piece into a more contemporary colour pallet. It is like painting with digital instruments on old masters reproductions. After that, I translate the prints into line drawings that I use as blueprints for the actual work painted on canvas. The prints of the digital manipulated paintings I use as a colour reference for my painting. When the sketch is finished I can start painting on raw canvas. This is done quite quickly and functions as an under-painting for me to build on with various kinds of fabrics. After all the fabrics are glued onto the canvas I take it home where I stretch it on an embroidery frame and start stitching the pieces onto the canvas. In this phase, I can still decide to use machine or hand- embroidery effects. When that is finished I start adding polyester wadding and use a hand quilting technique to create a puffy effect. Then I paint the fringes, which are the last element that I add to the frame and finish the piece.
Is narrative important within your work?
I am not so much interested in narrative, but more in conveying visual pleasure and the sense of touch. I appropriate and reinterpret these old masters’ paintings by mixing them with borrowed styles from pop art to abstract expressionism and refashion them into textiles. By doing that I aim to blur boundaries between making and thinking and art and craft. I see the rococo period as a celebration of the senses, the sensual and overwhelming visual pleasures, but also as hedonistic and overly indulgent. The idea of the portrait translated into fashion fabrics is a reference to a culture obsessed with image, the body and appearance.
The puffy bloating effect refers to bumpy imperfect body parts. It can also be perceived as a “tapestry on steroids” or “cosmetic fillers”. On the one hand, I aim for the work to bedazzle the viewer with seductive materials, while on the other hand, I leave the work its wobbly, uncanny and grotesque appearance. By working with fashion fabrics I would like to point out the seductiveness and commercial selling aspect behind these fabrics.
Reconstructing old masters’ paintings out of glitzy materials and turning them into modern art could be perceived as an ironic gesture, and while the concept carries out some irony, the process of painting and fabricating historical paintings with swirly brushstrokes and intricate textile pieces is a nurturing one for me.
Who are your favourite artists and why?
The idea of paintings that become fabrics and fabrics become paintings is something I am very interested in. Edouard Vuillard and Gustav Klimt, therefore, are great examples and influenced my work in that way. The art-deco movement, in general, I feel related to. Besides the old masters, I love contemporary art as well. For instance; Joana Vasconcelos, Wangechi Mutu and Raqib Shaw are artists I admire. Their work is bold and has a strong voice. They are not afraid to work with unconventional art materials and to use opulence and colour in their work.
What or who inspires your art?
I am inspired by Rococo, fashion and what people are wearing on the streets and also the materials that I see in fabric and haberdashery stores. The theatricality and the surrealism of the films of Fellini and Cocteau influenced my work. Things that are defined as pretty, kitschy or tacky inspire me. The book ‘Bloody Chamber’ of Angela Carter, The Subversive Stitch and the stories of Leonora Carrington are important to me. Next to that, I read about craft and the history of ornaments and fabrics.
Where’s your studio and what’s it like?
My studio is in Greenwich, in South East London.
It is a medium-sized studio with a roof window. I have a lot of boxes with various fabrics and drawers with beads and yarns.
Over the years I gathered new and second-hand tapestry fabrics, but also sequin, velvet and PVC fabrics that I keep organised. Everything has its place, but once I start collaging the fabrics onto the canvas, the fabrics are everywhere and I allow myself to make a mess.
Do you have any studio rituals?
I don’t have any studio rituals. The studio is a space where I can follow my intuition and play around with ideas and materials.
What are you working on currently?
Currently, I am working on another series of appropriated Rococo paintings that I transform into textile paintings. They are mostly portraits of ladies painted by Fragonard, but I also started reworking the Venus paintings by Boucher.
Where can we buy your art?
I have an upcoming duo show at James Freeman gallery from the 13th of May until the 5th of June. He will show four pieces that I made in 2020 during the lockdown.
Zerp gallery represents my work in Holland. https://www.zerp.nl/anne-von-freyburg
