COMMENTS OF A FINNISH PAINTER AND ART CRITIC “While modernism has tried to set itself apart from everything else, it has also acted as a gluttonous beast. Whenever material from outside the lofty high-culture sphere of modernism has been able to fuel the avant-garde, it has been readily incorporated. Primitive art and the art of the mentally ill, or pop culture’s sickliest kitsch are only a few examples of the ingredients that have gone into some new and shocking art form. Once these aesthetic appropriations have been exploited and made sufficiently banal, they are discarded and perhaps cast aside forever.”
“Although textile art has found its way into contemporary art circles, the artists themselves do not necessarily come from a textile art background. They are mainly (visual) artists who have discovered the radicalising elements of textile art. In spite of this livelier interaction between these genres , textile artists and other artists still remain firmly in their own separate camps. A change does seem to be taking place, but the pace is excruciatingly slow. Furthermore, the relationship between textile art and the visual arts clearly varies greatly in different European countries.”
Quotation from an article “Tapestry and the insatiable beast” by Hannu Castrén in TEXTILE FORUM magazine no. 3/2012