'Agnes Martin / Navajo Blankets', Pace Gallery, New York

Paintings by Agnes Martin are exhibited alongside wearing blankets by Navajo Diné weavers in ‘Agnes Martin / Navajo Blankets’ at the Pace Gallery, New York until 21 December 2018. A selection of paintings created by Martin throughout her career are featured, together with handwoven Navajo textiles from the 19th century, drawing parallels between these exquisitely crafted, transcendent bodies of work.

Most of the woven works in the exhibition were created in the form of the “chief-style” blankets by Navajo women working on indigenous vertical looms in their homes. From the 1750s, this bold-banded style worn around the shoulders by both men and women became a popular object of trade to high-level members of other tribes, military officers, and travellers throughout the American West, Southwest, and Northern Plains. By the mid-19th century, the Navajo chief blanket was one of the most valued garments in the world. The design spectrum of chief blankets includes four inter-figured phases, defined by their increasingly elaborate banding, colouration, and placement of foreground motifs.

Beyond their value as trade items, classic Navajo textiles are celebrated for their manifestations of harmony and balance as expressed in Navajo culture and philosophy. While the Navajo language has no singular term for art, the descriptive word hózhó refers to harmony and balance in both aesthetic and intrinsic forms, a state of being where the natural and the supernatural can coexist. This concept infuses Navajo blanket-weaving as well as Navajo religious origin stories. These narratives relate that Na’ashjeii Asdzaa, Spider Woman, taught spinning and weaving to the earliest Navajo people to contribute to their well-being. A Holy Person and key figure in the Navajo pantheon, Spider Woman is revered as the first Navajo weaver and a source of hózhó. The Navajo blankets on show embody a stately yet playful sense of harmony and balance, through the light and depth expressed within each broad band and through the rich red and indigo-dyed blue foreground elements that seem to float atop the atmospheric backgrounds.