The Tamesis
An adventurous and tenacious person, Anne overcame adversity throughout her life, including physical limitations caused by Charcot-Marie Tooth disease, a genetic disorder, as well as the typical headwinds faced by many female artists of the time. She has traveled extensively, including 14 trips to Mexico. She has exhibited her work in the most prestigious venues, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Endlessly creative, she continued to push the boundaries of textiles and, later, printmaking. Her philosophy is that, as Weber writes, it often pays to “start from scratch” in life.
Before the book was published, Fashion spoke with Weber about his first meeting with Anne and Joseph, the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College controversies, Anne’s call to knitting, and her enduring wisdom. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Fashion: What was your first impression of the Albers family?
Nicholas Fox Webb: In 1971, I was in graduate school when the mother of a friend took me to meet them at their home in Connecticut. I couldn’t start my car that morning and had to get under the car and hit the fuel pump with a rock. I was dressed appropriately for a meeting with the Bauhaus people, wearing a pair of neat tan corduroy trousers that were now stained with oil.
When I arrived home, Joseph didn’t even say hello. He looked at me and simply said, “Kid, what do you do?” I probably looked like a machinist. I said, “Sir, I’m studying art history at Yale University.” Then he said, “Kid, do you like it?” This is obviously a very, very strong person, and you can’t hide it in front of him. But Anne didn’t say another word at this time. Looking up, it looks like a religious act between the two of them. Both exuded great power. Joseph immediately left a very strong impression on people. He was a person who could express his thoughts very clearly, but Anne was such a silent existence. She gave me a smile that made me feel like I was answering her husband’s difficult question in some appropriate way. I can’t explain why, but I felt her support before I heard her say a word.
You write in the book that she served Kentucky Fried Chicken on a regular platter for lunch that day—I love that detail. Throughout the book, you describe their almost ascetic life. They eat simple food, dress simply, and their houses are barely decorated. Did this shock you when you first entered their home?
It’s completely surprising, but it feels completely right. I once brought a man named Stuart Johnson to my house. He is curator of design at the Museum of Modern Art. We were talking about something else and when we turned into the driveway and he saw the house, he said, “Jesus Christ.” That’s not what anyone expected. It was a surprise in the sense that I thought I expected something that looked like Walter Gropius’s architecture [the Bauhaus founder]. But what shocked me most was how correct it was. You can’t imagine it any other way.
