I'm very glad to tell about a thrilling course conducted by Aesthetic Realism teacher of art, Marcia Rackow, "The Visual Arts and the Opposites." In this museum/gallery class, the art of the world is studied - from the masters at the Met, treasures of African art, to the latest work in Chelsea -- based on the great principle stated by Eli Siegel, founder of the education Aesthetic Realism: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves."

The class I tell of took place at the Whitney Museum exhibition "Gee's Bend: The Women and Their Quilts" (opening at the Mobile Museum in Alabama, June 14th) -- seventy quilts made from the 1920s - 1990s. These quilts, astounding in their variety and ingenuity, were made by descendants of slaves in rural Gee's Bend, Alabama. They are described by one critic as "some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced." They came to national attention with the Freedom Quilting Bee, a cooperative arising from the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, and were sold at Bloomingdale's and Sak's, providing income for the quiltmakers. But interest waned and they were largely forgotten. In the 1990s, art collector William Arnett and his family, rediscovered them and, together with curators, patrons and others with a large respect for African-American culture, the present exhibition was first organized by the Museum of Fine Art, Houston. After the Whitney, it will continue to tour museums in the U.S.

Nettie Young
"H" Variation 1971
88 X 77 inches

Ms. Rackow gave a brief history of the African-American women who made the quilts, whose families were tenant farmers on the former Pettway plantation. Many are named Pettway. Most grew up in log cabins with walls covered with newspapers and magazines to keep out wind and cold. Here quiltmaking, handed down over four generations, was a necessity of life, using old, worn-out clothes, remnants, cotton sheets and feed sacks. In the show's moving documentary video, women tell how nothing was thrown away - no clothing, no food. "There were no extras," said one woman, "We were so poor, you couldn't imagine it." Another spoke of walking many miles a day working in the fields.