and objects — is undoubtedly the star.
Laverne Brackens, a well-known fourth-
generation quilter in Texas, is in close sec-
ond, with around 300 quilts in the collection.
While fraught with obligations regarding
care, storage, display and access that few
museums, large or small, would take on, the
bequest automatically transforms the
Berkeley museum, and its parent institu-
tion, the University of California, Berkeley,
into an unparalleled center for the study of
African-American quilts. Interest and sup-
port are coming forth: The museum has al-
ready received a $500,000 grant from the
Luce Foundation for a follow-up survey of
Eli’s entire gift in 2022, which should be ev-
ery bit as surprising as this one.
On the plane out to San Francisco in Feb-
ruary, I read the exhibition catalog cover to
cover. The organizers’ excellent essays in-
cluded Mr. Rinder vividly relating Tomp-
kins’s use of improvisation to the innova-
tions of Ornette Coleman and his “no-hold-
barred free-jazz sensibility.” (Although he
notes that she was an opera fan who lis-
tened to disco while doing her work.)
Ms. Yau provides the foundational ac-
count of Tompkins’s life, her working meth-
ods and the role of family ties and religion.
And Horace D. Ballard, a former divinity
student who is now a curator and art histori-
an at Williams College and its museum,
writes that Tompkins “lived in service of a
higher calling,” tying her efforts to sacred
music, texts and architecture.
But even they couldn’t prepare me for the
visual force of the 62 quilts and five assem-
blage-like memory jugs, dating from the
1970s to 2004. Spread out in the museum’s
sky-lighted galleries, the work’s beauty is
more insistent than ever.
Because of Tompkins’s improvisation, a
close look doesn’t reveal refinement or rote
technique — skill for skill’s sake. It shows
small individual adjustments made and lib-
erties taken, almost granular expressions
of imagination and freedom. In addition, the
fabrics — variously elegant, everyday and
ersatz — bring a lot with them, not just color
and texture, but also manufacturing tech-
niques and social connotations. Do you
think that polyester double knit might look
cheap used in a quilt? Think again. Cotton
flannel and beaded and sequined silk crepe
might not be a winning combination? Like-
wise. Such physical realism is all but impos-
sible to achieve with paint.
A measure of Tompkins’s ambition is that
she preferred to concentrate on the “free-
jazz” aspect of her work: piecing the quilt
tops. Other women finished the quilts by
adding a layer of wadding and the back, a
standard practice. Most of the pieces in this
show were quilted by Irene Bankhead,
whose work Eli also collected.
The show begins by demonstrating
Tompkins’s unusual range and versatility,
juxtaposing quilts in smoldering velvets
with a medley of found denims — a homage
to her grandfather and other farmers in her
family.
A remarkable early quilt from the 1970s is
pieced almost entirely of blocks of found
fabric embroidered with flowers — old and
new, machine- and handmade. They bow to
an ancient craft and, at the quilt’s center, a
spare image of the risen Christ blessing.
Above and to the right a circle of twisted
bands and leaves suggests both a crown of
thorns and a laurel wreath. Was Tompkinsaware of this possible reading? Perhaps,
but the main point is that her work is open to
the viewer’s response and interpretation.
As an artist, Tompkins may have taken
improvisation further than other quilters.
She all but abandoned pattern for an in-
spired randomness with an emphasis on se-
rial disruptions that constantly divert or
startle the eye — like the badge of a Califor-
nia prison guard sewn to an otherwise con-
ventional crazy quilt. Another narrative
quilt is more like a wall-hanging, or maybe a
street mural, pieced with large fragments of
black and white fabric and T-shirts printed
with images of African-American athletes
and political leaders. Rows of crosses made
from men’s ties evoke the pressures of suc-
ceeding while black in America.Her big velvet quilts — the exultant heart
of the show — are most often disrupted by
dramatic shifts in color and scale. In one,
several blocks of stark black and white tri-
angles break through an expanse of rich col-
ors like icebergs in a dark sea. The opposite
corner features a distinctive Tompkins de-
vice: a small framed area composed of tiny
squares that creates a quilt-within-a-quilt
— which reads as a witty self-reference to
the quilting process, and pulls us into the in-
timacy of making.
One of Tompkins’s most spectacular vel-
vets is edged with these framed mini-quilts,
which surround an enormous field of blue
velvets that creates a kind of van Gogh
night sky; they can read as small painted
side panels on an altarpiece. Some feature
abutting triangles that suggest desert land-
scapes and pyramids, perhaps the Flight
into Egypt. (In the catalog, Mr. Ballard reso-
nantly likens the field of blues to the vault of
a cathedral and the borders to clerestory
windows.)
There are many museum exhibitions on
lockdown in the United States right now.
They closed in one world and will reopen in
a very different one, and the relevance of
“Rosie Lee Tompkins: A Retrospective” has
only expanded in the hiatus. The sheer joy
of her best quilts cannot be understated.
They come at us with the force and sophis-
tication of so-called high art, but are more
democratic, without any intimidation
factor.
Her work is simply further evidence of
the towering African-American achieve-
ments that permeate the culture of thiscountry. A deeper understanding and
knowledge of these, especially where art is
concerned, must be part of the necessary
rectification and healing that America
faces.
Tompkins seems to have been an artist of
singular greatness, but who knows what
further revelations — including the upcom-
ing survey of the Eli Leon Bequest — are in
store. The field of improvisational quilting
by African-American women is not small,
but beyond the great quilters of Gee’s Bend,
Ala., and a few others, their work is not
widely known. Rosie Lee Tompkins’s ver-
sion of what Eli Leon called “flexible pat-
terning” may have been more extreme than
anyone else’s. Or perhaps not. It would be
gratifying to learn that she did not act alone.The Genius of Rosie Lee Tompkins
UC BERKELEY ART MUSEUM AND PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE, ELI LEON BEQUEST; BEN BLACKWELLRANDI MALKIN STEINBERGERUC BERKELEY ART MUSEUM AND PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE, ELI LEON BEQUEST; BEN BLACKWELLUC BERKELEY ART MUSEUM AND PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE, ELI LEON
BEQUEST; JUSTIN T. GELLERSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESAbove left, a rugged
appliquéd quilt begun in
1968, completed in 1996,
celebrates California,
Rosie Lee Tompkins’s
adopted state, with
tourist trinkets,
rhinestone trim, beaded
embroideries and, in
the lower right corner,
what seems to be the
back of a jacket
embroidered with an
image of Native
Americans. Above, Eli
Leon, who bequeathed
his vast collection of
quilts to the Berkeley
Art Museum. Some of
Tompkins’s quilts grab
you instantly, while
others, like a small
one from around 2005,
left, sneak up on you
but take hold just as
firmly. Below, the size
of a small billboard,
this 1996 quilt pieces
together a folkloric
dish towel, chunks of
the American flag and
a mass-produced
tapestry of Jesus.CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11
12 AR THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, JUNE 28, 2020Art