Art: Frescoes in Wool

The little town of Aubusson, in central France, has been famed for centuries for its carpets and tapestries. But of late no one wanted to buy tapestries; they were too expensive and their designs were too fussy. People no longer needed them to hang over doors and windows to keep out drafts, or to cheer barnlike castle halls. Now, a former cubist and surrealist painter named Jean Lurçat has given Aubusson a new lease on life.

Jean Lurçat returned from World War I with a mangled hand. At first he could not hold a brush, so his mother got him interested in gros point embroidery. In that way he acquired an interest in cloth art which lasted even after his hand improved and he was able to go back to painting.

Like most artists, Lurçat liked medieval tapestries best. He admired their storybook symbolism, straightforward drawing and economical restriction to blacks, reds and yellows. At Aubusson, Beauvais and the world-famous Gobelin tapestry works in Paris, descendants of the medieval masters still labored. But their models were mostly second-rate Italian engravings and 18th Century boudoir muralists like Boucher and Fragonard. Twentieth Century tapestries used as many as 14,000 different hues of thread, took years to finish. But medieval ones, designed to be “frescoes in wool,” used as few as 17 hues and were far simpler to weave.

Shortly before World War II, Lurçat had decided that to make good tapestries once again, Aubusson (285 miles directly south of Paris) needed a return to the good old days. He managed to interest a few fellow-artists (notably Raoul Dufy, Fernand Léger and up-&-coming Paris Painter Marcel Gromaire) in making properly simple tapestry designs, hired four Aubusson weavers to work them out in the ancient way. Then came the German occupation. While his weavers labored, Lurçat became a leader in the French underground.

Last week Aubusson came to Paris in an exhibition of French tapestries which made both critics and public happy. Said Figaro: “One moves from delight to delight.” The biggest and best delight in the show was also the oldest: a 14th Century illustration of the Apocalypse—measuring 35 by 250 feet—from the Angers cathedral. The newest and most surprising were from Jean Lurçat’s Aubusson atelier. Despite their secular emphasis on roosters, nudes and flaming suns, they, too, looked somehow medieval (see cuts).