Art: The Heroic Art

Not since the late Middle Ages has tapestry enjoyed such a surge of creativity. All over Europe looms are clacking busily as tapissiers. working elbow to elbow, ply the warp with bobbin and thread. In the ancient ateliers of Aubusson. 235 miles south of Paris, every loom is filled with work in progress; Gobelin in Paris, once the royal tapestry house for the kings of France but more recently a manufacturer of furniture, has put weavers back to work on modern tapestries designed by some of France’s foremost artists. And in Lausanne, Switzerland, the first tapestry biennial exposition, sponsored by the International Center of Ancient and Modern Tapestry, has since June been attracting visitors from all over the world (see color).

Carried into Battle. In the 14th and 15th centuries, tapestry was the supreme art of France. Rich in color, heroic in theme, and expensive to make, tapestries were the trappings of luxury. Yet they had a practical value. They dressed up the bare stone walls of a castle, and they kept out the cold. Many a shivering demoiselle was grateful for chambres, movable partitions of tapestry which could subdivide a drafty great hall into a cozy nook.

Often tapestries, commissioned to show the exploits of a brave and royal person, were rolled up. carried into battle to decorate his tent. Later, in the 17th and 18th centuries, taste turned more and more to fixed wall decoration—marble, gilded woodwork, monumental paintings —and tapestry began to take a second place. Ironically, just as great technical advances were being made in the art of weaving, the spirit of originality began to disappear, and tapestry largely became a slavish imitation of paintings—often complete with their own ornate “gold” frames woven around their borders. With the exception of a few independent weavers working on their own, little worth while was loomed until recent years.

To Veil the Starkness. Tapestry’s new renaissance comes partly from a curiosity on the part of artists for new techniques, a new appreciation on the part of the public for textures and bold colors. But architecture, tapestry’s first muse, seems to be most responsible. Says Jean Lurgat, 70, chairman of the International Tapestry Center and leader of the new movement in weaving: ”The modern world needs these large ornamental tapestries, these colorful hangings, to veil, and at the same time to enrich, the sometimes exaggerated starkness of bare walls in contemporary architecture.” Lurgat is currently working on a series of tapestries called Le Chant du Monde, mostly representing such contemporary horrors as La Grande Menace (fallout), Le Grand Charmer (worldwide charnel house) and La Fin de Tout (final destruction). Other sections of Lurgat’s monumental looming have more pleasant themes: fishing, wine, the conquest of space, hunting and poetry.

Lurgat’s work is done at Aubusson on the river Creuse, the waters of which, unlike most other rivers in France, are free from calcium and perfect for dyeing wool. Dyeing sheds, with skeins of wool in every shade and color hanging outside to dry in the warm sun, cling to its banks. A more romantic reason for Aubusson’s destiny is the fact that it lay in the heart of the troubadour country during the days when chivalry was in flower and found its grand expression in tapestry.

Unseen Until Finished. Aubusson was making tapestries as long as 500 years ago, but in the igth century it turned to making carpets, with only a few remaining hand looms turning out commercial copies of famous tapestries. Since Lurcat revived the art of the tapissier, Aubusson has seven workshops turning out the work of modern designers on hand looms. For his own works Lurcat has shunned the standard “library” of 14,500 different tones of wool and adopted a more practical 13 colors; he has also restored the old 14th century weave of six threads per centimeter to produce a more vigorous texture than the tenor eleven-thread count of the more recent “corrupt” period.

But Lurgat’s most important contribution was the introduction of the numbered cartoon, a kind of full-scale plan on Bristol board that the weaver follows at the loom. Formerly weavers took considerable latitude with colors and even design, but in transferring Lurgat’s fanciful designs to tapestry, they are given no margin at all. Each color area bears a number that corresponds to a number on a skein of wool, not unlike the popular “by the numbers” painting kits; the method gives Lurgat complete control over the finished product.

It takes a weaver a month to fill in one square yard of tapestry. First a set of colorless threads called the warp is strung on the loom to serve as the foundation for weaving. The other set of threads, the colored weft, is all that is visible in the finished tapestry. The weft passes over and under the warp; each time a different colored area is indicated in the cartoon, a bobbin holding a different colored thread must be used, and the ends of the different colored threads must be tied to hold the tapestry together. A tapestry is made with the reverse, or knotted side, up. As it progresses, it is rolled on a wide wooden cylinder. The finished tapestry is often not seen until the work is completed; then, amid much excitement, it is unrolled to be admired and criticized.

Wool & Straw. The exhibition at Lausanne University’s Palais de Rumine is showing the works of 57 artists from 17 nations, including ten from behind the Iron Curtain, and two from the U.S. Each artist is limited to a single work, with the exception of Henri Matisse, who is considered one of the pioneers of the renaissance of European tapestry and is represented by twin tapestries, inspired by a visit to Tahiti, called Polynesia: The Sea and The Sky. Poland commissioned five original designs, considered by many the most interesting tapestries in the show because of their crude, rough-woven finish of thick wool sometimes interlaced with straw. Also highly praised was the Japanese technique of Tsuzure-Nishiki demonstrated by Hirozo Murata’s silk and gold Hunting, a scene of horsemen with bows and arrows. In Tsuzure-Nishiki tradition, Japanese weavers compress the weft as it is woven into tapestry, using their fingernails cut like saw teeth.