The sultan
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Tabard workshop.
With its signed ribbon.
Circa 1945.
Lurçat's work is immense: however, it is his role in the renovation of the art of tapestry that earned him a place in posterity. From 1917, he began with canvas works, then, in the 1920s and 30s, he worked with Marie Cuttoli. His first collaboration with the Gobelins dates back to 1937, when he simultaneously discovered the Apocalypse tapestry of Angers, which definitively encouraged him to devote himself to tapestry. He will tackle technical questions first with François Tabard, then on the occasion of his installation in Aubusson during the war, he will define his system: large stitch, counted tones, numbered drawn cartoons.
A gigantic production begins then (more than 1000 cartoons), amplified by the desire to involve his painter friends, the creation of the A.P.C.T. (Association of Painter-Cartoonists of Tapestry) and collaboration with the La Demeure gallery and Denise Majorel, then by his role as tireless propagator of the medium across the World.
His woven work reflects a specifically decorative art of imagery, in a very personal, cosmogonic symbolic iconography (sun, planets, zodiac, 4 elements…), stylized vegetation, animals (goats, roosters, butterflies, chimeras…), standing out against a background without perspective (deliberately removed from painting), and intended, in his most ambitious cartoons, to share a vision that is both poetic (he sometimes sprinkles these tapestries with quotations) and philosophical (the major themes are addressed from the war on: freedom, resistance, brotherhood, truth… ) and whose culminating point will be the "Song of the World" (Jean Lurçat Museum, former Saint-Jean hospital, Angers), unfinished at his death.
“The Sultan” is a reversed reprise of “Fanfares”, with detailed modifications in the rooster's plumage. If it is a leitmotif with Lurçat, the rooster can have different meanings: here, in glory, on a large scale (3.5 m²), it testifies to the Victory of 1945 (note the tricolor allusions), it is a festive rooster, deployed in a profusion of colored areas.
Bibliography :
Tapestries by Jean Lurçat 1939-1957, Pierre Vorms Publisher, 1957
Cat. Expo. Lurçat, 10 years later, Museum of Modern Art of the city of Paris, 1976
Cat. Expo. The domains of Jean Lurçat, Angers, Jean Lurçat Museum and contemporary tapestry, 1986
Colloquium Jean Lurçat and the renaissance of tapestry in Aubusson, Aubusson, Departmental Museum of Tapestry, 1992
Cat. Expo. Dialogues with Lurçat, Museums of Lower Normandy, 1992
Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat, Simone Lurçat Donation, Academy of Fine Arts, 2004
Gérard Denizeau, Jean Lurçat, Liénart, 2013
Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat to the mere sound of the sun, Paris, Gobelins gallery, 2016
