Music and Shell
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Atelier Tabard.
With its bolduc.
Circa 1950.
The work of Lurçat was immense: however, it was his role in the renovation of the art of tapestry that earned him lasting fame. As early as 1917, he began with works on canvas; then, in the 1920s and 1930s, he worked with Marie Cuttoli. His first collaboration with the Gobelins dates from 1937, when he discovered at the same time the Apocalypse tapestry series of Angers—an encounter that definitely prompted him to devote himself to tapestry. He addressed technical questions first with François Tabard, and then, during his installation in Aubusson during the war, he defined his system: bold point, counted tones, and drawn Cartoons, Numbered. A vast production then began (more than 1,000 Cartoons), amplified by his desire to involve his painter friends, the creation of the A.P.C.T. (Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie) and his collaboration with the gallery La Demeure and Denise Majorel, and then by his role as an tireless promoter of the medium throughout the world. His woven work bears witness to a specifically decorative art of the imaginative, with a very personal symbolic iconography that is cosmogonic (sun, planets, zodiac, the 4 elements…), stylized vegetal, and animal (goats, roosters, butterflies, chimeras…)—all set against a background without perspective (deliberately distant from painting) and, in his most ambitious Cartoons, intended to convey both a poetic vision (he also sometimes encrusts these tapestries with quotations) and a philosophical one (the major themes were already addressed during the war: freedom, resistance, fraternity, truth…). And its culminating point would be the “Chant du Monde” ( Musée Jean Lurçat, former Saint-Jean hospital, Angers), left unfinished at his death. This model (of which one example is preserved in the Cité de la Tapisserie, in Aubusson) is exemplary of the theme of the laid table, a commonplace motif in Lurçat. The association of musical instrument-shell also refers to Picart the gentle’s work. Bibliography : Tapisseries de Jean Lurçat 1939-1957, Pierre Vorms Editeur, 1957 Cat. Expo. Lurçat, 10 ans après, Musée d’Art moderne de la ville de Paris, 1976Cat. Expo. Les domaines de Jean Lurçat, Angers, Musée Jean Lurçat et de la tapisserie contemporaine, 1986 Colloque Jean Lurçat et la renaissance de la tapisserie à Aubusson, Aubusson, Musée départemental de la Tapisserie, 1992 Cat. Expo. Dialogues avec Lurçat, Musées de Basse-Normandie, 1992 Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat, Donation Simone Lurçat, Académie des Beaux-Arts, 2004 R. Guinot, la tapisserie d’Aubusson et de Felletin, Lucien Souny, 2009, ill. p.96 Gérard Denizeau, Jean Lurçat, Liénart, 2013 Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat au seul bruit du soleil, Paris, galerie des Gobelins, 2016
