The basset
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Atelier Tabard.
With its bolduc.
Circa 1950.
Lurçat’s oeuvre is immense: however, it is his role in the renovation of the art of tapestry that earned him a lasting place in posterity. Beginning in 1917, he started with works woven on canvas, then, in the 1920s and 1930s, he worked with Marie Cuttoli. His first collaboration with the Gobelins dates from 1937, when he simultaneously discovers the Angers Apocalypse tapestry, which definitively leads him to devote himself to tapestry. He first addressed technical questions with François Tabard, and then, during his installation in Aubusson throughout the war, he defined his system: gros point (bold stitch), counted tones, and drawn, Numbered Cartoons. A gigantic production then began (more than 1,000 cartoons), amplified by his determination 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—then, through his role as tireless promoter of the medium across the world. His woven work attests to the art of a specifically decorative “imager,” with a highly personal symbolic iconography that is cosmogonic (sun, planets, zodiac, the 4 elements…), stylized vegetal forms, and animals (goats, cocks, butterflies, chimeras…) standing out against a background without perspective (deliberately removed from painting). In his most ambitious Cartoons, it was intended both to share a poetic vision (he sometimes even enriches these tapestries with quotations) and a philosophical one (the major themes were addressed already during the war: freedom, resistance, fraternity, truth…). The culminating point of this was the “Chant du Monde” (Musée Jean Lurçat, former Saint-Jean hospital, Angers), left unfinished at his death. An admirer of dogs, Lurçat had Afghan hounds. If they appear occasionally in his Cartoons, Lurçat cannot distance himself from their appearance: his “basset” (close to another Cartoon entitled “le chien vert,” without the owl) has only the name. 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, 1976 Cat. 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 Gérard Denizeau, Jean Lurçat, Liénart, 2013 Cat. Expo. Jean Lurçat au seul bruit du soleil, Paris, galerie des Gobelins, 2016
