Normans on the Seine
Aubusson tapestry woven in the workshops Pinton.
With its bolduc signed by the artist, no. 1.
1961.
Lars Gynning was one of many artists of all nationalities who were woven in Aubusson in the 1950s–70s, when tapestry was an indispensable artistic medium.
From a thematic standpoint, our Cartoon enabled—across the centuries—the interweaving, through the prism of Viking incursions dating back to the Seine, of Franco-Scandinavian relations: of course, Bayeux tapestry comes to mind.
But rather than a historico-diplomatic account by Gynning, the Cartoon in fact illustrates a song by Evart Taube, the 20th-century Swedish national poet-bard (whose text appears at the bottom of the composition). Aside from the subject in the strict sense, the woven translation of an epic chanson de geste evokes the great medieval tradition of tapestry, an unsurpassable model for many Painter-cartoonists of the period. The aesthetic, resolutely modern and influenced by Cubism, in turn revitalized this ancient subject.
