Pierre TAL-COAT

Adnet, who was placed at the head of the Compagnie des Arts Français in 1928, was keen to reinstate tapestry design as an art, distinct from painting, and a key element in interior decoration, with the constraint of numbered coloured threads
(in an approach similar to that of Lurçat, but without the numbered cartoon). To this end, during the war, he approached Coutaud, Planson and Brianchon, his painter friends (who, incidentally, would soon be commissioned by the Manufactures Nationales): “our intention was to demonstrate that contemporary tapestries have much to contribute to the integrated design of a room” (L. Chéronnet, Jacques Adnet, « Art et Industrie », 1948). The Compagnie des Arts Français organised until 1946 tapestry exhibitions on its premises : it was on this last occasion that our Tal-Coat tapestry was exhibited.

‘The Cockfight’ stands out here as an exception (as well as being a rarity, it is the artist’s first tapestry – perhaps his only one?) : the usual themes woven for the C.A.F. most often evoke a pleasant world, intended to illustrate ‘French-style’ good taste. Nothing of the sort is found in Tal-Coat’s work, where the upheavals of the era are revealed quite clearly here, in a theme that would remain almost entirely absent from his paintings.

Bibliography :
Art et décoration, 1946.3, ill.