A Trip To The Clark Art Institute To See The Tapestry Exhibit “Wall Power!”

I know I said I’d be taking Sunday’s off, but I was so excited about Wall Power! an exhibit of Modern French Tapestries that we saw at the Clark Art Institute yesterday. They are on loan from the Mobilier National in Paris.

I just wanted to share a few  of them with you.

Three or four people told me about the exhibit, which ends today,  and when Pat sent me a picture of a couple of the tapestries on exhibit, that convinced me to see it before it left.

When I thought of tapestries, the example above is what came to mind.  Now, I love this tapestry, but it was the more painterly ones that awed me.

These tapestries were made from artists paintings and drawings.  The detail above is from and India ink and acrylic on paper by Pierre Alechinsky.

This one you might recognize as a Matisse.  The artists work with the weavers to create the tapestry. This is the size of the tapestries I expected to see, about 36×40″.   But so many of the tapestries were huge.

(I’ve loved Matisse’s pattern on pattern painting since I first saw them in a exhibit at the Guggenheim when I was in High School)

This tapestry by Marc Saint-Saens, that Jon is standing in front of is about 10×15 feet.   As is the one below.

This tapestry is from a untitled painting by Velu Viswanadhan.  It was woven by hand at les Gobelins, a tapestry manufacturer who has been making hand woven tapestries since the 1600s.

In this detail you can see that painterly quality.  It’s still hard for me to believe it is woven not painted.  The way the colors fade into each other and those intricate details like that thin tan line between the gray and orange.

This was woven in 2004 at Manufacture de Beauvais. It’s from a Gouache o paper by Maria Helena Vieira de Silva from 1964.

You can clearly see the weaving in this detail.

Okay, this is the last one.  It’s a close up of Raoul Dufy’s La Bale de Sainte-Adresse from 1950.  It was woven in 1968.  Many of the tapestries are woven wool.  This one is cotton, wool and silk.

Again the amazing detail.

I had to keep reminding myself that these are hand woven, by “a team of weavers working side by side for many months.”