L’Europe ou l’Art d’Occident by Jean Lurçat
A series of three tapestries
3.82 x 5.98 m
3.80 x 6.05 m
3.73 x 5.34 m
Loaned by France in 1951
With (in order of appearance):
Martine Mathias, honorary chief heritage curator
Gérald Remy, inspector of collections at the French national furniture collection, the Mobilier national
Sound archives: Jean Lurçat
Authors: Charlotte Roux, Antoine Auger, Anne Kropotkine
To find out more:
Christiane Naffah-Bayle, Xavier Hermel, Thomas Bohl, Gérald Remy et al, Jean Lurçat (1892-1966), Au seul bruit du soleil, éditions Silvana Editoriale, 2016
Transcription
Opening titles: L'Atelier de l'Europe, discovering the Council of Europe’s art collection.
Closer to the sun – Europe or Western Art by Jean Lurçat. Series of three tapestries, loaned by France, located in the Palais de l'Europe restaurant, with Martine Mathias and Gérald Remy and, from the archives of the INA, the voice of Jean Lurçat.
Gérald Remy: These three tapestries, created for the Council of Europe, were commissioned by France in 1951. The tapestry cartoons produced by Jean Lurçat were sent directly to the Aubusson workshop, where the tapestries were to be produced. Together, they are a kind of anthology of Lurçat’s decorative and artistic achievements.
Martine Mathias: On the left, you have a kind of figurative representation of the world that Lurçat liked to show, with the galactic guardian that gives us life, the sun.
Sound archive - Jean Lurçat: The sun, for me, is movement, and therefore life, progress, warmth and so on.
Martine Mathias: In the sun, he incorporates everything that constitutes the Earth and the powers that are on it, plant life and animal life. Everything is in the sun. And there, you have a little circle of animals that is really interesting.
Gérald Remy: We have depictions of a sheep, a duck, a porcupine but also a snake and insects. And there’s a whole shoal of fish.
Martine Mathias: There’s an owl too, which in western mythology represents Athena, wisdom.
Gérald Remy: The snake represents knowledge in mythology.
Martine Mathias: The human is part of this circle of life alongside the animals, completely integrated in it. And then you have a huge plant springing out of this fertile water source, the source of life. What Lurçat was interested in was to some extent the interplay between different realms. You can see birds with wings of leaves, a man in foliage, and that all evolved over the course of his career. But it is a recurrent feature. And Lurçat, who was an extraordinary colourist in his painting, is just as extraordinary in his tapestry work. He manages to arrange contrasts where you don’t expect them and astonishing effects.
Sound archive - Jean Lurçat: I have a yellow, a red, a green, an ochre, a grey and a black, you see, each with 100 gradients. Which means I am more or less as rudimentary and limited as those hallowed 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th centuries that were the golden age of tapestry.
Martine Mathias: What is very interesting as well is to see how he has used elements of a translation of Pablo Neruda’s Canto General. "Tender and bloody was he…".
Gérald Remy: "… but on the grip …".
Martine Mathias: “… of his weapon of moist flint, the initials of the earth were written". You know, Lurçat was a poet too. And Pablo Neruda’s poetry, so rich in ideas, had this amazing capacity to conjure up images.
Gérald Remy: In the central section, Lurçat lists a multitude of artists and cities that were important in terms of art.
Martine Mathias: It’s like a portrait of western civilisation.
Gérald Remy: There are cities like Rome and Amsterdam for example, but also Prague, then an eastern bloc city and a capital of what was yet to become a Council of Europe member state. But for Lurçat who was a communist and a European and a westerner at the same time, you could say it was a way of uniting these two parts of Europe.
Martine Mathias: Among the personalities listed it’s clear that there are a lot from the Renaissance period.
Gérald Remy: You have Memling, El Greco, Da Vinci, Raphael, Donatello for example, all those great names from the history of European art.
Martine Mathias: And he mentions Nicolas Bataille. It was Nicolas Bataille who put together the Apocalypse tapestry that is in Angers.
Sound archive - Jean Lurçat: The most famous tapestry in the world is the Apocalypse tapestry. It was woven around 1370 and is certainly what triggered this obsession of mine that, in short, was to become my profession.
Gérald Remy: The tapestry alludes quite strongly to the Millefleur tapestries of medieval times.
Martine Mathias: You can see a collection of plants. But what is interesting is that the plants have roots, and those roots draw energy from the artists’ names and cities they represent. We are nourished by the soil, by what surrounds us and by nature.
Gérald Remy: You also have a repeated plant motif in this central section of the triptych, reiterated over and over again. But one particularly important element that is made to stand out, is the heart; a human’s heart, mind and powers of reason are what constitute life. In the right-hand panel, there is part of a poem by Jean Lurçat. "So this fire continues to burn on Earth, I herald a song free of horrors".
Martine Mathias: Here there is a different sun, not one that is inhabited by forms or animals. This sun is one that gives out energy. At the top floats a couple, a man and a woman full of light and power. There is a transfer of energy between the sun and the couple. Each time, humans are present in each of the tapestries but in different forms. In the centre, the form taken is the heart, human sentiment. On the right, it is power. And in the first tapestry, humans simply exist in the world, and that’s it. Lurçat attaches tremendous importance to humankind on Earth, to humanism. That is a cardinal value for Lurçat, who is not religious but deep-down has spiritual inspirations.
Closing credits: That was Closer to the sun – Europe or Western Art by Jean Lurçat, a Council of Europe podcast, created by Charlotte Roux, Antoine Auger and Anne Kropotkine, with Martine Mathias and Gérald Remy and, from the archives of the INA, the voice of Jean Lurçat. Other episodes are available on the Council of Europe website.
