Woven wonders: Tapestries at BYU are fusion of old and new

PROVO — Huge.

And amazingly intricate.

That only begins to describe the tapestries currently on display at Brigham Young University's Museum of Art.

The average piece is 6 feet by 8 feet and involves not only a vivid array of colors but styles, shapes and themes.

"Spring" by Jean Lurcat appears to celebrate the resurgence of life that comes with spring. The piece is constantly new as the eye discovers fish, birds and butterflies in a world where plants emerge from the back of a turtle and a phoenix-like bird appears to be engulfed in flames.

The Marc Chagall "Cirque 1" is an impressionistic, complex piece replete with acrobats, trapeze artists and flying animals in a dreamlike world that would challenge a painter much less a weaver.

Victor Vasarely's composition of colored circles on a shaded background seems a simple design to transfer to tapestry but is actually extremely difficult to transfer because tiny irregularities would be immediately obvious.

The Alexander Calder pieces, designed in celebration of the American Bicentennial, include spirals, a snake and a bold, energetic composition.

"Birds of the Air" are actually two matching pieces by Henri Matisse that each take up an entire wall. They were woven 18 years after Matisse's death.

In each case, the artistry is marvelous and the detail impressive.

The BYU museum is one of only six American museums — and the only museum in the western United States — to host this group of tapestries, art work assembled from a dozen collections throughout Europe and America.

Although tapestries date back centuries, in the 1930s French surrealist painter Jean Lurcat developed a system that simplified the complicated process of weaving and sparked a modern revival of the tapestry art form.

A surprising number of modern painters and sculptors were then able to transfer many of their masterpieces to tapestry. Now 17 of the woven designs by Lurcat, Pablo Picasso, Calder, Fernand Leger, Le Corbusier, Matisse, Vassily Kandinsky, Vasarely, Georges Braque and Chagall are on display in the Conway A. Ashton and Carl E. Jackman Gallery on the museum's lower level.

"This exhibition is a fusion of new and old — the bold abstract designs of modernism and the ancient techniques of hand-woven tapestry," said curator Paul Anderson.

"And it is a surprisingly appealing combination. The simple geometries and pure colors of much modern art transfer readily to the loom, and the large scale and soft texture of tapestry give these designs a sense of drama, warmth, and richness."

Tapestry is an art designed for architectural spaces, like frescoes or murals; however, creating art on a loom requires an approach different than painting.