Weavers who take a painting and do their own thing

Press, 4 December 1981, Page 14

Weavers who take a painting and do their own thing

By

DERRICK ROONEY

Considerable interest is being taken by both artists and craft workers in a travelling exhibition scheduled to open tomorrow in the Robert McDougall Art Gallery. Entitled “Tapestry: Henry Moore and West Dean," it came to New Zealand from the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and features eight original watercolour drawings by the British sculptor, Henry Moore, with eight tapestries worked from them by weavers at West Dean House, Sussex. The exhibition is in a low key, but is regarded as one of the most important to visit Christchurch for some time, largely because of the rare opportunity it affords to see the work of a great twentieth-century artist, but also because it presents a

new interpretation of his work, as seen through the sensitive eyes of skilled workers in a different medium. Even without Moore’s name the eight tapestries which make up the exhibition are interesting — for their quality, and for the break with tradition which they represent. In the past, tapestry design has been dominated by painters, such as Raphael, who completed his cartoons full-size, and delivered them to the studio so that exact copies could be made. But the life-size Moore tapestries were worked from tiny water-colour drawings done by a sculptor.

They are, says the exhibition catalogue, a set of weavings like no others. The commissioning of the tapestries by the sculptor was prompted by the success of a sample weaving worked from a water-colour selected and sent to the West Dean studio by Moore’s daughter, Mary. Moore asked the weavers to make seven more tapestries. based on water-colour drawings done in 1975. The mother-and-child theme dominates most of them — an appropriate subject, because earlier in Moore’s career the birth of Mary, his only child, had inspired some of his happiest sculptures on the theme of motherhood.

Moore encouraged the weavers to interpret his drawings, rather than merely copy them. "If it were just going to be a colour reproduction I wouldn’t be interested," he has said. “It is because it is a translation from one medium into another and has to be different that you get the ‘surprise’.” A lot of imagination was demanded of the weavers, because the drawings were not only in water-colour but very small — a doubly unusual basis for weaving. Some of the drawings are on absorbent paper which has attracted a rush of colour smears and ink blots. Moore has worked some of these into the figures or landscapes, and left others alone because, though accidental, they have, in his view, enriched the feeling and textures of the works. But whereas this may work very well in a small drawing, it becomes a very deep complicating factor when enlarged to tapestry size. A small blotch' becomes a huge switch of colour; a delicate pen or brush line becomes a broad stroke. “I doubt," writes Edward Mullins in his catalogue note, "if in any other interpretative medium it would have been possible to meet this challenge, but in weaving it has been possible since variations of this sort are found quite naturally in the way wool absorbs dye and the way wool can be handled. "A single thread of wool, if it is not subtle enough, can be split into several strands to provide any number of blends of colour and varieties of texture. Looking at these tapestries I cannot help feeling there is no interpretative tour de force which EvaLouise Svensson and her

team would have found beyond them, and that if Paganini had been a weaver not a violinist he would have been proud of such a performance.” The Robert McDougall Gallery is the final stop on the exhibition’s tour, which has already taken it to galleries in Auckland, Wellington, and Dunedin. These four public galleries jointly arranged the tour, with sponsorship from the Wool Board. West Dean House is an educational trust established in a park-like setting in west Sussex, near Chichester, in a flint mansion built in 1804 by James Wyatt. It was set up in the mid-19605, when the owner of the estate, Mr Edward James, who now lives in Mexico, made over most of his British estate to the trust. There is more than 2400 ha of land, comprising farms and woodland, with many farmhouses and cottages. Around the mansion are extensive gardens dating from the nineteenth century, and inside it is a large collection of antique furniture, early tapestries, and other art works. The trust’s aim is the preservation and restoration of traditional arts and crafts, and more than 100 students are accommodated in a residential college while they attend a wide variety of specialised courses. These in-

clude such offerings as a year-long course in the special conservation skills of antique-furniture decorating, antique-clock restoration, and the conservation of pottery and porcelain, run jointly with the Cultural and Educational Trust of the British Antique Dealers Association. Other classes deal in similarly esoteric subjects, such as ' silversmithing, pewter work, jewellery making, enamelling, glass engraving, blacksmithing, bookbinding, papermaking, calligraphy, weaving, and printing and designing textiles. Edward James, who started the school, is himself a poet and writer, and has been a life-long patron of the arts, closely associated with the surrealist movement. In the 1930 s he befriended and supported a number of artists, including Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali, Chirico, Delvaux, Paul Nash. Many of the paintings and drawings which he bought in the 1930 s were passed over to the trust with the estate, and are now out on loan to leading galleries, in London, Rotterdam, and elsewhere. The tapestry studio is separate from the college. Under the direction of EvaLouise Svensson, it employs six experienced weavers. The exhibition will remain in the McDougall Gallery until January 24.