Weaving Modernism: Postwar Tapestry Between Paris and New York

摘要

From the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, tapestry held a place as the most luxurious and highly prized art form in Europe. These grand-scale, meticulously woven textiles, often with intricate narrative imagery, brought color and warmth to interior spaces and conveyed more than any other art form the power and prestige of their owners. Subsequently, with changing tastes, tapestry fell out of favor as a valued artistic medium and was little studied by scholars. However, in the past twenty years, major exhibitions and groundbreaking studies have brought fresh attention to historical tapestry, heralding a renewed appreciation for the medium. K. L. H. Wells, in her thoughtful new book, Weaving Modernism: Postwar Tapestry Between Paris and New York, expands the cur-rent discussion to look at tapestry in the twentieth cen-tury, when the medium experienced a lively revival in France and the United States. Wells also sets out to ac-knowledge tapestry's significant place in the history of modern art. Wells introduces her book by asking: 'Why would so many modern artists be drawn to tapestry after World War Ⅱ and what impact did tapestry have on modern art in this period?' (p. 3) In four chapters, the author addresses these points by examining closely examples of postwar tapestry in France and the United States, two countries linked artistic-ally and politically at this time. She not only mines archival sources, but also revisits modernist art theory.