ARACHNE

This program aims at replacing tapestry-making within the history of artistic creation. It is based on a dialectical approach of this art, in its relation to the theory of ornament in arts and architecture, its straight relation to painting and in its dependence to the organization and to the functioning of antique crafts. In addition, the objective of this program is to take a critical look at the methods of investigation and analysis used to this day in this field of art history. Thinking about the creative process in the art of tapestry today requires rethinking its history from three renewed conceptions: Tapestry as ornament. This first thematic axis concerns the analysis of the placement of objects, the function of the medium as the structure within space and the element of the dissemination of a style. How can tapestry, when integrated into a space, modify its character? (up to today’s practices of contemporary tapestry installation)? What place of tapestry is given by architects, both of yesterday and today (Corbusier, Portzamparc)? How was the art of tapestry observed or regarded? How does the art of tapestry adapt itself to styles and how does it participate to their dissemination? As tapestry is seen as a double of painting, it is also advisable to think of the stakes of these weaved reproductions, of the transmission of an aesthetic at a specific moment and its reception Tapestry art as expression of a collective art. Focusing on the analysis of the application of theory in practice of an artistic technique, this second thematic axis aims at analyzing the successive phases of the process, from the verbal into the painted and (from the painted) into the weaved. It investigates questions of inter-textuality, scale, transposition, and the translation from one medium into another. Tapestry art as art and craft. This last thematic axis aims at understanding the organization and the functioning of the professions which recover tapestry-makers' names by using notions of the migration of craftsmen as well as transfer of know-how and marks. The latter is connected to the former as far as the work of the tapestry-maker is at the end of the creative process and his work constitutes the material element of the works. We know that the word used to describe a tapestry-maker in French (tapissier) englobes at least five or six professions, which divided the production and the business of the various sorts of tapestry, but we have a very limited knowledge of the functioning of these professions in networks, within the same city (Paris, Beauvais, Aubusson), between these cities and all the more with the nearby countries, while we know of their existence. To be successful, the program leans on a double framework: the historiography of tapestry-makers and the elaboration of an IT database dedicated to them. Writing on the art of tapestry involves establishing a better understanding of this artform by analyzing the way its history has been constituted. It is not only a question of establishing a better understanding of its process of production, creation, but especially of measuring the impact of historical, functional or symbolic notions in the historiography of tapestry. The making of a database, if it is not an end in itself, is a fundamental work, because these collected data and the exploration of their relations will serve as an essential support on second thought. The expected outcome is to give to the scientific community, to museum curators, to the art market and to designers a fresh knowledge of this artistic manifestation, to specify the unique nature of the art of tapestry, in France mainly, in the form of a set of analyses (essays, critical editions, fundamental studies) and in sources (catalogues, directories, databases, reconstructions of indoor decorations), reflecting the variety of the scientific approaches.