Creative Crossroads
Entering the sixth-floor galleries that house the Denver Art Museum’s “Creative Crossroads: The Art of Tapestry”, the first thing a visitor sees is a vast 18th-century Flemish tapestry based on David Teniers II’s Kermesse flamande of 1652. A fading pastoral vision within a woven tromp l’oeil frame, it’s what many of us may think of when we think about tapestry. Yet if the visitor moves a few steps to the right, a more complex vision involving Old World and New, past and present, begins to emerge.
A tassel-covered tunic made for a Peruvian noble of the pre-Columbian Chimu culture, still a vibrant cochineal red, stands in a clear case in front of the Kermesse tapestry. The tunic is beautiful, but its place here is unclear until the viewer’s eye is drawn to tiny medallions of minute, densely woven tapestry work among the red tassels. To the right hangs a Manchu court robe of imperial yellow, woven for a member of the Chinese imperial family. On the other side of the Kermesse hangs an earlier Flemish tapestry, an allegorical scene of The Birth of the Prince of Peace woven in an unknown workshop in the early years of the sixteenth century. A 17th-century English table covering depicting The Five Senses bridges the gap, chronologically and spatially, between the two Flemish tapestries.
Here, then, is a panoramic view of the place of tapestry weaving among the courtly arts of three different cultures. Yet the picture becomes even more complicated once the visitor turns around. There hangs another Peruvian tapestry, woven in the mid-eighteenth century, probably for use as a table cover in a colonial household (as with the The Five Senses, the orientation of motifs suggest it was designed for use on a flat surface).
In the center of the table cover is a stylized version of the Habsburg double eagle, a reminder of the complex dynastic ties that linked Flanders, Spain, and South America. Surrounding the eagle are parrots and viscachas – a cousin of the chinchilla found through much of South America. In each corner of the tapestry is a fire-breathing beast, identified as the amaru of indigenous Peruvian legend (but also perhaps suggesting the dragon motifs seen on the Chinese goods that entered the New World along Spain’s trans-Pacific trade routes?) Likely woven by an indigenous weaver, the tapestry embodies the way in which the textile traditions of different cultures can overlap and combine – metaphors of “common threads” and “interweaving” are hard to avoid. Not far away, past a Turkish kilim prayer rug, hangs a bird-and-flower rug by contemporary Navajo weaver Ason Yellowhair.
A number of works on view in the second portion of the L-shaped gallery elaborate on this theme, demonstrating the interaction between indigenous, colonial, and contemporary forms of textile art in the American Southwest. Hanging against one wall is a Saltillo serape from Mexico, its intricate pattern of interlocking diamonds somehow holding pink and purple, red and yellow, black and white together in disciplined equilibrium. By the serape hangs a blue and white “servant blanket”, probably woven by a Navajo woman working in a Spanish New Mexican household and displaying a mix of Saltillo and Rio Grande influences.
Next to the “servant blanket” hangs one of the exhibition’s most impressive works, Irvin Trujillo’s Saltillo Shroud, woven in 2014 in wool, silk, and gold. Incorporating Saltillo motifs into a dazzling spiral composition, the work pays tribute to the relationship between Mexican and New Mexican weaving. Another Trujillo work, Mexican Killer Bees, hangs opposite. The weaving of Hopi artist Ramona Sakiestewa is represented by Katsina 5, a bold and minimalist design echoing the color bands seen on katsinas, the sacred figurines of Pueblo religion. Nearby hangs Four Corners 8 by Rebecca Bluestone, who studied with Sakiestewa. Bluestone, a skilled dyer as well as weaver, places beautifully shaded squares of red, yellow, and blue on a deep gray ground. The abstract design was influenced by the Fibonacci sequence, while the title refers to the point at which the states of New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Utah meet.
The exhibition contains other striking modern works, such as Catalan artist Josep Grau-Garriga’s monumental Tapis Pobre, and Mark Adam’s Flight of Angels, woven by French master weavers Paul and Marguerite Avignon. But it is the interplay between Old World and New, and the evolution of tapestry weaving from courtly art to modernist art form that gives this exhibition a satisfying unity.
By Holly Hunt
Review of Creative Crossroads: The Art of Tapestry at the Denver Art Muse
um.
Until March 6
A tassel-covered tunic made for a Peruvian noble of the pre-Columbian Chimu culture, still a vibrant cochineal red, stands in a clear case in front of the Kermesse tapestry. The tunic is beautiful, but its place here is unclear until the viewer’s eye is drawn to tiny medallions of minute, densely woven tapestry work among the red tassels. To the right hangs a Manchu court robe of imperial yellow, woven for a member of the Chinese imperial family. On the other side of the Kermesse hangs an earlier Flemish tapestry, an allegorical scene of The Birth of the Prince of Peace woven in an unknown workshop in the early years of the sixteenth century. A 17th-century English table covering depicting The Five Senses bridges the gap, chronologically and spatially, between the two Flemish tapestries.
Here, then, is a panoramic view of the place of tapestry weaving among the courtly arts of three different cultures. Yet the picture becomes even more complicated once the visitor turns around. There hangs another Peruvian tapestry, woven in the mid-eighteenth century, probably for use as a table cover in a colonial household (as with the The Five Senses, the orientation of motifs suggest it was designed for use on a flat surface).
In the center of the table cover is a stylized version of the Habsburg double eagle, a reminder of the complex dynastic ties that linked Flanders, Spain, and South America. Surrounding the eagle are parrots and viscachas – a cousin of the chinchilla found through much of South America. In each corner of the tapestry is a fire-breathing beast, identified as the amaru of indigenous Peruvian legend (but also perhaps suggesting the dragon motifs seen on the Chinese goods that entered the New World along Spain’s trans-Pacific trade routes?) Likely woven by an indigenous weaver, the tapestry embodies the way in which the textile traditions of different cultures can overlap and combine – metaphors of “common threads” and “interweaving” are hard to avoid. Not far away, past a Turkish kilim prayer rug, hangs a bird-and-flower rug by contemporary Navajo weaver Ason Yellowhair.
A number of works on view in the second portion of the L-shaped gallery elaborate on this theme, demonstrating the interaction between indigenous, colonial, and contemporary forms of textile art in the American Southwest. Hanging against one wall is a Saltillo serape from Mexico, its intricate pattern of interlocking diamonds somehow holding pink and purple, red and yellow, black and white together in disciplined equilibrium. By the serape hangs a blue and white “servant blanket”, probably woven by a Navajo woman working in a Spanish New Mexican household and displaying a mix of Saltillo and Rio Grande influences.
Next to the “servant blanket” hangs one of the exhibition’s most impressive works, Irvin Trujillo’s Saltillo Shroud, woven in 2014 in wool, silk, and gold. Incorporating Saltillo motifs into a dazzling spiral composition, the work pays tribute to the relationship between Mexican and New Mexican weaving. Another Trujillo work, Mexican Killer Bees, hangs opposite. The weaving of Hopi artist Ramona Sakiestewa is represented by Katsina 5, a bold and minimalist design echoing the color bands seen on katsinas, the sacred figurines of Pueblo religion. Nearby hangs Four Corners 8 by Rebecca Bluestone, who studied with Sakiestewa. Bluestone, a skilled dyer as well as weaver, places beautifully shaded squares of red, yellow, and blue on a deep gray ground. The abstract design was influenced by the Fibonacci sequence, while the title refers to the point at which the states of New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Utah meet.
The exhibition contains other striking modern works, such as Catalan artist Josep Grau-Garriga’s monumental Tapis Pobre, and Mark Adam’s Flight of Angels, woven by French master weavers Paul and Marguerite Avignon. But it is the interplay between Old World and New, and the evolution of tapestry weaving from courtly art to modernist art form that gives this exhibition a satisfying unity.
By Holly Hunt
Review of Creative Crossroads: The Art of Tapestry at the Denver Art Muse
um.
Until March 6