Loose Weaves

Tapestries: the very word conjures up the past -grand, remote, rather faded. Although the art of tapestry weaving is ancient, a number of present-day practitioners are proving that the results can still be new and fresh. France's famous tapestry factories, which date back to the 17th century, today keep a corps of weavers busy turning out bold, flat, colorfully stylized designs by Matisse, Vasarely and Jean Lur*sat.

An important designer at the Aubusson factory is Hungarian-born Mathieu Mategot, 60, whose abstract yet evocative works are now on exhibit at San Francisco's M.H. De Young Memorial Museum. In Arizona, the jagged patches of orange, yellow and brown suggest a Southwestern desert landscape. The tall, sail-shaped stripes of Regales evoke a boat race amid shafts of sun and wind. In Icare, the flame-colored, bird-like shapes against an indigo background may well reflect the Greek legend of the mortal who tried to fly to the sun and ended up plunging into the sea in flames. But as in most of his works, says Mategot, the title did not come until after the design was completed.

Free Forms. Even less tied to traditional ways than Mategot, a few hardy pioneers have stopped creating designs for factories and begun making their own free-form wall hangings. They work directly with such out-of-the-way materials as jute, sisal and new synthetic yarns, which they knit, tie and wrap into works so offbeat that baffled customs officials sometimes confuse them with rugs.

Swiss-born New Yorker Franchise Grossen knots wool and sisal into shields of intricate scalloping. The shaggy tapestries of Poland's Magdalena Abakanowicz have the look of untanned animal hides. The loose, three-dimensional web of New Yorker Sherri Smith's Volcano no. 10 hangs clear of the wall so it can be seen from either side. Paris-based Nebraskan Sheila Hicks abandoned the loom altogether to create her modular The Principal Wife, eight individual units that hang from a rod and can be added to indefinitely.

These intensely personal works find favor with modern architects and interior designers, who like the handmade, one-of-a-kind individuality they bring to austere apartment and office buildings. They also appeal to the young. A few weeks ago a white-bearded professor from France's tradition-bound Academic des Beaux-Arts asked Sheila Hicks to give a course in tapestries, "but not the factory kind." To his young students, even the highly abstract "woven paintings" of Mategot are out of date.

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