A selection of almost 250 outstanding examples is now being made available to a wider audience for the first time in the publication Moroccan Carpets and Modern Art. But the publication goes a step further: as you encounter the Moroccan woven and knotted carpets, with their intensive graphic and colour impact from twentieth-century Western painting, a startling relationship becomes visible.
The eschewal of figurative representation by the Arabs and Berbers in Maghreb led – parallel to the Western tradition -to radical abstraction, a completely free, seemingly ‘modern’ interaction with colour and form. The publication poses therefore the more general question of the basic provisos of art, their origins and the path to abstraction.
With large-format illustrations of Moroccan knotted carpets and numerous comparative examples from twentieth century art, the book appeals to a wide audience interested in textiles from North African cultures and in modern art.
‘... a cornucopia from which enthusiasts of textiles and modern art can benefit enormously.’
Christian Erber, Kunst und Auktionen, November 2013
What a valuable book for understanding the development in Moroccan tapestry and Modern art!
The German, French and English texts are very well written and explain in the texts the influences on the painting in the 20th century. With very interesting photos on works by - among others - Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Raoul Dufy or Kees van Dongen, one sees the connection in influencing. One can be sure that the mostly unknown female artists were not aware of the art at all but anyway the carpet weavers in Morocco did develop their art the same way from figurative to abstraction as Gerhard Richter of Mark Rothko did.
A map situates places and ethnic groups of the creators of the tapestry and formulates the history of development of the weavers. The chapter Origins of Art compares components of images in carpets and autonomous art like rhythms, patterns, colour fields, lines or the influence of colours and signs and writings or typefaces, nature and surroundings. In Materials and Techniques the process of carpet making is explained from the wool, spinning and twisting the threads, the dyeing, the looms, knots, magical signs, figures and symbols.
The following chapters are well-organised around the point and dot, line and line structures, substructures, the surfaces and all their combinations and show excellent photos of works.
A book as a book should be: to understand, get inspired and make you wonder!
Angela van der Burght
