La Cité reçoit le prestigieux prix Liliane Bettencourt pour l’intelligence de la main® - Parcours 2018 (communiqué)

16.10.2018
Les actus de la cité

La Cité reçoit le prestigieux prix Liliane Bettencourt pour l’intelligence de la main® - Parcours 2018

16.10.2018

Le jeudi 11 octobre 2018, la Fondation Bettencourt-Schueller a dévoilé le lauréat du Prix Liliane Bettencourt pour l’intelligence de la main® - Parcours 2018. La Cité internationale de la tapisserie reçoit cette distinction d'excellence, remise à son Directeur Emmanuel Gérard, pour son travail autour de la création contemporaine, de l'enrichissement et de la mise en valeur des savoir-faire de la tapisserie d'Aubusson, reconnus au Patrimoine culturel immatériel de l'humanité par l'UNESCO.

Les 700 invités rassemblés dans la salle Wagram, à Paris, pour la cérémonie de remise de ce prix prestigieux, ont eu l'occasion de découvrir des pièces exceptionnelles des collections de la Cité de la tapisserie, après que la Présidente de la Fondation Bettencourt-Schueller, Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, a remis le Prix Liliane Bettencourt pour l’intelligence de la main® - Parcours 2018 à Emmanuel Gérard, Directeur de la Cité internationale de la tapisserie, en présence de sa Présidente Valérie Simonet, Présidente du Département de la Creuse, et de son Conservateur Bruno Ythier.

La Fondation Bettencourt-Schueller rappelle que ce prix a été créé pour "valoriser les métiers d’art et contribuer à leur rayonnement". La sélection est réalisée par des comités d’experts et un jury indépendant, présidé par Jean de Loisy et composé de Pierre Hermé (pâtissier), Rabih Kayrouz (créateur de mode), Didier Krzentowski (galeriste), Catherine Pégard (présidente de l’Etablissement public du château, du musée et du domaine national de Versailles), Lina Ghotmeh (architecte) et Nicolas Bos (président de Van Cleef & Arpels).

La récompense "Parcours" du Prix, créée en 2014, met en lumière une personnalité exemplaire pour son engagement, ses réalisations, sa contribution au secteur des métiers d’art français. La Cité de la tapisserie se voit ainsi remettre une récompense importante (50 000 euros) et fera l'objet d'un accompagnement sur trois ans pour le lancement d'une nouvelle collection au sein de la collection "Musée de France" de la Cité de la tapisserie : "Carré d'Aubusson", une série d’œuvres contemporaines en tapisserie, à l’échelle de l’habitat et du décoratif, d’une surface carrée de 1,84 m x 1,84 m.

La Cité de la tapisserie rejoint les 105 lauréats récompensés depuis 1999, représentant 50 savoir-faire d’exception. La Fondation Bettencourt Schueller soutient la Cité de la tapisserie depuis les débuts du projet, notamment pour la réalisation des espaces d'exposition dédiés aux savoir-faire de la tapisserie, "Les Mains d'Aubusson".

Quatre choses sont importantes pour nous. Autour de la formation nous avons réussi à réunir les professionnels de la filière de la tapisserie d'Aubusson, à apaiser les rivalités historiques. Le deuxième point c'est la création contemporaine : nous avons été ambitieux et nous avons fait évoluer les choses. Troisièmement, nous sommes fiers de la qualité des expositions qui sont montées dans cette maison. Nous montrons que l'on peut être dans un territoire rural et faire quelque chose de très haut niveau. Enfin, c'est l'opération "Aubusson tisse Tolkien", un projet unique que la famille Tolkien s'est aujourd'hui tout à fait approprié.

Emmanuel Gérard, Directeur de la Cité de la tapisserie.

[Photo Caroline Doutre / CAPA Pictures pour la Fondation Bettencourt Schueller]

 

Découvrez le film réalisé par Jérôme de Gerlache, produit par Have a great Day films pour la Fondation Bettencourt Schueller :

Calls for creation

Salades (Lettuces)

Sébastien Gouju, Salades, Jury’s special merit, 2016

Working on the question of the bound and the hierarchy between “noble arts” and “minor arts”, Sébastien Gouju restyles the traditional greeneries of the Aubusson tapestries in a humorous way.

Coming from the notion of décor, he took inspiration in what decorates our plates, to make us sink into a pack of salad. He delivers a composition of salads, a mixed salad, in its most calibrated version, the most industrial ever, with a very contrasted and graphic treatment.

Steeped in the constraints of the textile medium, Sébastien Gouju wished to restrain his cartoon to 20 colors and play with the technical writing of the tapestry to transcribe the almost organic gush of his composition in a mastered weaving project. The jury wanted to underline the quality of his project by attributing him the special mention of 2016.

 

Calls for creation

Bleue (Blue)

The second prize of the 2016 Cité’s call for creation goes to the plastic artist Marie Sirgue for her project Bleue, a tapestry project of 2m x 3m, which, in the preciousness of its weaving, will pursue to give the illusion… of the pettiest of the construction site’s tarpaulin.

Marie Sirgue lives and works in Toulouse. Multi-medium, her work questions mankind and his uses. From a project, she will go and look for the most appropriate technic. She is interested in the notion of “reverse counterfeiting”: by coming from a trivial model, a common object of minor value, she imagines how to give a nobler copy.

Marie Sirgue experimented for the Cité’s call for creation: from a montage of several photographs from a construction site’s tarpaulin, which just came out of its wrapping, with its wrinkles and its play-on-light thanks to the use of a deported flash, she proposes a big project in trompe l’oeil style, in the draped textile tradition of the historical Aubusson tapestry. For this project, the hangs play with effects of shine, iridescence and light should give the illusion of the plastic being crumpled. Marie Sirgue produces a blur between the original tarpaulin’s framework and the weft of the tapestry, precisely by playing with the technical language of the tapestry, flacked fabric or flat tint. The blues are electric, willfully artificial.

The weaving was entrusted to the Atelier A2 in Aubusson.

 

Calls for creation

Lucite

Eva Nielsen gets the Cité’s Great Prize 2016 with Lucite, a tapestry proposition in trompe l’oeil style, which plays with a tension between the monumental and the intimate

After going through London’s Central Saint Martins and graduating the Beaux-Arts in Paris, Eva Nielsen is a promising artist from the new French pictorial scene. Represented by Jousse in Paris, Selma Feriani in Tunis and London and The Pill in Istanbul, the young French-Danish is interested in the theme of the interlacing. Her plastic art work is a work of layers: from photographs, Eva Nielsen takes the images over by intervening in successive layers, successive frames of silkscreen printing, application of paint or ink.

For the Cité’s 2016 call for creation, Eva Nielsen proposed a project in trompe l’oeil style. From the name of an illness preventing the confrontation with day light and obligating the ill persons to protect themselves from the sun under a hessian, the work Lucite comes from a research where the artiste superposes the impression of a mosquito net on top of a landscape picture. Planned to measure 2,20 meters large and 3 meters high, the work plays with the tapestry’s monumental dimensions and the intimate perception of the landscape through the textile framework.

While she works her images in successive layers, the realization of a tapestry allows her to transcend her artistic signature by touching directly the material which she prints since several years. As a result of five years of research, this tapestry project could allow her to “merges the tracing papers”, by setting the image into a unique gesture, the one of the weavers.

The weaving was realized by the Atelier Patrick Guillot in 2018.

 

Calls for creation

Le manteau de Capucine Bonneterre (Capucine Bonneterre’s coat)

Capucine Bonneterre, 6th Prize, 2015 call for creation “Aubusson weaves fashion”

Capucine Bonneterre, young textile creator, proposed an elegant coat in a Japanese spirit, half-way between garment and object of choreographic composition.

Along her researches on the technic of the Aubusson tapestry, Capucine Bonneterre saw an analogy between the relays – weaving’s interruptions which allow the color changing – and the principle of the buttonhole. She then decided to integrate this technical imperative of the tapestry in the graphic composition of her coat.

Entirely thought as to be woven, this project emphasizes the play on lights between matte material and shiny fibers within red shades. The contrast between the apparent simplicity of the weaving on the right side and the wrong side of the tapestry, which is “looser” and furnished, is put forward by leaving visible parts of the garment on the wrong side.

This long coat, woven in one unique piece, is thought up to be assembled without finishing stitches, via a folding system, then set in place by the lacing and the braiding of the buttonhole network. The presentation of the work is to be imagined in a scenography, which is close to the performance: a choreographed passage from the hanging tapestry to the garment, which would be laced up to the body.

Capucine Bonneterre has graduated the École nationale supérieure des Arts décoratifs in Paris (section “clothes design”). She notably collaborates with Cacharel, Christophe Lemaire.

Calls for creation

Henri Cap

Vincent Blouin and Julien Legras, 5th Prizze, 2015 call for creation “Aubusson weaves fashion”

With Henri Cap, the two designers decided to revive an ancient motif to dress a very contemporary accessory: the cap.

Instead of simply copying a contemporary motif about the technique of low-warp tapestry, Vincent Blouin and Julien Legras came from the conception of the tapestry as a precious accessory, expression of the kings’ glory and the symbol of their power, and they imagined a work over the crown motif.

Playing with the oppositions and contrasts, they decided to confront this monarchy symbol in form of a cap, both very used in the fashion world and considered as the ultimate modern and democratic accessory. This reflection then gave birth to a hybrid object, representation of the ancient in a new and unexpected form.

3 kings, 3 eras, 3 styles

Henri Cap is actually a collection of three caps. Even if the idea of an opposition between the democratic accessory and the symbol of the monarchist power still lingers within the three pieces, each one of them proposes a particular style through a progression in regards to the complexity of the motif.

With less details and colors, the Henri IV cap plays with monochromatic colors and simplicity. The cap in the style of Louis XIV uses more colors. Finally, the Louis XV cap with the shine of its jewels and its large amount of colors can be perceived as a little more feminine. In these three pieces, the designers took into account one of the fundamental characteristic of the tapestry: the weft play allows different levels of reading in function of the distance in the perception. Observed from far off, the tapestry delivers its message. And when one gets closer, the aesthetics and the virtuosity of the motif are the ones which shine.

With proven experience in scenography, the two artists presented their collection in a peculiar mise en scène, to strengthen the sensation of anachronism provoked by such unexpected pieces.

Julien Legras and Vincent Blouin met at the ENSCI. They are both co-founders of the agency Élément commun.

Calls for creation

Infinite flowers: le tableau-objet (Infinite flowers: the painting-object)

Infinite flowers: le tableau-objet, by Maroussia Rebecq, 2015 3rd Prize equal ranking

The fashion designer Maroussia Rebecq, alias Andrea Crews, proposes a series of fanny packs coming from a painting-piece, which would stay as an art work after the cutting of the pattern.

The weaving is realized by the Atelier de la Lune.

 

 

Calls for creation

Canne à motif de paon (Stick with a peacock motif)

A series of sticks, by Alessandro Piangiamore, 2015 3rd Prize equally ranked.

For the 2015 call for creation “Aubusson weaves fashion”, the Italian plastic artist Alessandra Piangiamore proposed a series of sticks, at the border between luxury accessories and “utilitarian object”. It takes the motif of the peacock back, which is very present in the tapestries from Aubusson, notably by Dom Robert, to give it both an abstract and a natural form.

The weaving was realized by the Atelier Catherine Bernet.

 

Calls for creation

Libramen forma

Libramen Forma, Prisca Vilsbol and Dagmar Kestner, 2nd Prize 2015 “Aubusson weaves fashion”

For their project Libramen Forma, Prisca Vilsbol and Dagmar Kestner founded their thinking on the passage of the 2-D tapestry into the volume of a 3-D garment. Thus, it is a statuesque dress, which they are providing.

They also aimed to overcome the stiffness of the tapestry material to draw a flowing garment. The two designers chose to create an impression of volume thanks to a fold of fabric in trompe l’oeil style. Thus, even though the garment has a straight-cut, forms emanate from it.

The weaving was realized by the Atelier Françoise Vernaudon. The designers proceed to the assembly of the dress in their studio in Copenhagen.

Prisca Vilsbol is French and Danish, Dagmar Kestner is German and Romanian. They are both fashion designer.