It is often said that Jean Lurcat is the renovator of tapestry, which is quite 
true. We certainly know it, some will say, but personally, I believe the 
public opinion is wrong, because he did much more than renovate. 
True enough, he revived tapestry which had gone out since many years; 
true enough he traced back to its source. But beyond a revival, he could 
achieve a transfiguration. The tapestry of illustrious ages reflected 
anecdotes; with Lurcat, it carries a dream, a kind of annunciation. Lurcat 
invited us to discovery and knowledge: the surrounding world is not only 
a show but a world of which we are part, in which we are immersed: there 
is an exchange from the world to us, and from us to the world. Those 
plant life personages of his, that magic bestiary, he suggests, mean that the 
universe is full of signs and charms, and Lurcat was never more explicit than 
in his "Chant du Monde”. 
It seems to me that Jean Lurcat can be defined as being at the same time an 
energetic man, a poet, a dynamic individual. 
An energetic man, because it required qualities similar to those of Hugo, 
Zola or Claudel, a human vitality, a muscular energy, an exceptional 
strength to build such a work. Moreover it also required an unusual 
tenacity; as in spite of all the encountered obstacles, he kept on going 
forward with fierce stubbornness. 
A poet, because Lurgat loved the real, and at the same time his mind 
perceived a kind of surreal. The real is what is directly perceived by the 
senses. And it is important to stay in contact with the existing things, 
otherwise one could be left with insubstantial material. Lurcat liked 
concrete things: for him touching wool was delectable: and how much he 
enjoyed colours, elementary colours! But at the same time he had a strong 
feeling that substance as such, nature as such, have a message to 
communicate, that a flow goes through them, that the world is filled with 
humming elocutions, with confused suggestions that we must grasp and 
interpret. 
At last, a dynamic individual. One of his texts appears to me essential: 
’I would like’, he wrote, ’I would like an art which would stop flirting with 
despair'. This man I have known, and who was certainly not simple 
minded, had experienced horror. even in his flesh, when, fighting in Verdun, 
he was, as pet his own saying, 'nothing in that hell but a small fragment of 
that 'roaring mud', this marked man, this unbeliever, was however 
someone who refused to give in to despair, someone who, with a 
continuous ardour almost fietce, chose hope and sun. He reminded me of 
those other unbelievers to whom I feel so close, much closer than to those 
Christians by name only. Zola, Jaurés, men, standing as he was, against 
iniquity, oppression, evil. Those hard fighters had an enlightened soul. 
And that is what Zola indicated in the kind of will he has hidden in the