Had my intention been to seek the world’s favour,
I should surely have adorned myself with borrowed beauties
Montaigne ^[1]

When the ageless Louis Kahn questioned the brick as to what it would like to be, the red object, unmoved by the disgruntled architect’s replicas, invariably told him the same thing: it aspired to become an arch. Arte Povera also declared that the artist was perhaps not this relentless figure who handles the world as they see fit, but a mere conduit for the manifestation of the intrinsic desires of the materials they work with. If all that there is has an unchangeable core, it is more worthwhile to submit to the will of the objects than to counterfeit in marble what can only be rendered in wood, or to use brick in a structure befitting concrete – anyone who blurs essences would only produce mangled simulacra of what could have been. The figure most associated with such formalist purity is perhaps Clement Greenberg, pioneer of Abstract Expressionism, who advocated that each artistic genre should search for its innate qualities – the focus of painting would be the use of paint on a flat canvas, detached from any pictorial illusionism that would alienate it from its actual substance. ‘The history of avant-garde painting’, he said, ‘is the gradual submission to the resistance of its medium’^[2].

What, then, is the essence of tapestry? If art is the worship of excess, the repeated sophistication of some utilitarian practice until it surpasses its convenience and finds meaning only in its own existence, then tapestry can be seen as the greatest of the arts, as almost no activity has been as compelling to us as the weaving of threads for fishing, binding and dressing. Yet its slow and repetitive nature has at times been eclipsed by artistic modernity, which is more prone to bursts of irreverence, endless experimentation, perceptual immediacy and gestural spontaneity – were such innovations the outcome of the anxious nature of modern society which, fascinated by the speed of its purported progress, was powerless to preserve the righteous stillness fostered by tapestry practice, which is more medieval as it comes from a sense of divine protection?

Nevertheless, its rich feel, handmade aspect and spatial versatility have always found some noble supporters, such as Anni Albers and Gunta Stölzl – William Morris exalted it, not only for its collective and hands-on character (which prompted the brilliant Gothic craftsmanship), but also for its flexibility, whose almost garment-like expansion brought into play the rigidity of bourgeois life. A formalist too, he was wary of textile workshops that attempted to mimic the effects of painting, such as Aubusson and Gobelins, betraying the essence of tapestry, whose eternal weaving of fibres and motifs had first been promoted in the Persian East. While the European pictorial tradition had become mainly naturalistic, he opted to adopt the millefleur method, a perfect harmony between the Western realist drive and the woven spirit of tapestry.

By first displaying tapestries made as copies of paintings, and then showing works whose plastic elements are intrinsic to the tapestry itself, Não Vá o Diablo Tecê-las! combines and expands on these tensions. The first floor features tapestries from the well-known Manufactura de Portalegre alongside the Portuguese modernist paintings that served as their models. Whilst the Western intellectual tradition is structured around opposites, the model/copy dynamic is one of the most enduring in our psychic landscape. This idealistic way of thinking tends to perceive in each thing the power of utter purity, naturally forming a metaphysical ladder that prioritises that which has a deeper content of itself. However, if we reject this convention of reflections dividing everything into genuine and imperfect – arboreal, as Deleuze would say – for the sake of rhizomatic knowledge, i.e., free of hierarchies, understanding all things only in reference to themselves, with their unique and unparalleled qualities, then one can comprehend these tapestries not as copies of originals, but as originals that offer us properties denied to paintings – then, that which was previously considered imperfect becomes high-quality, in a plastic subversion of the models, allowing new identities to sprout from the difference.

The artist is also the interpreter, and this is where the plastic range of painting, instead of being replicated in the tapestry, is translated into other pictorial options. After all, how could the thread contain the qualities of the paint itself? How could the weaver stitch together its chromatic sheen and sedimentary thickness, or the swiftness of the brush? This unavoidable mismatch is precisely the avenue to the power behind transforming works such as Graça Morais’ Sagrado e Profano II into a grainy panel with a fluffy texture, contrary to the lightness of the acrylic/pastel and holding a distinct weight, radiance and warmth from the original. This is because the carpet’s colour is not reflected as it is in painting, which builds up fine layers on the surface, but is born from the underlying fibre interweaving, preserving each colour in a sort of linear micro-pointillism (fibrism?) that grants it a more intimate and immanent effect – no wonder medieval theologians worshipped the purported light that only tapestries retain. This structural logic ultimately alters the tonal nuances in painting: the nebulous motions in the dark background of Graça Morais’s painting acquire a prominent sharpness in tapestry, which, by maintaining the autonomy of each stitch, draws the line between the edges and endows all the tones with the same pictorial relevance.

An exciting curatorial gesture is also to reveal to the viewer both the checkered panel, the first moment in transcribing the painting where its contours are outlined and its colours mapped (and whose painstaking nature stands in contrast to the pace of the brushstrokes), as well as the back of the tapestry, providing yet another plastic layer to our perceptive possibilities. Or was it not modernity itself that revered the undeniable importance of the artistic process and the use of all the plastic features of each medium? I can almost picture a second, absurd exhibition, where the painter would render in paint the tapestry formerly based on her work, finally able to check the differences between the initial and final paintings, in this endless round of innovative copies and recycled models that challenge notions of authorship.

We can trace the history of modern art as a gradual interest in matter that finally transforms Rembrandt’s brushstrokes into the cult of paint in Abstract Expressionism. On the second floor, Nova Tapeçaria ponders the formal development where Persian geometric schemes became Morris’s millefleur, before finally adopting the pure concreteness of its own medium. While the lower floor reveals all the potential of a dialogue between genres which paradoxically clarifies everything authentic to tapestry, this is where the natural endpoint of promoting autonomous plastic experimentalism is found – although certain pieces use methods such as collage and assemblage, they still highlight the importance of textile plasticity: Altina Martins reveals the supposed horn of the mysterious Narval, but the bright thread sewing them together is the most important aspect of the piece. These works acquire a more down-to-earth look – the weight and tension between the fibres, the harsh nature of their scars, the flexibility of the thread and its sculptural quality. Margarida Reis takes the methodical nature of tapestry to the next level in a work that features an obsessive attention to detail in every stitch, its weave enhanced not only by the open knots but also by using golden fibres – other artists, such as Gisella Santi, use metal wefts and animal hair, vegetable fibres and fishing nets, broadening the material range of their practices.

It is worth considering that, in some ways, the lower floor poses more current questions than the upper one, as notions such as artifice and simulacra are contemporary, whilst the promotion of pictorial purism was more common in the first half of the last century. The greatest intention of the show is perhaps to bring into tension the different flavours available to contemporary textile practice, which only appear to be opposites from above. Regardless of whether the work is a copy or a model: all that is there is exactly the same, yet born elsewhere, and the genuine is nothing more than an interpretative approach. Both the handmade and the avant-garde end up in the same tabernacle of a revolting cult of all truth expressed through borrowed threads, no less tautological than others.

Não vá o diabo tecê-las!, curated by Rita Maia Gomes, is at Galeria Torreão Nascente, Cordoaria Nacional, until January 12, 2025.

^[1] Montaigne (2019). Essays. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, p. 39.
^[2] Greenberg, Clement. Chilvers, Ian. A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 254.