Put a spell on you

Many of the mediums from which art is made have been around for a long time. People have been painting on walls, for example, for about 40,000 years. Similarly, figures have been fashioned out of stone and metal for millennia, and still are. But if there is one ancient medium you might think was now definitely over and out, it would be tapestry.

But no! In this era of artificial intelligence and omniscient Google, the ancient practice of painstakingly twining coloured wool into pictures is undergoing an unexpected revival. The latest contemporary artist to give tapestry a go is Chris Ofili. His exhibition Weaving Magic at the National Gallery gives some clues as to why he — and other figures such as Grayson Perry, Marc Quinn and Craigie Horsfield — find it appealing.

Nearly 20 years ago there was a brouhaha when one of Ofili’s works was denounced by the then mayor of New York. The offence was that the painting in question contained elephant dung — balls of it — plastered on to a picture of the Madonna and supporting it like rather rough-hewn balusters.

Actually, as soon became clear, Ofili’s more recent art isn’t shocking or scandalous at all. Its transgressions are quite the reverse: mainly being altogether more charming than is normally the avant-garde way. Sometimes it verges on decorative, long a dirty word in the art world (though quite a positive one outside it). At the National Gallery, the tapestry is complemented by a monochrome frieze of figures the artist has painted on the walls of the gallery, making the whole room an integrated interior — wall-hanging plus mural — which Pope Leo X would have immediately understood.

His new tapestry, a triptych entitled ‘The Caged Bird’s Song’, is a sensuously gorgeous thing, full of curvilinear, twisting forms and sumptuous colour harmonies blended softly together: gold and turquoise in the right wing of the piece, purple and bluish green on the left.