Sidewall, Celui qui aime ecrit sur les murs [One who loves writes on the walls]

Celui qui aime ecrit sur les murs [One who loves writes on the walls] is one of the few Dada-inspired wallpapers in the Museum collection. The imagery contains numerous birds and foliage mixed in with bits of musical scores, all tilted and overlapping, bearing unusual patterns, and rather nonsensical to say the least. While a design of this nature could turn out to be a disaster in its density, the transparency and stylization of the elements renders the design rather flat and forms a nice overall pattern, with enough voids in the printed matter to allow the eyes some rest. The Museum contains this design is three different colorways.
Dada was an art movement of the avante-garde launched in Zurich in 1916 as a reaction to the horrors of the Great War. Dada rejected logic, and nonsense was one of its prevailing attributes. As strongly emotional as this movement was it was rather short lived and in only a few years was preempted by the Surrealists.
Jean Lurçat was a French painter and designer who is probably best known for the role he played in the revival of the design and weaving of tapestries in the 20th century. The wallpaper design is styled in the same manner as his paintings and tapestries in the openness of the motifs which gives them an almost transparent nature, and in the density of his designs.

Sidewall, Celui qui aime ecrit sur les murs [One who loves writes on the walls]; Designed by Jean Lurçat (French, 1892–1966); France; block printed on paper; Overall: 47.5 x 47 cm (18 11/16 x 18 1/2 in.); Gift of Mrs. Cornelius Sullivan; 1930-21-1-e