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The Château Dufresne, Le Musée de Arts Décoratifs de Montréal is presenting a travelling international loan exhibition of contemporary textiles. One of the first major exhibitions devoted to contemporary textiles created within the last five years, the show will focus exclusively on furnishings for the interior: the home, office, public building, theatre and church. The exhibition will include approximately 110 textiles by some 50 artists from various countries in North and South America and Europe. Among them are such internationally renowned artists as Mariette Rosseau-Vermette of Canada, Olga de Amaral of Columbia, Lia Cook and Cynthia Schira of the United States, Irma Kukkasjarvi and Maisa Tikkanen of Finland, Peter Condu and Ann-Marie Nilsson of Sweden, Geneviève Dupeux of France, and Jette Nevers and Kim Naver of Denmark.

From the early nineteenth century on, textile manufacture like everything else, became increasingly industrialized, and this was reflected in a decrease in artistic quality. Many of the important questions regarding the relationship between art and industry that concern us today first emerged in this early industrial period. The aim of our decision to limit our selection to individual artists creating furnishing fabrics is to allow us to highlight the distinctions between their work and contemporary industrially-produced textiles. Obviously, the main goal of the textile industry is to manufacture quality products as inexpensively as possible, thus obtaining the highest possible profit. The attention given to aesthetic and artistic considerations, while still considerable, apparently fails to satisfy today's consumer.

An important - perhaps the most important - reason for this is the role played by the artist in the production process: in most cases, the artist no longer participates in any aspect of the textiles' manufacture. No longer does exploration and experimentation flourish but this very dissociation of the artist from the total creative process results in a product that lacks spontaneity, vibrancy, originality and