2001 Matthew Kangas on Robert Willson

Here's an example of writing on glass from 2001. The year was filled with academic views on glass as several writers stepped in to fill the need for a critical voice that had been asked for the previous decade. In 2001 Matthew Kangas was asking for glass artists to move beyond decoration. Kangas and James Yood were writing reviews of glass art from their perspective as accomplished art critics which used that particular language and voice of authority. Robin Rice was working as a critic in residence at the Creative Glass Center of America. These writers integrated glass with art in their writing. Was it because they believed in it's potential as artist's material? Was it because they wanted to document, defend and champion a new art movement? Motives aside, Matthew Kangas' book "Robert Willson Image Maker" is one of the triumphs in glass writing for the year.

2001 Matthew Kangas:

"Willson was one of the first Americans to work on Murano, the island of Venice famous for glassblowing. There he collaborated with maestros believed to be the best in the world. He was preceded by Americans Eugene Berman and Ken Scott in the early 1950s. Later Thomas Sterns, in 1962, and the first representatives of the studio glass movement--Dale Chihuly in 1968 and Richard Marquis in 1969--went to Murano to learn about glass. Unlike Willson, these Americans designed for the Venini glassworks, and their collaboration lasted but a year or so. Richard Marquis was the only one among them to make a substantial body of his own work on Murano.

Other aspects of Willson's work, and his approach to it, strike me as meaningful in the context of glass. I say 'in the context of glass' because it is clear that Willson was attracted to other materials, such as clay, bronze, and watercolors, even though glass was his favorite. I find it interesting that he moved so easily between two and three dimension, developing a lasting relationship with glaass and watercolors[...]

Kangas, M. Foreward to "Robert Willson Image Maker." 2001

[...]Willson took the vaporetto across the lagoon each morning to Ars Murano. From his early days at Toso with two, three, or four pieces completed per year, Willson progressed after 1981 to as many as one or two dozen works each summer. Again, [Luciano] Ravagnan [Ravagnan Gallery on St. Mark's] remembers the warmth of affection toward Willson once he stepped off the boat: 'On Murano, he was such an open man. One day I took the boat with him and it was amazing, everyone greeted him, but everyone!'

'We called him sempreverde,' [Elio] Raffaeli smiled, 'because he'd return each year with all new 'leaves' or ideas for us. He was like a tree, the sempreverede, or evergreen.'[...]

During these years, Willson developed and refined four major themes. The female figure, the landscape, the sphere, and the animal were devised and repeated wit Raffaeli from 1985 to 1997. Selections from each category demonstrate how Willson's final period matured into a ravishing and impressive body of work. Like Matisse, he accomodated and adapted to old age and infirmity. Because he was not required to do the actual construction, Willson was able to participate as actively as he wished during the creation of each work, to oversee refinements, try out new ideas, and, eventually, embark on entirely new projects--his glass-and-steel sculptures, the crowning achievements of his career.

Willson's favored version of the human figure, the big-breasted female, has roots in his Calithump woodcuts of 1934 and in Mesoamerican art, specifically the Tlatilco culture. Willson's glass figures are quite close in size to seated pre-Columbian terra-cottas, partly due to the exigencies of the hot shop (larger work could not fit through the oven doorway) and partly in an attempt to approximate the devotional character of the Mesoamerican religious figures.

[...] Ruins of Early Venus (c. 1985), a combination lower female torso and rocky landscape, can be traced to several early undated drawings and was made in several versions. The open-topped loin forms surround inner organs suggestive of ovaries or a womb (similar to an idea in Creation [1976]) above a blood-red center, common to all versions. Fecundity is the underlying theme of these works, with the clear quality of the glass acting as a water metaphor and underscoring the maritime origins of the goddess Venus. The work was perhaps influenced by the female glass sculptures of Jean Arp that Willson saw at Costantini's La Fucina degli Angeli Gallery.

[...] In his memoir, Willson said, 'I would like to see the use of glass in larger standing sculptures and in relief walls made of assembled parts of heavy glass.' One of the advantages of longevity is the chance to fulfill long-held dreams that require time. Willson's patience must have been enormous. Considering that he began working in Italy at the age of forty-seven, he may have rushed to make up for lost time. By 1986, when he was seventy-four, he devised and supervised construction of his first large-scale 'relief wall,' Fiesta: Everybody Come and Play, acquired by the Texas Military Institute, a private secondary preparatory school in San Antonio. The eight separate panels are set into an 8-foot-high open steel frame. Three of the panels depict stylized male and female figures , while another three show Willson's characteristic psuedo-petroglyph stick figures in jumping and dancing poses. Three glass spheres adorn the panel's tops, like carnival or fiesta decorations. Fiesta: Everybody Come Play sets in motion a series of large-scale constructions that are among the artist most important works.

[...] Door for All the Horses and the People is even more ambitious, a single see-through 'door' with rectangular and square poured panels of glass set into steel frames. (Hank Murta Adam's wall-mounted Map [1996], made of cast glass and sharing Willson's frontal positioning and imagery, is an interesting parallel by a much younger artist.) [...]

[...] Witness to the Mexican Revolution, veteran of World War II, expatriate American in Cold War Italy, and artist influential in reviving the artistic credibility of Murano glass, Robert Willson made art that is accessible, open-ended, and resonant with complex as well as simple meanings. He attempted something few others achieved: creating solid glass sculpture that qualified as art. His rich legacy will be the benchmark for those who come after."

Kangas, M. [excerpt] "Robert Willson Image-Maker" Pace-Wilson, San Antonio. 2001. pp 90.