In this time line I pull quotes to illustrate a thread in popular and scholarly writing and criticism about glass. Here we will see current glass artists defending their art against the accusations and separating themselves from these stereotypes and, hopefully, find out how and where the now-common opinion was born. Fundamentally, the general thesis seems to be born of the question, What Is Art? This question I will leave to others to answer, here I am only documenting the written history of a popular way of thinking and a popular taste.
2007-08 Victoria Josslin:"Since Albrecht Durer depicted himself wearing gloves, artists have claimed that they are gentlemen, not artisans. Museum of Glass adjunct curator Juli Cho Bailer...seems intent on pursuing Durer's argument. In her catalogue essay she insists on dissociating the work in this exhibition from the traditions of craft or American Studio Glass, emphasizing the hands-off nature of the work. She contrasts 'the artistry of glass in earlier centuries [that] stressed technical mastery of the medium by the artisan, a convention that still influences much of glass art-making today' to the more conceptual work of the current exhibition 'since all the glass elements were conceived by the artists, yet fabricated by others.' The press release, too, shields the artists from association with the work for which the museum is best known: 'While the artists of the Studio Glass movement have brought glass as a medium to the forefront of contemporary art,' it reads,'the artists selected for this exhibition have minimal relationship to that movement and tent to use glass differently in their work.'It's amusing to consider a world in which Wim Delvoy's X-rays of copulating couples are fine, but there's something not quite nice about the hot shop....Bailer writes that the work in the exhibition 'suggest[s] passages through which we can see beyond the technical matters that overwhelm our appreciation of glass and begin to observe and understand the deeper issues that concern artists today.'Is there some inherent quality in technical accomplishment that perverts us from addressing deeper issues?...I do have a hard time believing that there's an inevitable disconnect between execution and content, skill and conceptual power....If the artists had brilliantly fabricated their own glass, would the content of the work be diminished?""Immaculate Conception". Josslin, Victoria. Glass Quarterly, Number 109. Winter 2007-08. 2007 Ethan Stern and Davide Salvadore:
Davide Salvadore, "trasparenze ethniche" @ William Traver Gallery, Seattle Oct 5-28, 2007.
Ethan Stern, "texture mapping" @ William Traver Gallery, Tacoma Oct 13-Nov 4, 2007.2007 Benjamin Genocchio:"The history of studio glass is full of surprises. Sometimes the designs are tacky or derivative of modern art styles. But in many instances ideas from modern art are adapted by glass artists, who create something new in the process. Occasionally, if rarely, glass artists are even in the vanguard.
Several strands of modern glass artmaking are surveyed at the Newark Museum in “The Art of Glass from Gallé to Chihuly.” It is a tantalizing show, with 80 glass sculptures by 60 artists from around the world, most of them active in the 20th century. About half the displays belong to the museum, with the rest on loan, as a promised gift, from Dena and Ralph Lowenbach of South Orange.
The museum’s interest in collecting glass art goes back to its founding almost a century ago. In 1913, it acquired its first glass pieces, designed by Otto Prutscher and René Lalique, and it has built on those foundations to create one of the largest collections in the nation. It is great to see some of it on show.
The material here ranges over several decades, beginning with a display of historical pieces from the collection, followed by rooms focusing on modern and experimental contemporary studio art glass.
The historical material is spectacular, handpicked by the museum’s knowledgeable decorative arts curator, Ulysses Grant Dietz. Early-20th-century art glass was influenced by Art Nouveau, the late-19th-century style that favored opulent decoration and often incorporated floral designs. A notable example here is a circa 1900 egg-yolk-colored vase by the French artist Émile Gallé. The acid-incised chrysanthemum patterns are a marvel of elegance.
Besides Gallé, another important early-20th-century glassmaking figure was the American icon Louis Comfort Tiffany. He was famous for experimenting with ways to re-create the iridescent surfaces found on buried ancient glass, but he also pioneered various other techniques that would revolutionize studio glassmaking. A single exhibit featuring some of Tiffany’s characteristic innovations is on view here: an iridescent vase with interior poppy decoration. The piece is ethereal and whimsical, its colors fading and dissolving as you move around it.
Subsequent displays explore the evolution of glass as an artistic medium, with a substantial selection of mid-20th-century Scandinavian studio glass and first-rate examples of French, Venetian and Eastern European glass art. They range from whimsical and fanciful designs to more practical vessels, like the Venetian artist Paulo Venini’s bottle-shaped vase, “Notte” (1958), a much-copied classic with its softly layered colors and smooth sensual surface.
At the show’s core are almost 50 exhibits surveying the diversity of contemporary studio art glass in Europe, Asia and America. They begin with a surprise: Dale Chihuly’s “Two-Part Basket” (1979), a delicate, subtly colored, lightweight object that contrasts radically with his recent, more flamboyant sculptures favoring acidic colors and dramatic installations.
With few exceptions, the contemporary pieces fall into three groupings: sculptural vessels, figurative sculpture and purely abstract forms. To me, the figural sculptures are the most interesting, the artists mixing together uncommon materials and seemingly concerned less with beauty than with expanding the sense of what glass art can be. A few objects look as if they had been rescued from a Dumpster.
Among the pieces that stand out are Shane Fero’s little sculptures of big-hipped dancing women. I was also impressed by Miriam Di Fiore’s landscape “paintings” made of glass shards fused together using multiple firings. The imagery evokes a real sense of place. But most impressive is Richard Jolley’s jewel-colored totem pole made of stacked glass figurines.
Apparently Mr. Jolley’s star is rising, for he is the subject of a national touring retrospective currently at the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton. The show includes different types of artwork, from sculpture in glass to painting, printmaking, drawing and large-scale installations, but it is as a glass artist that Mr. Jolley excels. He should stick to what he knows best.
Animating the retrospective is a marvelous selection of figural totem poles, ranging in date from 1996 to 2001. These sensual, colorful constructions combine organic shapes with figures and portraiture; viewed at certain times of day, they begin to shimmer as sunlight animates their foglike density. They also have a cartoonish quality that makes them seem playful, irreverent and rather fun.
Other works blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture, like a grouping of small, transparent glass vessels and solid forms on which narrative images have been drawn with flowing lines of hot colored glass — a figure walking a dog, children playing in a park. Mr. Jolley draws in molten glass with a tightly controlled hand, providing further evidence that glass artists can bring flair to standard themes and ideas.
“The Art of Glass from Gallé to Chihuly,” at the Newark Museum, 49 Washington Street, Newark, through Aug. 5. Information is at (973) 596-6550 or newarkmuseum.org.
“Richard Jolley: Sculptor of Glass from 1985-Present,” Grounds for Sculpture, 18 Fairgrounds Road, Hamilton, through Sept. 23. Information: (609) 586-0616 or groundsforsculpture.org.
""Art Most Fragile" Gennochio, Benjamin. On "The Art of Glass from Gallé to Chihuly” at The Newark Museum.
The New York Times. July 15, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/15artsnj.html2007 Benjamin Genocchio:
"“Is that glass?” gulped the young girl to the docent taking a group of schoolchildren through “Shattering Glass: New Perspectives,” at the
Katonah Museum of Art. “Yes,” the docent replied, “every single thing you see in this exhibition is glass.”
I know how the schoolgirl felt, for many of the two dozen artworks here are of infinite beauty and wonder. Some of the displays don’t look like glass, and the exhibition is so rich in stylistic diversity that it is hard to believe everything is made of the same material.
Working with glass is not easy, the material imposing all sorts of limitations on artists. Paramount, also, are safety concerns. At the same time, hot liquid glass is intrinsically malleable, able to be coiled, twisted, bent and broken into all-over-the-place shapes.
Inventiveness abounds in “Shattering Glass,” beginning in the foyer, where Sharon Louden has attached hundreds of buzzing, energized squiggles of colored glass to the walls, floor and ceiling. Here the artist is literally drawing in glass. The installation is flush with a sense of joy and pleasure.
There is a fine line in glass art between pleasure and kitsch. I am thinking of those fabulously excessive decorative glass displays you sometimes find in hotel lobbies, the kind of things designed to appeal to audiences visiting from all over the taste map. Such displays are not so much art as interior decoration.
Fortunately, there is no kitsch in this exhibition, for the curators, Neil Watson and Ellen J. Keiter, have been judicious in their selection. In fact, the accent is more on contemporary artists who happen to work from time to time with glass rather than what you might call contemporary glass artists, who tend to be associated with glassmaking as a studio-based craft.
Richard Klein, an established artist, often uses eyeglass lenses to make sculptures. Showing here is “Transparency” (2007), a wall-mounted construction made out of found ashtrays and hundreds of recycled eyeglass lenses. The varying shapes and magnification of each of the pieces of glass refract light, much as a stained-glass window does. The work can, however, be somewhat dizzying to look at.
Josiah McElheny is another well-known contemporary artist who works with glass. He was trained as a studio glassmaker but has forged a reputation for himself in the New York contemporary art world. On display here is his “Modernity Circa 1962, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely” (2004), consisting of eight hand-blown mirrored glass vessels inside a mirrored cabinet. The reflective environment makes it seem as if hundreds of vessels were on display.
Several other artists work with optical illusions. One is Thérèse Lahaie, who makes kinetic wall sculptures consisting of a rotating motor that flutters a piece of fabric behind a mottled, vividly lighted sheet of tinted glass. The combination of motor, glass and light creates the illusion of waves ebbing and flowing like the ocean tide. This is probably not the most complex or conceptual work in the exhibition, but the visual effects are beautiful, even hypnotic.
The fragility of glass — something we take for granted — is never really made apparent in this show, except in Beth Lipman’s “Still Life With Metal Pitcher” (2007), an eye-catching display of 400 hand-blown glass vessels on a dining table. There is no metal pitcher here, or not one that I could find, but it doesn’t really matter because this work is all about visual delight. It is a densely packed optical extravaganza modeled after Dutch still lifes.
A willingness to experiment with placement is what distinguishes this show from other, run-of-the-mill glass exhibitions, which tend to treat the art as a precious object. There are no barriers to viewing here, with artworks mostly installed directly on the walls or floor. The curators have allowed the displays to spill out of the galleries into the public areas, where you will find, among other works, Arlene Shechet’s lengths of ice-blue cast crystal rope lying along the walls and floor.
Another artwork, by Bill FitzGibbons, is installed in the museum’s two street-front windows. It consists of computer-activated LED screens that emit a wildly fluctuating colored light show, the colors morphing and mixing together. Sometimes the light even dances between the windows, as if in conversation — a playful invitation to anyone passing by.
“Shattering Glass: New Perspectives,” Katonah Museum of Art, Route 22 at Jay Street, through Feb. 24. Information: (914) 232-9555 or katonahmuseum.org.
"Genocchio, Benjamin. "Really? It’s All Made of Glass?" December 30, 2007. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/30artswe.html Topic: "Shattering Glass: New Perspectives,” Katonah Museum of Art. Accessed March 21, 2009.
2007 Author Unknown:
"Charlotte, NC - On December 15, 2007, internationally known studio glass artist Daniel Clayman will debut an entirely new body of work in White Light: Glass Compositions by Daniel Clayman at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design. The exhibition will feature seven original glass works made exclusively for this presentation. On exhibition December 15, 2007 through May 25, 2008. “Art glass” has become a familiar household term and is characterized by color and glitz. In contrast Clayman’s work exercises the most severe form of restraint. He creates Minimalist forms which explore both the subtlety and the drama of form and movement, and light and shadow. By paring down shapes to their absolute essence, he creates an aesthetic that is defined by spare elegance. His sculptures often use geometric forms such as cubes, cones, planes and triangles. White Light: Glass Compositions by Daniel Clayman takes Clayman’s geometric forms and erases color and texture and adds light.
The piece Circular Object 1 resulted in a turning point away from his signature glass and bronze combinations to create monumental forms in a single medium.
“By taking away all the color and precious qualities of glass we are forced to look at the form for what it is,” Clayman says. “In 2004, I completed Circular Object 1. It greatly satisfied me with its visual simplicity.”
White Light displays Clayman’s newest body of work, white large-scale forms, full of subtle melt and flow marks, combined with dramatic lighting to create formal arrangements of line and shadow. His work has been described as spare, elegant, evocative and understated.
As with other internationally renowned glass artists such as Ben Tré and Dale Chihuly, Clayman recognized the need to work “big.” His pieces have gained size in recent exhibitions and now appear in larger-than-life scale. A computer-modeling program entitled “Rhino” allows a scanned drawing to be manipulated into any size the artist desires, making it easier to contemplate the finished product.
Clayman fell in love with the effects of lighting while working as a lighting designer for numerous theater and dance productions. He then trained as a studio glass artist in various private studios and schools across America. Since receiving his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1986, Clayman has pursued the art of cire perdue or “lost wax” casting, creating unique sculptures in glass and bronze. From the opaque to the translucent, these materials alternately serve as sheathes and the sheathed; containers and the contained. Beginning in the mid-1980s, he developed a series of organic pod forms which explored the themes of protective nests and enclosures. This exploration evolved into studies of form and movement—channeled forms in particular. In White Light, we see the seeds of his mature style, defined by its increasing refinement of form.
Clayman has sculptures in the permanent collections of leading craft museums, including the American Craft Museum in New York City, the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, N.Y., and the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Accompanying the exhibition will be a catalogue with an essay by Janet Koplos, senior editor of Art in America, author and noted art critic."White Light~ Glass Compositions by Daniel Clayman".
Author Unknown. Accessed April 16, 2009. Art Knowledge News. Sponsored by The ArtAppreciation Foundation.
http://www.artknowledgenews.com/Daniel_Clayman.html
2007 Lara Day:
"In 1996, two academics from the school of Art & Design at the U.K.'s University of Wolverhampton went to China to forge links with educational institutions. While they were there, they fell into a discussion with Shanghai University Professor Wang Dawei about glass art — one of the key subjects offered at Wolverhampton. It quickly emerged that the subject was not taught at all in China's fine-art institutions, even though the country produced a staggering 80% of the world's processed glass. Wang resolved to do something about it, and in 2000 Shanghai University's glass studio was launched. It was headed by Zhuang Xiaowei, who had just returned from a two-year M.A. at Wolverhampton. That same year, another professor, Wang Jianzhong, set up undergraduate and graduate glass programs at Beijing's Tsinghua University, with Wolverhampton's assistance. Together, these two courses and their graduates formed the roots of Chinese contemporary glass art. It is starting to flower today as one of the most exciting genres in the world's fastest-growing arts scene.
Admittedly, China's new wave of glass artists toil far below the stratospheric heights attained by the country's painters, who have witnessed an estimated eightfold increase in the market for their works during the past two years. But the glass artists are every bit as bold and experimental, and equally capable of referencing international trends while retaining distinctly Chinese characteristics. "Our traditions are different from those in other parts of the world," says Beijing-based artist Guan Donghai, referring to the Chinese preference for casting glass instead of blowing it. "They give our glass a typical Chinese style." This is visible in Guan's own work, where elegant kiln-cast sculptures recall the primal forms of William Morris but represent specifically Chinese objects such as swords and ancient city gates. The meditative works of Zhuang Xiaowei — the Shanghai pioneer — explore space and form in the manner of Barbara Hepworth or Henry Moore, but they are invariably infused with Chinese symbolism: a transparent cast-glass flute imbued with royal-blue pâte de verre forms a beautiful allusion to China's traditions in ink, for instance. Zhuang's former student Wang Qin also draws on calligraphy, creating three-dimensional "brush strokes" in glass.
While almost every Chinese dynasty has produced glass work — usually vases or bowls — the creations of today's glass artists bear little relation to either the functional or the merely ornamental pieces of yore. "People often confuse glass with craft, but you just have to look at a work to realize the difference," says Vanessa Taub, a Hong Kong–based art dealer and proponent of Chinese glass sculpture. She points to a piece by Zhuang — a sensual, almost abstract female nude emerging from the luminous, semitranslucent matter. "You can't confuse that with a glass or a bottle." There's no mistaking a bargain, either. Chinese glass art is still eminently affordable. A major piece by an up-and-coming glass artist goes for as little as $2,500. Zhuang sells his smaller pieces from about $10,000, while Guan's sculptures start from $5,000.
Zhuang reckons it's only a matter of a few years before China becomes a leading player in the field. Toward that end, a major expansion is taking place in the subject's teaching, with existing undergraduate and graduate studio-glass programs being supplemented by new courses in cities including Hangzhou, Nanjing, Xi'an and Guangzhou. An ambitious new glass-art museum is also being planned for Shanghai, in time for the city's 2010 World Expo.
All the more reason for would-be collectors to get acquainted with the art form, and quickly. "To collect a piece, one must first enjoy it," says Zhuang. "The appreciation is only a question of time." But not much time. If previous experience of contemporary Chinese art has taught anything about these new works in glass, it's this: buy now."
Day, L. "Raise Your Glasses". TIME magazine. Thursday, August 30, 2007. Accessed April 18, 2009. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1657581,00.html
