This essay was written for the 2019 Glasstress catalog, published by Fondazione Berengo

In Secession

by William Warmus

Life is random, and yet there is fate. Tim Tate and I met on a bus in Chicago in the autumn of 2010, during a tour of private art collections. We sat together, and soon learned that we shared certain frustrations with the situation of studio glass in the 21st century—frustrations that had been bothering Adriano Berengo since at least 1989, resulting in his first Glasstress exhibition in 2009.  I had written about the “End” or rather “Completion” of the studio glass project in the early 1990s, and Tim firmly believed that in order for all the wonderful contributions of studio glass to the fine art aesthetic to survive and prosper, they needed to migrate until they were firmly embedded in the world of fine art. Along these lines, he had been showing primarily at fine art galleries and expos. The conversation we began that day continues into 2019, with almost daily phone calls where we talk, primarily, about ideas. We now turn to Berengo Studios when we need to document the most advanced outposts of fine art using glass.

Tim is a creature of action, and for our observations to mean anything he felt we had to do something in addition to just talk. We turned to social media, and in 2012 created a Facebook page dedicated to exploring and documenting the world after studio glass. But what to call our group? Tim and I both have a subversive side, and recalling the art movements of Alfred Steiglitz’s Photo-Secession and the Vienna Secession of Gustav Klimt, we decided to secede from studio glass and call our group Glass Secessionism.  We firmly believed that in order for glass as a medium for art to have a fresh start, it had to distance itself from its origins in the movement that began in 1962. There is a subtle point here that must not be overlooked: we both are deeply aware of the rich history of studio glass (I have written books about many of the leading figures) and have infinite respect for the achievement of Harvey Littleton and his students. And yet the chicks must eventually learn to fly and leave the nest. We simply chose to fly farther away than our peers.

Why? Because of our tremendous love for glass and a desire to see it used and exhibited at the very highest levels of the art world. Looking around, we realized that the only way for us to accomplish our goal was to turn our backs on our beloved studio glass for a few years (that stretched into almost a decade!) in order to better focus on the present. I used a special phrase when I said that we needed to “forget all that” which was derived from the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, who wrote that “What forgetting awakens at this crossroads is...the problematical character of the representation of the past, namely, memory's lack of reliability. Forgetting is the challenge par excellence put to memory’s aim of reliability.” So not only were we seceding, we were challenging the reliability of our community’s memory of what had happened during the classic era of studio glass, circa 1962-2010. Most importantly, we were saying that in order to live firmly in the present during an era critical to the progress of glass as a medium for art, we had to forget the past, not get bogged down by the endless arguments our peers were having about who made what when. And in the process, we surprised ourselves when we learned to love glass all over again, but in new and unexpected ways.

It would have been lonely out there for us were it not for Adriano Berengo in Venice, who had a similar view of the world and had already been working since 1989 on encouraging established contemporary artists to use glass as a medium, a venture which led to the first Glasstress exhibition in 2009. While our project is all about documenting and discussing the transition beyond classical studio glass, his is about bringing artists with elevated fine art reputations, people like Ai Weiwei and Fred Wilson and Kiki Smith, into the glass world. We are like two sides of the same coin, and in 2019 we joined together for the first time when Adriano exhibited the work of Tim Tate in the tenth anniversary Glasstress exhibition, and asked me to write this essay.

Since the formation of our Glass Secessionism (GS) group on Facebook, we have attracted over 4000 members [over 10,000 by 2025] from half the world’s countries and published over 1 million words of dialog; the beating heart of GS is our archive of thousands of images representing the cutting edge of 21st century glass. Quite a lot of the dialog has been about artists and issues represented in Glasstress exhibitions.

Positive articles soon appeared in American Craft and other publications. We even survived a flaming, complete with death threats, in 2014 that almost forced us to take down our by then beloved Facebook page. Death threats about art theory? Only in America. We were attacked for not knowing the history of studio glass, and for having vain and flip and shallow conversations. This was especially mystifying for us, as we had an extremely detailed chronological bibliography of studio glass that we always referenced when discussing the need to forget that history, and I had developed a theory of “Reticulate Aesthetics” (published in American Craft magazine and the Utne Reader and widely available on the internet) that was meant as a theoretical basis for Glass Secessionism.

 And we had many great and deeply thoughtful dialogs, which our detractors apparently failed to read. We actively moderate these discussions, keeping them lively, intellectually stimulating, and free of rancor.  Here is a very brief summary of a few of our favorite conversations from the Facebook group: the dates will help anyone interested to find the archived dialogs on our Facebook pages.

“Spirituality” June 13, 2014 (A pilgrimage. A moment of epiphany)

“Against Glass Architecture: How GS can have an impact on 21st century architecture” July 4, 2014

 “The consciousness of the material: focus on a medium for meaning.”  February 17, 2015: 139 comments.

“Gerhard Richter’s windows in a cathedral setting” June 14, 2014 Brilliantly led by our co-moderator, Patrick Blythe.

“Newman’s Stations of the Cross.”  October 9, 2014:  150 comments. 

“Olafur Eliasson, his glass book, and its significance. Is he the most important glass artist of 21st century?” 20 November 12, 2018: 20 comments.

“Is there a Middle Aesthetic?” March 4, 2014 and August 24 ,2019:

Over 250 comments

“Jeff Koons and his glass Kama Sutra series” January 27, 2015 : 66 comments.

“Social media as a primary way to see work. Is this a loss or gain? Basically a gain. No gatekeepers.” February 23, 2015

“A question of artists rights: the Gay Cake Case.” September 17, 2017: 135 posts.

“Is it time for a name change for GS? 1 million words written. Do we need to have this name change?” July 8, 2015:  144 comments.

“Against Glass Secessionism.” June 2, 2014:  250 comments.

“Plastic is glass” December 7th 2016: 84 comments, followed by a post by co-moderator Patrick Blythe: “Is plastic the future of GS?” with 114 comments.

“Is GS is a place where female artists thrive?” January 3, 2016 :99 comments.  Co-moderator Liz Renee.

2014 was a tumultuous year for GS as we recovered from flaming attacks on Facebook and embarked upon what has become our most important special project. We had been hearing from dealers and curators and collectors, including those in media other than glass, that glass was anathema to fine arts dealers and that they were avoiding showing it at major expos such as Art Basel. We decided to find out for ourselves. We went to Art Basel in Miami in December of 2014, and attended most of the other art expos, such as Art Miami, Scope, Untitled, and Aqua, held at the same time.

We were prepared to see little glass. So we were astonished when, turning a corner at Art Basel, we saw an extraordinary glass cube, one meter on a side, by Ai Weiwei. At the same show we saw absolutely major works in glass by Roni Horn (a massive solid cast cylinder of pale lavender glass that was chest height) as well as by Gerhard Richter and Olafur Eliasson. We have attended every Art Basel and associated show over the last five years, and every year we see fabulous works in glass by famous and emerging fine artists including Anri Sala, Andrea Galvani, Idris Khan, Kohei Nawa, David Hockney, Ann Veronica Janssens, Dustin Yellen and Yoko Ono. These artists were for the most part not trained in the studio glass traditions, but they owe their ability to work in glass to the accomplishments of Harvey Littleton and his offspring in making the medium accessible to artists everywhere, and in many cases to the efforts of Adriano Berengo and his Glasstress project, which has introduced so many leading artists to the opportunities available when they use glass as a medium for fine art. So in a sense, Ai Weiwei and Olafur Eliasson and the rest ARE studio glass artists, in the literal sense that they make use of glass in their own studios or in Berengo Studios. On our Facebook pages we have published hundreds of images of the works we documented by these artists, and have lectured widely about our results.

I am convinced that had we not seceded from studio glass and “forgotten” all about it, we would never have established our Facebook page, made literally thousands of new friends (one art professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, met on Facebook, even invited me to lecture and judge an art show in China, and I am returning again later this year to repeat the process), and we might never have embarked upon our Art Basel project. Ultimately, after almost a decade, we see this as our ongoing mission: To bring together glass artists, curators, dealers and collectors from around the world; to encourage Fine Art galleries to add work made in glass to their artist stables, one artist at a time; to document and to identify the glass art that has already bridged the gap between all these various worlds, and to help everyone make sense of the ever changing, ever fascinating terrain of glass as a medium for high art. In this ongoing project, Glasstress has been an inspiration and a fellow comrade.

As in the beginning, so in the end. For Tim and I personally, GS has always been about the love of art, and the desire to see as much as possible, enjoy its ecstasies, and talk about it intelligently. The contemporary art world, with its reliance on social media and vast art expositions, can be messy as hell. Failure waits at every exit door to the expo halls. Yet we forge on. It feels fitting that Tim and I met on a bus all those years ago: we began a journey when we began that first conversation in 2010. Now, almost ten years later, we’re still talking. We’re still moving forward: desire drives us both. Glass Secessionism is a movement, and it’s not slowing down.

William Warmus

William Warmus is a Fellow and past curator at the Corning Museum of Glass. The New York Times described him as a Stylemaker because the exhibitions he has curated have influenced taste. He is the author or coauthor of 20 books, and is curating an exhibition with Tina Oldknow that looks at the Venetian influences on American glass, to open at the Stanze del Vetro in Venice in March, 2020.