The First Medium: Pǎte de Verre
William Warmus
This essay appeared as the introduction to the book Pâte de Verre : The Material of Time by Max Stewart and Tone Ørvik published in 2022 by Schiffer Publishing Ltd, Atglen. ISBN: 9780764363177
Pate de verre, an opaque paste of glass, is a seemingly rarefied material for art. Transparent glass is everywhere in the modern world, from skyscrapers to fiber optic cables to the screens of our smart phones. Glass as a material for art is frequently used by famous artists like Olafur Eliasson and Ai Weiwei. So how does pate de verre fit into this universe, and why is it so special?
The paradigm for glass is changing. The roles of transparent glass and glassblowing have been center stage for several centuries, pushing aside alternate states and processes, and obscuring the origins and special qualities of materials like pate de verre. This book contains groundbreaking research that is the basis for a corrected history of the medium, telling the story of its development from the ancient world through its resuscitation in the late 19th century, and into the new frontiers that have been explored since the 1970s.
Stewart and Orvik write that “The expanding nature of pate de verre's universe is presented through the experience and inner drive of contemporary artists. The heritage of pate de verre as an explorative and experimental art form lives on with an urgency to tell new stories in a precarious world.”
One way to look at this is that if the dominant forms of glass are transparent and blown and liquid, pate de verre is opaque and compressed and brittle. These characteristics have in the past seemed like confounding flaws. You certainly can not make a cell phone screen from foggy and murky glass paste, or even a window. Or can you? The world itself seems increasingly opaque and brittle, so maybe pate de verre can be a kind of window for art to investigate our 21st century situation. This book explores and expands upon these surprising uses for the material. In the hands of skilled creators, an aloof, brittle substance becomes a familiar, tactile, even aromatic one. Embers of glass spark just beneath the surface, brittleness becomes a tool for investigating decomposition, while imitation is toyed with on the surface. The soul is within while the surface represents its bodily limits. One thinks of a quote from the artist Robert Smithson about a work he created in glass: ‘A stagnant blaze sinks into the glassy map of a non-existent island.” Pate de verre can be messy, not clean and neat like transparent glass. But then, our world is messy.
In 1987, as editor of New Work (now Glass Quarterly) magazine, I published a special edition focusing on pate de verre including an essay by Louvre curator Jean-Luc Olivié about Henri Cros and another about Diana Hobson by scholar Dan Klein. I put a sculpture by James Watkins on the cover, without any text whatsoever to identify the publication or contents. Just the detail image of a book in pate de verre. The absence of words was meant to make the publication seem anonymous, opaque, and a little mysterious. You had to open the “glass” cover to find out what was going on inside. Just like pate de verre. Bringing to mind the words of our authors that “Today there is an increasing awareness of opacity as narrative element.”
The powerful narrative potential of pate de verre was recognized by Henri Cros in the 19th century, for example in his monumental “The Story of Water” from 1892-94, now in Paris at the Museé d’Orsay. Color was central to storytelling in this sculpture, as it was in the ancient world, and pate de verre helped revive and reinvent that role in the 19th century---at a time when color seemed like magic in early photography and the eerily tinted wax sculpture of Mendardo Rosso evoked the “simultaneously fleeting and lasting”—like life itself. All this experimentation with the technology of materials and processes of science was anticipated in the early science fiction of writers like John William Polidori, whose “The Vampyre” (1819) dealt with physical decomposition and the transmission of disease, and Mary Shelley, whose “Frankenstein” (1818) has been described as the “first and most enduring symbol of modern technology.” Like Frankenstein, large pate de verre pieces were, and still are, extraordinary works of technology made of parts “sewn” together, and like the Vampyre, early colored and corroded works in pate de verre have the appearance of the undead. Do not misunderstand: many works in pate de verre are bright and lovely, but the medium has a history of exploring darker shores, and that history seems suited to the present moment.
At a time when transparent and translucent plastic is increasingly confused with glass when used in sculpture, but also accepted as an alternative, why shouldn’t glass be accepted that looks like other materials, such as stone or life itself? Along these lines Stewart and Orvik make a challenging assertion: “This book argues that transparent glass is an arm on the larger pate-de-verre body.” I tend to agree with them. For me, the first great artwork in glass is the throne of Tutankhamen, which contains a glass paste relief of the king and Nefertiti. She leans in to touch the pharaoh, who is a god. The glass is lovely and rich and opaque. From this material and narrative, chosen for the most elevated purpose, descends the history and art of glass.
William Warmus