The Completion of Studio Glass

By William Warmus

Published in Design Visions (exhibition catalog) Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth in 1992. Pages 33-34. ISBN 0-7309-3603-1 Robert Bell was the curator of Craft and Design at the Art Gallery of Western Australia who organized the exhibition and catalog.

When I wrote this essay in 1992, I concluded with the idea that “In the aftermath of studio glass, artists are searching to create sculptures that are heir to Goethe's little figure of an emperor, objects with the power to channel the 'fierce, clear sun', via the medium of glass, into forms previously unimagined.” One of those artists, who rose to prominence in the 21st century, is Olafur Eliasson, an artist not connected with studio glass traditions. Eliasson established a studio in Berlin around 1995, and installed The Weather Project, described as "a milestone in contemporary art", at the Tate Modern, London in 2003. It was dominated by a “fierce, clear sun” obscured by an atmosphere. Eliasson also works in glass, and the aesthetics of his treatment of the material are in my opinion heir to Goethe’s little bust of Napoleon.

I am deeply grateful to Robert Bell for his encouragement in writing this essay, which led to several more related ones: “The End?” appeared in Glass Quarterly, Autumn, 1995. It was reprinted in Glashelder, #5, January 1996, and another in an exhibition catalog for the New Jersey Center for the Visual Arts earlier in 1992. “Lost Legacies Salvaged: In the Aftermath of Studio Glass” was published in Glasswork magazine in Japan in 1993, with the support of Koji Matano.

THE COMPLETION OF STUDIO GLASS

William Warmus

If your demon brings you to Weimar again, you shall see that image stand in the fierce, clear sun...

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Stagnation, exhaustion and lack of direction are words applied in the 1990s not only to studio glass, but to all aspects of life in the United States. The end of the cold war has unmasked the decay of moral values within nations on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Artists, acutely aware of the corruption within society, have tried to effect change through their art. In most instances these attempts have failed. Is this the desperate end of an era, or the painfully incomplete birth of something new?

Studio glass has its beginning and end in America where the present situation offers enormous opportunities in two directions. Looking back, we have the possibility of recording the history of studio glass and establishing the key figures. Looking to the future, artists and art critics must react against prevailing studio traditions and artworld conditions if they want to produce successful art - art capable of communicating to a changed audience.

Studio glass is at a pivotal point in its history. The recognition of established masters, including Tom Patti, Dale Chihuly, Richard Marquis, Dan Dailey, Paul Stankard and Marvin Lipofsky, and the increasing attention paid to their work by writers, museums and collectors, indicates the passing of the era of isolated innovation within the field. The criticism levelled against many of these artists - that they do not change - no longer seems valid as time reveals the diversity of work produced during their careers. More significantly, these pioneering figures may now be seen as justified in consolidating their positions within studio glass.

Innovation makes sense in art as a way of moving beyond a meaningless or unproductive tradition. Harvey Littleton and others sought to escape the confines of the glass factory, which by 1962 had become highly commercialized and unresponsive to artists needs,

so that they could make art in the studio. But, once innovation has accomplished its goals, it must become tradition if it is to be preserved in the culture. The old masters of studio glass have become the champions of its traditions. Almost paradoxically, some of the leading glassmakers have returned to the factory traditions of teamwork and efficient organization as the best ways in which to make art in glass. Production has been redeemed as a technique for art.

Most art movements last only a generation and studio glass is no exception. Exceptional is the fact that studio glassmakers often behave as if their world will continue without end. In part this is because there has been no consensus reached about the nature of its history and development. The terrain of studio glass remains uncharted, its circumference and boundaries unmeasured.

The origin of the term 'studio glass' is obscure. Details of the original Harvey Littleton workshop in Toledo, Ohio in 1962, preserved in internal memos at the Toledo Museum of Art, have yet to be published. Although writers regularly interview artists as a way to preserve the history of studio glass, virtually no collateral interviews are conducted, or searches of archives made, to verify the authenticity of the material presented by the initial research. Criticism of glass exists but is sporadic and tends to be published in inaccessible journals. It has yet to become part of the mainstream of discussion in quarters where it really matters, that is among collectors, artists and museums, in part because criticism of serious writers by non-critics has succeeded in inhibiting the growth of healthy dialogue. The Mexican poet Octavio Paz wrote: 'Modern art is modern because it is critical.' Fear of criticism by artists, dealers and collectors is as ill-founded as tear of wearing a safety belt in a car. We need criticism as a corrective to excesses, whether of taste, price, or commercialism.

Once it is recognized that studio glass has become a part of a larger tradition and is no longer new, issues of stagnation and exhaustion appear differently. Studio glass is not stagnant, it is complete. There is an uncanny parallel between the development of studio glass and the emergence of glassblowing in ancient Rome. As Donald Harden noticed in writing for 'The Glass of the Caesars', There must have been some experimenting before glass-blowing became accepted and well understood by glassworkers...but...within twenty or thirty years they proved capable of developing almost all the inflation techniques still present nearly 2000 years later in the workshops of their modern successors. I believe the argument can be made that the period of innovation in studio glass, roughly from 1962 through to the end of the 1980s, was the most significant period in the history of glass since Roman times.

Will another two thousand years be required before the word 'new can again be applied to glassmaking? The confused and incomplete styles of art we see emerging from glass studios today are indicative of experimental, transitional work that in moving away from studio glass traditions has yet to establish its own identity. Some of the best work has simply taken its place in the art world in general, and is unrecognisable as studio glass: the work of Donald Lipski and Christopher Wilmarth comes to mind.

Despite the success of Marcel Duchamp's Large Glass', glass as a material for art has never been comfortable in association with the avant-garde. Studio glass that imitates the look and actions of the avant-garde inevitably appears immature and kitschy or stale and pompous. Perhaps that is why the most promising artists are now exploring and renovating the human figure and the vessel tradition. Maybe the word 'renovation' will come to replace the word 'deconstruction' as a mantra for the 1990s. If that is the case, then the relationship of politics to art may also change, so that the progressive art that mimics the corruption of the political establishment will be exchanged for a new reality where the role of politics is seen as making the world safe for the pursuit of beauty. In such an admittedly utopian scenario, politics will serve art.

It has happened before and glass played a notable role. In the autumn of 1830 Goethe acquired an opalescent glass bust of Napoleon of 'inestimable value. It confirmed for the author his connection to the Emperor: 'Napoleon inherited the French Revolution... and it fell to me to correct the error of the Newtonian doctrine. In the glass Napoleon '...one truly sees the hero victorious on behalf of the theory of color too. ' One hundred and sixty-two years ago, a glass image proved capable of significantly enlisting politics in the service of art and science. In the aftermath of studio glass, artists are searching to create sculptures that are heir to Goethe's little figure of an emperor, objects with the power to channel the 'fierce, clear sun', via the medium of glass, into forms previously unimagined.

NOTE

1. Note: Quotations are from Hans Blumenberg,

'Work on Myth', MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1985, pp. 476-7

William Warmus is an American writer and independent curator in the field of glass.

He curated the exhibition 'New Glass' while at the Corning Museum of Glass.