Glass comes of age in Tucson in 1983
The Quality of Sculptural Glass
By William Warmus
"Sculptural Glass" held at the Tucson Museum of Art in 1983 marked a major turning point in studio glass as it focused primarily on installations and brought together a very diverse group of artists. I wrote the principle essay for the catalog.
As a young curator in the 1970s and 1980s, I was very interested in the emergence of women as a force in the medium, as glass had been almost 100 percent the domain of men for maybe 3500 years. Today, I see it through the lens of my theory of reticulate aesthetics: it was the ecosystem finally, at long last, coming into balance.
Looking at the list of selected artists, there were 19 total, and 10 were women in the catalog. (Several other artists were included in an earlier catalog detailing the proposals for the project). What made the show so special is that many of the works were large scale installations, for example Flo Perkins exquiste cactus garden and Mary Shaffer's shining "Path." It was a "coming of age" exhibition.
There were four panelists who made the selection of work: William Warmus, Penelope Hunter-Stiebel (curator of 20th century art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), Paul Smith, and Eason Eige—under some influence from the museum staff of course.
The Quality of Sculptural Glass
By William Warmus
What is "sculptural" glass? Artistic works may be described as "sculptural" if they appear to model or fill space in three dimensions; from this definition, many Renaissance paintings are sculptural. Glass, with its inherent properties of transparency and reflectivity, inevitably extends space. But is glass therefore inevitably sculptural? The Tucson exhibition helps us to consider this question.
Clement Greenberg describes the properties of a sculptural style which is perhaps closest to the work we see today in glass:
“The new construction-sculpture points back, almost insistently, to its origins in Cubist painting: by its linearism and linear intricacies, by its openness and transparency and weightlessness, and by its preoccupation with surface as skin alone, which it expresses in blade or sheet-like forms. Space is there to be shaped, divided, enclosed, but not to be filled.
The new sculpture tends to abandon stone, bronze and clay for industrial materials like iron, steel, alloys, glass, plastics, celluloid, etc., etc., which are worked with the blacksmith's, the welder's and even the carpenter's tools. Uniformity of material and color is no longer required, and applied color is sanctioned. The distinction between carving and modeling becomes irrelevant: a work or its parts can be cast, wrought, cut or simply put together; it is not so much sculptured as constructed, built, assembled, arranged. From all this the medium has acquired a new flexibility in which I now see sculpture's chance to attain an even wider range of expression than painting. (Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture, p. 142).”
Many works in "Sculptural Glass" conform to this outline, as a brief look at one of the most ambitious-Therman Statom's (plate 3)—reveals. What we see is the construction of a spiraling wall from large sheets of plate glass siliconed together.
Color in patches is applied to the glass and to the wall of the museum. Also, several models a toolbox, a chair, a house, a sort of aquarium or water tank-have been constructed in glass. This sculpture is both thematic and metaphorical: it evokes a shelter, but it is also somewhat frightening because we know glass is fragile, brittle, sharp. Do you really want to sit in that chair in the center?
But what really intrigues are the purely sculptural elements. How does Statom model space? Mostly through color. He uses paint primarily to draw attention to space or to indicate the structure of his work. For example, brush strokes applied to the walls surrounding the sculpture seem particularly important for their interaction with the painted glass surfaces as the eye moves around the installation.
Statom's colors are usually primaries (I especially remember the reds and yellows), at times loaded with white. One of his innovations is the punctuation of the glass surface here and there with "hard-edge" Pac-Man-like circles of strong color which sometimes extend into space beyond the edges of glass. These unexpected elements seem almost to swallow the messy patches of color while simultaneously acting as anchors in the midst of so much action. Statom's "performance" has many elements of construction-sculpture: use of an industrial material, applied color, arrangement, blade and sheet-like forms.
Several works explore barriers or mark pathways through space. Steven Maslach (plate 24) draws attention to the entire central court of the TucsonMuseum of Art with a "Line of Glass" seemingly unaffected by gravity, as unsubstantial as a ray of laser light. In contrast, the "Tightrope" sags under its own weight while simultaneously defying the brittle properties we associate with glass but as a tightrope it has a human scale. Benjamin Kaiser's work is a 'Barrier" (plate 22) that tunnels down into the gallery, but also may be interpreted as a horizontal fence seen in perspective. This latter view is especially evident in his diagram for the project. Light is trapped and controlled by the edges of greenish glass which is itself restricted within the wire mesh. Of course, the angle at which the piece approaches the floor echos the ramp of the building.
In Mary Shaffer's "Path," (plate 17) the scallops of glass, slumped semi-circular sheets, lead us toward the wall of the building. We want to walk on this path, but perhaps our experiences with mirrors, which also invite us into their space, stop us. One is impressed by the last few graceful arcs near the wall, compressed so that they bend backwards, able to defy gravity because of support by all the sheets up front. The edges of the glass formed a drawing: repetitive, stroboscopic, a study in curves and 90° angles.
A striped carpet suggesting those found in airports leads us into Margie Jervis-Susie Krasnican's "Interior Landscape with Red Vases" (plates 6 & 7). While Malach, Kaiser, and Shaffer present fragile illusions that we can investigate only with eyes and mind, these two artists invite us inside their work-and we go! No way to harm this carpet. The illusion of three dimensions, so carefully constructed and so well sited within the Museum, is meant to be erased once we penetrate the space. Those vases are flat, the shelf is vertical, and the shadows are painted, or rather enameled. But the medium is glass glass imitating itself, maybe glass as art imitating glass as functional.
One characteristic that identifies many of the artists in this exhibition is evident in the use of repetitive components. It is there in Kehlmann's "14 stations," Mark McDonnell's "Monument," Anthony Corradetti's glass tiles (plate 20), the flags of Valerie Arber, bones of Michael Aschenbrenner, and cacti of Flo Perkins as well as the threads of Mary Ann Toots Zynsky. One might propose that it is inherent in the use of the medium, which favors construction of large works from smaller, discrete cells. We are also reminded of the history of the medium's use in mass production. One of the most interesting formal characteristics of repetition is that an object can achieve unity on two distinct levels: as a component and as an overall work-like the cells in a body. Aschenbrenner's work is a good example of this.
Traditions continue to inspire new work. Revivals of historically important techniques are evident in Doug Anderson's Pate de verre pieces, which were previously revived in the 1890s in France, and in Michael Glancy's work, which reminds one of Marinot's experiments with deep surface erosion in the 1920s-1930s.
One might also include Paul Seide (plate 27) and Michael Cohn here; the high tech neon constructions and elegant "Space Cups" would be at home in the science fiction of the 1950s and sixties. And certainly Linda MacNeil's and Dan Dailey's furniture contain Art Deco elements (plates 8 & 9).
There is no intent to be pejorative in grouping these works as "Revivials." Revivialism, as David McFadden showed us at the Glass Art Society Conference in Tucson in March, can be original and interesting. Isn't it refreshing to think that artists can preserve old ideas and realign them to appeal to current tastes?
Museums preserve the past and reconstruct it through laborious scholarship, stopping short of fanciful interpretation. But the artist has no such restrictions, and so extends the results of scholarly research into the imaginary and artistic. Mark McDonnell's "Monument to the Glaserne Kette" (plates 10 & 11) is a good example of what I mean. As he says: "It is this wonderful structure and the ideas of the Glaserne Kette that I wish to salute!"
Similarly, the work of Flo Perkins (plate 12) is a return to Naturalism-and what a return! It's like revising Michelangelo by using sugar cubes and twine, and "getting it all to happen." Instead, Perkins uses glass and silicone to mimic desert scenes. The glass/silicone really can't copy the skin, needles, and flowers of cacti because it's too shiny, or too thick, or too clear. But Perkins makes us think the desert should look this way. After all, shouldn't a cactus be shiny like a mirror to reflect the heat? And might the other cacti not envy the clear ones, that look so cool? In some work she even models her shapes by modulating the color of the siliconed spines an eccentric but effective approach to nature.
The widely touted style of the 1982-1983 season in the art world, Neo-Expressionism, also falls under the general heading of Revivalism. It is a curious blend of German Expressionism (vintage 1905-1919) and New Wave or Punk styles with their roots partly in Art Deco, and New York subway grafitti, Post-Modernism is at times a confused companion, and certainly itself a revival style. Several works in Tucson echo this influence: Jay Musler's politically sensitive bowls, Narcissus Quagliata's tortured hands (plate 15), and Dailey's wall piece. Several of these relate to the work of New York grafitti artists such as Keith Haring. But Dailey's "Control" is not in the least uptight as is so much of Neo-Expressionism: the white dog has a big, broad smile. He's a Cool Cat. Zynsky and Aschenbrenner affirm their interest in Neo-Expressionism, but like Dailey have produced pieces with an individual character that transcends the style.
Mary Ann Toots Zynsky's work is enigmatic (plate 26). It is reminiscent of textile art with woven threads of glass but not for very long. What can we say when a lumpy red bird settles down on the rim of a goblet? This sudden contrast startles like a mirage. She is pushing the medium and what it represents as far apart as possible, and on at least two levels: glass threads create goblet, glass goblet becomes perch for bird.
In Michael Aschenbrenner's work, glass becomes bone (plate 13). He says his work is "somewhat biographical in nature,
'" that it relates to his experiences in Viet Nam and that it does "not dwell on the violent aspects of life, but on the frailty of human existence." Perhaps these bones hanging on a wall are a little like the whale bones with which the PEQUOD in Moby Dick was inlaid: "A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that." (Moby Dick, Herman Melville, The Library of America, p. 868). Aschenbrenner manages an elegance of construction that constantly relieves the evocation of pain we associate with damaged bones. While the separate components may awaken memories of violence, grouped in large numbers they tend instead to produce a distilled sort of melancholy, like the Dead and Wounded statistics we saw on the nightly news during the war. For Aschenbrenner, violence is not a tool to produce violent emotions in the viewer, but an occasion for meditation.
Valerie Arber's 'Flag Series" (plates 18 & 19) summarizes many characteristics of this exhibition. Its ambitious, large scale includes repetitive components. The imagery melds martini glasses, olives, globes, trophies, buzz saw blades. Reggae music and yachting can't be far away. She likes the projective qualities of glass, the way the flags color the surrounding walls. And how well her series fills space! It projects. It traverses, with brightly colored cords like Malach's piece. Most importantly, it celebrates. Arber's work, and most of "Sculptural Glass," are a celebration in light, form, and energy. Its artists use glass because of its potential for extravagant expression, not in spite of it.
Opening as it did only a few weeks prior to the 'Whitney Biennial," "Sculptural Glass" represented an opposing spirit: "Today, Art a la Mode prefers to muck about in the darker side of human existence, lingering cooly over demonstrations of violence, cruelty and sexual perversion, or indulging in wild frenzies about the hopelessness of life" (Review of the Biennial by Eleanor Hartley, New Art Examiner, May 1983, p. 11). In Tucson, instead, we saw work which sometimes dealt with the darker side of human existence but also exposed it to light and reminded us of the drama of life.
Tucson also revealed another possible approach to art. At a time when the art world is increasingly politicized (and vice versa-one only need read Hilton Kramer's autopsy of Vanity Fair [The New Criterion, June, 1983] to see how deeply rooted this is), it is possible to overlook the pursuit of quality from a nuts and bolts level: " ... the better art gets, the more relevant the fundamental principles of picture-making become. ... To give somebody an idea of how high is up you have to point to the gutter. The critic has to talk about color, chiaroscuro, scale, size, etc." (Valentin Tatransky,
"The Art of Painting: Jules Olitski, Lawrence Poons, and Darryl Hughto," Arts Magazine, May 1983). "Sculptural Glass" should make us, once again, look for this quality.
Remember the initial question, "Is it sculptural?" and the subsequent analysis of several works. Perhaps, following the Tucson lead, we should avoid one-dimensional political concerns (the art vs. craft issue is basically economic-political which mask the only true aim of such works. Glass has an unlimited potential for richness of expression only if its emphasis is on quality and on progress from the good to the excellent.