As we say goodbye to Lino Tagliapietra and welcome in Daniel Clayman and Dale Chihuly, it is hard not to notice the amazing array of contrasting styles in contemporary studio glass currently represented in our galleries. The two new exhibitions, White Light: Glass Compositions by Daniel Clayman and Dale Chihuly: The Laguna Murano Chandelier, will serve as a striking continuation of the overall theme of Contrasts: A Glass Primer.

With Lino’s exhibition off traveling the country, however, we lose a beautiful and dramatic illustration of the contrast between factory glass and studio glass as exemplified in Lino’s transition from the traditional world of European factory produced glass and fine craftsmanship to the more experimental focus of the American Studio Glass Movement.

With all galleries focusing primarily on Contemporary American Glass, we lose the overt connection to history that Lino Tagliapietra in Retrospect represented. But don’t be too quick to throw off the past. As we look forward to touring our new exhibitions we may find it helpful to look back at how art movements throughout the history of art have contributed to the artwork and artists of today. Let’s take a tour through the galleries.

In art, the term rococo—a combination of the French words for rock (rocaille) and shell (quille)— originally was used to describe the ornate decorative style favored by Louis the XIV of France. Eventually, the style traveled beyond the gilded walls of the palace in Versailles, influencing painters and musicians across Europe, to become the primary artistic style of the eighteenth century.

At once both frivolous and somber, rococo style turned away from the state/religious focus of baroque style. Rococo painters focused on a world of fantasy and grace, soft muted colors, and swooping lines uncontained and undefined by the hard edges of the rectangular format of the canvas.

Although Dale Chihuly is an example of the experimental and often asymmetrical approach of American studio glass artists in the early 70’s (the “hippy glass blowers” that Dante Marioni spoke of), similarities in line, color and form exist in Chihuly’s Laguna Murano Chandelier and French painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Bathers (pictured below). The addition of Pino Signoretto’s sculpted figures harkens back to the use of cherubs in rococo paintings, a reflection of the “aspects of art history” that Chihuly purposely traveled to Italy to explore prior to his first collaborative series with Lino.

Travel around the corner and into the Dante Marioni: Form, Color, Pattern exhibition, and you immediately enter a world that is simultaneously traditional and minimalist in its approach. Although Dante’s respect of Italian form and tradition is evident in his use of the familiar vessel form and beautifully sculpted handles, there is a uniformity and repetition of form accomplished through scale and his use of opaque color. This both emphasizes the relationship of color to form and imparts a feeling of precise edges, the “hard edge style” that minimalist painters were searching for in the 1960’s.

Minimalism is best expressed in sculptural work as paintings are ultimately a representation of an object or form. Sculpture has a dimensional presence in its environment becoming an integral part of its setting. White Light: Glass Compositions by Daniel Clayman explores this idea by literally trying to “grab light out of the air.” By using geometrical form, Clayman follows the minimalist search for non-objective expression focusing on the basic “minimal” qualities of form.

In our walk through, Daniel Clayman said that his artwork has formalist qualities (an approach that dominated modern art from the late 1800s through the 1960s).

He is searching for rational structure and purity of color and form; an artistic ideal distanced from the story or the narrative that is often behind a work of art. At the same time Daniel stated that he has the soul of a constructivist (a movement arising in Russia in 1919). White Light: Glass Compositions by Daniel Clayman is not just “art for art’s sake.” By creating sculptural elements that capture the light and define the space, Daniel’s art invites a response from the viewer, becoming a part of the social environment as well.

The Bathers (1772-75) by Jean-Honoré Fragonard,
Oil on Canvas, 64 x 80 cm,
Musée du Loouvre, Paris