It may have been kick started by a show of his work at the Columbus Museum of Art earlier this year, but I have been paying more attention to Dale Chihuly.
For years now I have maintained the opinion that Chihuly was primarily a showman, looking for the biggest and most gaudy expressions in his chosen medium – a kind of glass bowhard. Everything at the museum was assembled in the most expansive way possible. But instead of clucking I tended to hum. The museum is undergoing an expansion and the collection is mostly down, leaving a lot of empty space to be fully occupied.
Chihuly frankly admits that while he plays conductor to an ever changing orchestra of glass artists, his heart is not in the hot shop so much, but rather in the exhibition side. He knows how to put on a big show that is all about the inherent potentialities of blown glass and its relationship to light and biomorphic qualities as they interact with any number of environments. Everything is positive, yet tinged with the vulnerabilities of the medium.
I feel somehow that I need to look closely at the Chihuly phenomenon and gather from it what might relate to my recent experiments in plastic. How light is handled is surely one focus.
Chihuly is the subject of some controversy. For example, there is a movement afoot in Seattle to keep him from erecting a permanent installation near the Space Needle. Would you nimby Chihuly if he came to your town?
Jay,
What comes to my mind is WC Fields saying: ‘… are like elephants, I like to look at ’em, but I wouldn’t want to own one’.
Imagine dusting that stuff!
Birgit:
What are like elephants?
Chihuly looks to fill every habitat that he can. In that effort he goes to some pretty big extremes. He did an installation in Jerusalem that featured a Marge Simpson assemblage made of hundreds of blue twirly units all hung together and something like forty six feet from top to bottom. Owning such a thing would be a nightmare. Since so much of his work is composed of self similar objects arising from traditional craft, I wouldn’t be surprised if much of the big stuff goes back to the factory to be used again in some other context.
He likens his pieces to coke bottles which can stand a lot of abuse.I think the comparison faulty as so many of the vessels are blown thin and so much of the work is stretched out with lots of fats and skinnys existing together and a very physical yet tenuous quality pervading withal.
There are enough glass collectors in town to support a gallery. I visit the place but am uncomfortable the whole time, not onlyu for my fiscal insufficiency in the face of the prices
Jay,
“women” are ….
Thin glass is a pretty scary commodity.
cont.
but for the ever present danger that a false move could be disastrous.
If I could afford high level art glass, then I could afford to have it professionally curated.
Jay,
I agree Chihuly is a showman, and a fairly arrogant one at that, but I’ve also come around to believing him a brilliant (and articulate) artist. I think the turning point was watching some videos of interviews and of his work. Can’t remember where, unfortunately, but I know at least one included his Jerusalem show, in which the lighting was a key element.
I’ve seen some of his work in person, mostly in Seattle. It impresses by its craftsmanship and over-the-topness. Fascinating, but I’m not sure I’d want one in the house, even if it came with a dedicated duster. I might make an exception for one of the black cylinders.
Steve:
I read where his companies either grossed or netted $29,000,000 in 2004. Either way it’s an impressive figure.
I’ve seen some of the videos on his website and it’s hard to gauge him as a personality. Yes, I can see the arrogant side, but he comes across to me as somebody who is quite comfortable doing his thing.
The Jerusalem show in question included a cone-shaped framework upon which were hung chunks that resembled rose quartz. Sparse in its way, but very effective.
I am not a fan of his work. Far from it. The Cincinnati Art Museum has one of his pieces and it hangs like a giant, oozing spat of mucus from the Beaux Arts main lobby ceiling, a glaring example of funds spent badly, imo.
But Jay, I admire your fortitude in studying his pieces. I fully expect to be enlightened by your thoughts on the matter.
May I add one more, ahem, snotty comment…
I think Dale Chihuly is to glass what Thomas Kincaid is to paint.
I like the first glass pictures. The earth colors and round shapes appeal to me.
Tree:
You messin’ with Tommy the K? My man? Yes, he is like Chihuly and Koons and Dali back when in that they all built or have built empires by making things that nobody needs but are enticed into buying. That requires a lot of business savvy, energy and focus, and you as the entrepreneur need to want it really bad.
I checked the Cincinnati Museum site and they don’t seem to admit to owning a Chihuly. I can imagine a cowpoke yelling Chee Huly! while slapping his ten gallon on his chaps. But maybe not along the Ohio.
It seems to me that one might be able to roughly replicate the glass products in sugar. I wonder if anyone has ever tried to blow molten sugar into the shape of a vessel. One could certainly roll up the frit and whatever odds and ends – the jimmies – onto a gather of molten sugar like they do in the hot shop. Peppermint sticks and multi-colored glass rods are made similarly. I think this may be part of the appeal: there’s something about glass that touches so many of one’s pleasure centers.
Birgit:
The brown glass pieces were presented on a big log table and in a room with a wall of shelving where such pieces and baskets were interspersed and the opposite wall was covered in Pendleton blankets. It was all quasi-Indian and a little contrived, but interesting to see.
Jay, I found things re: Chihuly in Cincinnati. yee haw!
http://www.chihuly.com/installations/public/Art/cincin_n96441ch1B.html
by the way, notice the photo is aimed at the gift shop ;-)
Tree:
I hereby dub thee, oh chandelier of Cincinnati, Large Marge. (reference Pee Wee’s Big Adventure and the Simpsons )
Photographs should always be aimed at gift shops. Throw a gift shop in that passport photo and that one of the wedding party while you’re at it! The central atrium of the Cleveland Museum of Art is being rebuilt and the accustomed passageway to its accustomed location is blocked off by – you guessed it – a gift shop. First thing you see when you walk through the door.
Large Marge. Doesn’t have the same ring as Oozing Spat of Mucus, but I LOVE it.
Yes, gift shops and everything must be “family friendly.” But don’t get me started…
Tree,
I’m interested in your comparison of Chihuly to Kinkade. In what sense are you saying they’re alike? Both have empires of sorts, and are certainly successful financially. I find Mucus Marge rather barf-inducing, just like a lot of Kinkades. But Kinkade seems to be all about over-doing clichés, whereas I find a great deal of Chihuly’s work very original. I admit I know very little of glass art and possible predecessors.
Jay,
I think I’ve found the video I alluded to above, it’s one of the ones on his web site. It’s about the Jerusalem ice wall, and has a lot about his artistic thinking and about his curiosity and delight with the material. It’s also a lot about lighting. Tree, what do you think of it?
Folks:
This has gotten me thinking about the conflation of factors that leads to the phenomenon in question. In terms of influences one can see Chihuly’s upbringing as important. He dwells upon the organic nature of his work; the direct relationship of body function and resulting form. He speaks of his mother’s gardening, but I wonder as well about his father’s occupation as a butcher. The hewing and forming of an animal’s carcass, made malleable in death, and it’s recreation into new configurations seems a likely influence.
More later.
Jay,
Yes, the work is organic, but in a peculiar way, like Hallucigenia and other outlandish critters of the Burgess shale. Though amazing, it’s also a little creepy, the more so for being rendered in bright, hard glass.
I wonder what Tree, primed by her series on Soutine, will think of your carcass theory.
Uh oh. Chihuly and Soutine? Say it ain’t so!
Seriously, that’s a very astute observation, Steve.
Steve, you asked about my comparison and maybe in the end it comes down to nothing but personal opinion because I don’t think Chihuly is original. I think he stifles light and life just as Kinkade does, despite the latter’s claims to the contrary. Rather, they both create bastardized forms of both light and life. There is to me a lack of understanding on their part, there’s no soul, no transcendence, no working out the big issues.
I think Chihuly’s work is over the top but in a way that is not enjoyable or rewarding or that provides any intellectual challenge. Like Jeff Koons.
I watched the video of his ice wall and it leaves me cold.
He lacks the social and political acumen to pull that off and as someone who is pro-Palestinian, I think the location is insulting to the Palestinians or at the very least misguided.
Tree:
I would be surprised to hear that C or K – either of them – have much concern for big issues. Frankly, Kincaide doesn’t interest me so much for any issue with his work – his images are good examples of a certain genre that he certainly did not invent – but with people who tend to have strident attitudes toward him. There was something called Gallery Something in the area. The place was full of wildfowl images and a general kincaidiness. In a back room was hung an abstract daub, obviously chosen for its lack of formal qualities, and going for some ungodly amount of money. The salesperson would steer customers around to it, proclaiming its shortcomings as he or she went and leaving the marks feeling smug about not falling for that non-representational crap. People would be sucked in by the ploy, even though it was so patently manipulative. I feel a little guilty about shooting fish in a barrel here, but there is a mentality out there that is almost tribal in its approach to such things, and the salesperson just had to say the right things to get the juices flowing.
The Chihuly exhibit in Columbus was a kind of three ring circus with all kinds of shiny trinkets . One can argue that such a production is indicative of a general tendency to coarsen gallery offerings in the name of some form of commerce or another. And it doesn’t stop there. Orchestras are playing more old favorites and halls are trying to pull ’em in with whiz and a bang and a boom. But it’s hard to fault the man for his happy discovery that folks like what he likes – and the more the merrier.
Jay, you bring up a very interesting topic for me–commerce over culture. I’ve noticed with the Cincinnati Symphony a dumbing down of the “product” to try and entice more listeners. It set my teeth on edge to see the “I Like Tchaik” series.
The CSO once posted on Facebook an interview with one of the powers that be who wants to rid the CSO of “elitism” and be more accesible to the public. I left a rather long comment about that and how it’s a mistake to dumb things down rather than have people learn and expand their horizons, and I added that what’s elitist is charging $95 for good seats and $18 to sit behind a pole in the third balcony. My comment was deleted.
I don’t blame musuems for needing profits. However, a lot of their attempts at making money are misguided and weaken the effect a museum can have.
Tree:
It’s a big basket load of factors. It’s hard to speak for the art museum as it has fixed assets and a considerable endowment and is it’s own principality to an extent. But the orchestra is more subject to outside pressures: classical music is declining in popularity, there’s a movement afoot to include jazz as a classical mode, subscription income and endowment monies are under pressure and the voting base in the area could care less. The people who really support the orchestra are those eager to recruit and retain the educated and talented. It’s good to be able to point to such assets as can be found in University Circle in making a pitch.
I can’t help but wonder if some of the reservations about Chihuly’s work (which I tend to like, btw), arises from that age-old controversy about decorative/craft media versus — always versus — fine art media. Which has been discussed here previously, so I won’t reiterate. But I wonder.
I agree that he’s not original (in the same way that the scenic design for Avatar is not original). Unique, perhaps, but that’s not the same as original.
I think also I may be in a minority that considers “popular appeal” as a category of genius.
Melanie:
Well hello!
At times one person’s art is another person’s craft. If one adopts a more general set of terms, like “aesthetic production” say, then a lot of the boundary disputes can become moot. In Chihuly’s case the drive towards things that provide aesthetic pleasure is in blatant evidence. There must be a reason why glass cannot be made florescent, else Chihuly would have made it so and in the presence of the biggest UV lights possible. Otherwise he has gone gentle and considered along with his big glassy extravaganzas. While in grad school he made a series of of cylinders adorned with images inspired by James Joyce. I find them whimsical and restrained. Steve mentioned a series of cylinders whose designs are taken from Pendleton blankets.
As I see it Chihuly espied an empty environmental niche, which he has filled with thousands of tons of glass, armies of talented glassblowers from here and abroad and big business galore. He has also been influential in standing up one of those genius of the Puget Sound enterprises like coffee, airliners, computer apps and who knows what else.
Hi all, It’s been a long time.
But Jay told me I had to get over here and check out the Chihuly (or anti-C) crowd.
Chihuly is definitely a commercial entity, as much that as an individual artist. But as an artist, he harkens back, I think to the days when the material was the reason for the art– pure love of paint, with the abstract expressionists, pure love of translucency and malleable materials, mostly glass, for Chihuly. His influence in the pacific Northwest is pretty phenomenal — the Pilchuck organization, the Tacoma Museum of Glass, Portland’s own Bullseye gallery — all these were sort of off-springs of Chihuly’s influence.
I like a great deal of his work, although I do tire a bit of the big chandeliers. I admire his audacity — whatever you think of his politics, he pursued the wall of ice as Michael Heizer or the other land artists in the deserts of the inner west pursue their bulldozed artifacts. He’s a bit of Andy Goldsworthy on steroids.
I think of him and Christos as playing with people’s love of light and movement, not particularly caring about permanent objects or conceptual statements. In some ways his approach treads more lightly on the land than my paintings, which after I’m gone will fill the landfills.
It’s true that Chihuly is decorative — but so is Pollock and even Rothko at times. I never sense that Chihuly is putting us on, but Jeff Koons is always doing so, so I can forgive some of the kitsch that Chihuly puts out. Being in a place with some of his pieces over time, when the sun changes and the light bends and pierces, makes them a moveable feast. They are not fixed if they are situated where the light changes — a bit like James Turrell’s light fixation.
Art that changes with the changing surrounds, and has a bit of impermanence about it, seems to flout the oldest conventions of art, but I find it moving. Something like sitting all day in an a cathedral where the stained class windows change the visions, but without the religious baggage that such an experience can carry.
And my apologies for my absence. I am scheduled for a hip replacement on June 8, which might bring me back more energy. And thoughtfulness, because, as we all know, the hip bone is connected to the thigh bone — and to the synapses that allow thinking.
Hi June, I really hope your operation goes well. Hang in there.
I’m an advocate of having no division between fine art and craft. I argued quite a bit with art history professors that quilts should be considered fine art.
June:
Yep! I knew you were good for a real rippersnapper. Thanks for taking time out from what must be a distracting situation.
Briefly, there’s an element of dramatic process about glass blowing at this level that makes a loud statement about craftspeople and less so about craft in itself. There’s a sweaty, dangerous and balletic aspect to the whole thing, and if I recall, a recent issue of a popular glass mag talked about glass blowing as a form of theater. Wayyy off Broadway.
June,
Very well said, I think we’re quite in agreement. The fascination with the material, not just with its effects, may not be either necessary or sufficient to make one an artist, but it sure seems to correlate highly, and I think Chihuly has it. I also agree with Melanie that Chihuly has a species of genius for show and popular effect. I respect him for that, though I’d say it more often than not anti-correlates with artistic quality, at least as I idiosyncratically judge it..
Since you mention Heizer and Turrell, I should add that I bought, read, and enjoyed the book by William Fox that you introduced us to. Then a couple weeks ago, at a <a href="http://artbozeman.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/charles-ross-lecture-star-axis-project/"lecture in li'l old Bozeman, I met Charles Ross who is building his Star Axis in New Mexico. How many of these guys are there out in the desert? (And are they all guys?)
Tree — I know enough (even though only through reading your posts) not to think you have any of the old art/craft dichotomies in your thinking. I’m glad to hear you are fighting to good fight. There was an excellent review of an exhibit of quilted art in the Las Vegas weekly recently:
http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2010/apr/28/quilt-hard-hate-reed-whipple-fabric-exhibit-will-h/
The review is not related to Chihuly or craft, exactly, but it does pinpoint some places where quilted art departs from, for example, painting, perhaps necessarily so. But that’s just a digression I found today and was delighted to see.
Steve, I was unaware of Charles Ross — glancing quickly at the link and his site, it looks to me like he’s far more architectural than Turrell, with his (Turell’s) tunneling into volcanic mountain. One has to wonder what the anthropologists, without an English Rosetta stone, will make of these desert pieces in 5000 years.
I’m hoping that maybe I can get to the Lightning Fields (Walter de Maria) in October; it’s been a long-held dream of mine. It too is in New Mexico — hmm, gives me notions…..
and yes, as far as I know, the giant land art forms are all done by guys. But I would love to be proven incorrect. Anyone….? The Dia Foundation, which is the biggest funder of land art, has large pieces by women in its Beacon museum on the east coast (New York — or Connecticut?). But none outside that enormous factory, as far as I am aware.
Jay, you knew I couldn’t resist your devilish temptations. But it was a momentary weakness, brought about by a pending textile exhibit that has me flummoxed. However, I have overcome the flummoxing, hence have regained my strength and will not succumb again — maybe
June:
I wetted my hair and fashioned it into horns. Even then I could not see any flavor of devilish temptation in my reflection. But you are pulling leg, no?
Lightning Fields appears to be back in business. At one point it had been seriously vandalized. Those twenty foot poles are so useful around the ranch.
A fellow named Stevenson had made up a large number of gold luster ceramic horns which he arranged in a field-sized grid pattern as part of Colab in Rhode Island back in “68 or ’69. Next morning after installation they were totally gone – ripped off. Me? I put up a level line marked with pink surveyors’ tape and was vaguely disappointed to see that nobody had considered the stuff worthy of theft.
June, I really hope you get to see Lightning Fields.
One name comes to mind immediately, Nancy Spero. Big in earth installation pieces in the 70s and beyond but I can’t remember right now if she created the really large pieces you are discussing.
A place to investigate is Mass MOCA. They go for the BIG installations and hopefully have some women in their ranks.
I’ll check out the link as soon as I can.
Darn. That’s Nancy HOLT, not Nancy SPERO. I
Here’s a photo of her work at my former university. Looks godawful, doesn’t it?
http://ludb.clui.org/ex/i/OH3170/
godawful is right. Oh dear.
But a recent essay in, maybe the Atlantic, takes on the Spiral Jetty, and to the author, it too looks awful (but much larger!) He makes the trek to the center of the spiral and has a revelation, based, if I’m remembering correctly, on the lack of revelatory inspiration. This is one of those tantalizing elusive bits that I read and am fascinated by and then — poof — gone. Hey, now there’s a concept for a piece of art. I will see if I can find a reference to the article, the author, or the magazine. I know it’s here somewhere.
Re: esoteric symbols: I am reading the first chapter of “The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution”, by Denis Dutton, (assigned in a master class on landscape that I’m taking.) The chapter is titled “Landscape and Longing,” and as usual, I’m reading it, engraving deep pencils grooves into the pages, annotating and argufying about the vagueness of the concepts and the (in this chapter) lack of attention to specific art: “since we still have the souls of those ancient nomads, these emotions can flood into modern minds….”
It’s truly unfair of me, since I only have this photocopied chapter to refer to, so I guess I’ll have to read the whole book to find out if the title is of any consequence to an artist. Thus far, it reads to me like a rationale for the most banal of Sunday painting results. But then, I’m a skeptic and an existentialist, which keeps me from, perhaps, seeing symbols that work on less argufying natures:-) I’m willing to accept genetic ideas in other realms, but with art, it feels to me that so much culture overlays it that the fact that we all like blue (or do we?) isn’t worthy of so many words.
Maya Lin’s done some land art — Wave Fields, I think it’s called.
It might be argued that the Vietnam Memorial is a kind of land art — I read somewhere that she was the only contestant in taht long-ago contest who actually went to DC to look at the site and thefore designed something that suited it.
Yes, The Wave Field. I’m a huge fan of Maya Lin, in all her art forms. Not that it matters much, but my original question was about the monumental land art in desert environs; in that particular setting I only know of male-driven projects. I’m sure obsession knows nothing of gender, but perhaps there’s some masculine appeal to this particular obsession.
June,
Though a fan of evolution, I fear it’s way over-invoked these days, and my impression of Dutton’s book is that he’s following the fad without providing any deep insights. I’ve only read a bit here and there, but I’ve seen too mjuch elsewhere.
Was this post about Chihuly? Way leads on to way…
“since we still have the souls of those ancient nomads, these emotions can flood into modern minds…” Blech.
Maybe not fair of me to state since I haven’t read the book but still. Blech.
Tree:
Getting back to one of your early comments about the Chihuly looking like a splat and your subsequent link to selfsame object, I clicked on. I was then moved to Google “blue mucus” and was directed to medical advice sites where blue mucus appears to rank as a verified phenomenon. Might be bacteria some say, while others point to the possibility of a snorting response to a joke soon after drinking red wine. Mainlining indigo is also mentioned.
This would appear to indicate a certain affinity to realism in C’s work – a topic rich in possibilities.
Lin also did Storm King Wavefield in New York, and one called Flutter in Miami, but I thought there was also a smaller one somewhere.
So Chihuly is a Biological artist? Very interesting…
I’m off to experiment with red wine.
Tree:
What with his parents the gardener and the butcher, it seems inevitable. Red wine, a handkerchief and and a source of zingers that will make you snort. And considering that it is mucus and not spittle that we’re discussing, one should allow time for the mingling of fluids.