To love a painting is to feel that this presence is… not an object but a voice.
~ Andre Malraux ~
Parakeets and Gold Fish Bowl
by
Louis Comfort Tiffany
“Tiffany created this window specifically for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, claiming that it ‘illustrates most perfectly the possibilities of American glass.’ By carefully selecting and manipulating the glass – rough or polished, opalescent or iridescent – Tiffany could create form, figure, shading and depth, to heighten the illusion; he used a read chain to ‘suspend’ the fish bowl.”
I love stained glass; I was first introduced to its marvel by a vice-principal, in high school, who created lovely pieces for the sheer pleasure and joy that their beauty brought into his life. I happened to be in the student government room, on a day he brought some of his work in, and he generously took time to not only show me his art, but discussed everything from technique to the complexity of various colors of glass.
When I saw this widow, at the Museum of Fine Art, in Boston, I swooned! The subject matter, execution, and detail are all marvelous; if it were a painting done on canvas, I would still find it exquisite and worthy of hanging in a museum, but to think that it was made with pieces of glass is truly remarkable.
I hope you are enjoying warm, sunny, and colorful vistas – if not, I offer you Tiffany’s parakeets.
Art can never exist without naked beauty displaced.
~ William Blake ~
