DALE CHIHULY OBJETS DE VERRE

In 1986 when the MusŽe des Art DŽcoratifs in Paris's Palais du Louvre presented "Dale Chihuly Objets de Verre," the artist was only the fourth American to be given a solo exhibition. The chief curator and director of the Centre du Verre, Yvonne Brunhammer, writes in her introduction, "His place in the story of American glass is that of pioneer and absolute master." The French and English exhibition catalog illustrates examples of all of Chihuly's series to date and features the just developing "Persians," described in the illustrated Vocabulary of Forms as "an experimental direction exploring new possibilities derived from the blowpipe." To place Chihuly's work "in the context of American and international art," the Metropolitan Museum of Art's former curator of Twentieth-Century Art, Henry Geldzahler, declares that "Artist and Craftsman are categories for the ego, not ways in which to make useful or even meaningful esthetic distinctions." In his essay, Robert Hobbs, then director of the University of Iowa Museum of Art, focuses on the Macchia, calling the works "vital but not organic, containers whose primary role is to communicate their own significance as works of art."

1986 Softcover, 9" x 11 1/2"
40 pages, 33 color reproductions
ISBN: 978-1-57684-026-9