Vitreosity

Redon Revisited

I have mentioned in the past how I felt the artwork of Odilon Redon would work well translated into stained glass. The other day I was thinking of this while playing in Photoshop -

the original image - a pastel by Redon called "Golden Cell", circa

with some leadline added - does make the design heavier, but to my eyes it still works well -

and here are how the leadlines would work out -

The Comics Thing

I came across this page with a reading of the Good Samaritan window at Chartres Cathedral. Here is the diagram - it's bigger when you follow the link

I have long thought of the possibilities of stained glass as 'sequential art'. This page reminds me once again that there is a precedent for it. I witnessed this window being 'read' as a story by the long time English guide at Chartres, Malcom Miller, and I remember thinking at the time - this thing is a comic strip!

The Good Samaritan/Creation window is especially interesting to me in that it translates so directly into the form of a modern comic strip, except that it goes bottom to top rather than top to bottom. It certainly has panels with gutters - gutters being the bands of space outside story panels that are usually blank, but here are highly colorful and ornamental.
I also love the sophisticated narrative. Two stories on top of each other that then relate to each other. The telling of the Good Samaritan first, then the story of Adam and Eve. The idea being that the act of compassion by the Good Samaritan is a metaphor for Christ's act of compassion in sacrificing his life for fallen man - Christ is the Good Samaritan. Unfortunately, this sequential element was never developed further in stained glass past the 14th century or so, and certainly does not exist at all today.

The Comics Thing, pt 1

Good online press for the comics world.
There is a multiple article issue on Art Spiegelman in Indy Magazine Winter 2005.
Also, there is a week long series on Robert Crumb at the Guardian website.
In both, there are lots of pictures and lots of background text. The comics art of the past 30-40 years has not had much of an impact on stained glass, with the primary exception of Judith Schaechter.... more on that tomorrow...

German Expressionism - Ripe for Translation 2

I've long seen the potential for stained glass design in the works of the Expressionist painters and printmakers of the first half of the 20th century. The art features a strong use of black, vivid color, and a content filled with intense emotional figurative content.

There seem to be few stained glass windows made in that period or in that style. The only one I've ever see by a German Expressionist of that era is a window by Max Pechstein at the Busch Reisinger at Harvard. And they do not have a picture (or a mention) on their website and I never got a picture of it when I lived in Boston. I seem to remember it being a good size window (perhaps 3 feet wide by 8 feet tall?) with a female figure and some stylized animals. I remember there being an interesting use of flashed glass effects but I also remember the figure not being too striking. I'm not sure if the window was made before or after World War 2. I know Pechstein made other windows but I've never seen any pictures of them.

There tends to be so much more attention focused on the Post-war German glass artists than on Pre-war glass artists. Post War German stained glass artists mostly work in abstract or stark austere designs. Hardly ever figurative at all - Stockhausen being the only exception I'm aware of.

By way of demonstration - I've been playing with an image by Emil Nolde. A woodcut that always struck me as an image that could easily translate into stained glass.

Original woodcut print by Emil Nolde -

One 'Expressionistic' color possibility -

The leadline would be very simple using flashed glasses -

Now the coloring on this is actually more conventional, with blue for 'sky' or background and red seeming to symbolize 'blood'. Nolde himself, in his colorwork, very often did not go with natural or logical colors. That is, a background might just as easily be a bright harsh yellow as any other and a bright green might be on the face. So, here is another color possibility - perhaps more in line with the expressionistic dissonance of color -

Now if this were made into a more traditional, purely mosaic, style stained glass window - with color seperation NOT happening throught the use of flashed glass or colored enamel. The result might be more like this - the gradation of color could be acheived by careful selection of glass -

In this case the leadwork would be more complex, something like this

Ripe for Translation 1 - Redon

I have long been fascinated (some might say obsessed) with the question -

What different graphic approaches could be applied toward the design of stained glass?

In much the way that Tiffany used Impressionistic and Hudson River School ideas to influence his design work (especially in his Landscape windows). In much the same way that LaFarge used Japanese and a whole slew of other approaches to influence his design. I'd like to share some thoughts and impressions of artists and graphic approaches that might inspire new design directions in stained glass.

I love the work of Odilon Redon, french Symbolist artist (1840-1916), and it's always been difficult for me to pin down why. There is an indistinct quality that is appealing. the words evocative and thoughtful spring to mind. There is a pull toward the mysterious that, to me, lends itself to spiritual art and that does not seem to have been explored in depth by many actually designing stained glass.
Check these out and think how they might translate into the design of stained glass windows - just as examples, try his Beatrice and St. John.

There is one artist and one work that may resemble what I would envision a Redon-inspired stained glass work to be like. The St. Bartholomew War Memorial window in Ottawa by Wilhelmina Geddes. This also happens to be a favorite window of mine, in terms of concept and execution. I have strong memories of seeing this window in person, even though it's been nearly 20 years. I have not ever seen the entire window reproduced in print and would love to see an article on it - hey, why not a whole book!

[update 9/2007 - updated link to Geddes page, though there is no picture now on that page - just a link to a pdf of an article from Irish Arts Review of 1994, which does have a picture of the window]