GAS News S/O 06 copy - Glass Art Society

Art and Originality by Gianni Toso, translated by Karyn Toso
Mary Smith,“Fall Necklace”, photo by the artist.
GAS
LINE
Congratulations Are In Order!
GAS members Laura Donefer and Norman Faulkner
recently received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the
Glass Art Association of Canada (GAAC). Mary Smith’s “Fall
Leaf Necklace” took First Place in the 2006 Saul Bell Design
Award Competition. She was honored in Las Vegas during
The JCK Show–Las Vegas in June. GAS member Kathleen
Elliott was featured in the 50th issue of AmericanStyle, which
highlighted nine emerging artists in different categories,
whose work is raising excitement among collectors.
Fuel Your Habit on the GAS Message Board
There has been a lot of interest in the conference panel
“Fueling the Habit,” focusing on how to maximize fuel use
and cut costs in the shop. David Levi will host this new topic
on the GAS Message Board. Get online and share your ideas,
tips and questions with the group. You can check out this
and other new categories on the GAS Message Board at
www.glassart.org.
A Passing
We are saddened to hear that Edwin A. Hansen of The
Glass Gallery, who has been affiliated with the GlassWeekend
at the Creative Glass Center of America at Wheaton for many
years, passed away on June 20, 2006. He was an intelligence
analyst for many years, including two tours to Australia,
and retired in 1979. In 1981, he and his wife opened the
Glass Gallery, a Bethesda art gallery presenting the work of
nationally recognized artists. He had a strong dedication
to the studio glass movement, and was a member of the
James Renwick Alliance, the Farmland Trust, and the Nature
Conservancy. He is survived by his wife Sally, two children,
Deborah Trunzo and David Hansen; a brother; and five
grandchildren.
OBITUARY
Veronique
Valkema-
Kindermans
Uithoorn, May 6, 1919 -
Blaricum, May 20, 2006
The Glass Art Society mourns the passing of Veronique
Valkema, wife of the late Sybren Valkema (recipient of the
Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994).
Trained as a nurse, she worked at a hospital in Amsterdam
and during WWII was the head nurse at a mental hospital
in the south of Holland. After the war she was running a
children’s sanitarium in the French countryside where she met
my Sybren Valkema; they were married in 1950. Veronique ran
the library at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam from
1965 to 1980. Ulla Forsell tells of visiting the Glass department
for the first time in 1972 as a prospective student. One of the
students was showing her around–the glass studio, the canteen
–and then told her to come and visit the place and person that
really mattered: he introduced her to Veronique Valkema in the
library. She was a beloved presence at the school, unfailingly
helpful and also famous for the many dinners (she was an
incredible cook) and parties at the Valkema house in Blaricum.
Her passions in life were travel–to Vietnam, Australia,
Kazakhstan, Jordan, Portugal, New York and New Orleans–
and the books with which she surrounded herself.
She is survived by her son Durk Valkema, daughter-in-law
Anna Carlgren and her grand-daughter Wyke Valkema.
I would like to thank Robin Cass for reopening
the question of what constitutes original art to our
international community of artists. It is difficult to
overemphasize the importance of this debate, and
the importance of articulating our own views on the
matter not only as regards to intellectual property
rights or plagiarism, but rather as a way for laying
the foundations of our own art. I have been engaged
in this debate for over thirty-five years, and would
like to take the opportunity to contribute to the
current dialogue.
It seems to me that the interviews in the previous
article touched upon the technical and academic
aspects of the question, but did not grasp the real
heart of the matter, which speaks less to lawyers than
to creators and connoisseurs alike. Before we can
answer the question of what is original art, we must
arrive at a workable definition of “Art” itself. What factors
go into producing a work of art? Genius? Mastery
of technique and the approbation of the Academy
(or whatever the contemporary equivalent of that
venerable institution)? Interpretation? Culture?
My early years of academic education have
taught me that there are two types of teachers. Both
types profess to teach “culture” to their students. The
first type of teacher, best described as a “bureaucrat of
culture,” passes on information to the student, with
the goal of having the student memorize and acquire
that knowledge. The goal of the other type of teacher
is rather to actualize the potential of the student by
facilitating an internalization and assimilation of the
required knowledge. They do this with the understanding
that they are merely providing the student
with the foundation for his or her own intellectual and
creative development. Yet this knowledge cannot
develop in a vacuum. Artists–and art–constantly refer
to and develop from the work of other artists, as well
as the cultural and intellectual climate of the day. The
history of art is actually a history of the record of the
living dialogue between artists through the centuries.
Artists constantly need new stimulation, from within
their fields and from the world at large.
And herein lays the seeds of the plagiarism
question: when has a work of art evolved from what
preceded it, and when is it a mere copy? There are
those artists who approach a “classic” work of art with
the motivation of acquiring knowledge and technique
to enhance their own artistic development. (My
professor, the late Anzolo Fuga, who taught and
influenced an entire generation of Murano maestri,
would make us copy the masterpieces of Michelangelo
line by line, warning us that if we did not improve
upon the original in at least a single detail, we were
not evolving in our art, but rather contributing to
its decadence.) Then there are those imitators who
chose to reproduce original art, typically with the
goal of “cashing in” on a popular style or trend. Such
“artistry” is best described as theft.
During my years as an art student at Murano’s
Abate Vincenzo Zanetti, more than half the academy’s
funding came from the old glass factories on Murano
Island. As a result, at the end of each academic year
we were required to create new glass designs for the
factories’ production. Our drawings and the glass
prototypes we created were exhibited in a local
government gallery. Each factory would send its head
maestro, who would then select the best design to be
reproduced (and mass produced) in his glass factory.
Although we were generally a competitive bunch,
and were extremely proud of the other awards and
recognition our work garnered, this was one “honor”
none of us looked for. We knew that our designs
would be acquired by some factory, only to be poorly
imitated by less skilled workers and sold for a cheap
price. Seeing our distress, Professor Fuga assured us
that the creator of an idea is always superior to the
mediocre imitator, for if the artists were to stop
creating, there would be nothing to copy and the
furnaces would close. Yet, on a personal note, let me
say that I find that cold comfort. As someone who has
spent more than half a century working in glass and
endeavoring to give value to glass culture, as someone
who has tried to elevate the medium of glass as
a vehicle for the highest level of human expression, it
was infinitely painful to me, on a recent trip to Venice,
to see cheap, grotesque “knockoffs” of my work in
store after store after store. More recently, I found
myself in a Baltimore craft gallery selling mediocre
imitations of Maestro Lino Tagliapietra’s work at a
fraction of the cost of the originals. It is this kind of
market that-far from expanding and popularizing the
audience for glass art, as the “gallery” owner claimed–
destroys any potential for the healthy growth of the
Glass Studio Movement.
Where has all of this left us? Whether considering
“Art with a capital A,” or “art with a small a,” (I prefer
these terms to the rather tired and somewhat clichéd
dichotomy of Craft/Art), I believe it is imperative that
we as artists reevaluate what it is we are trying to
achieve when we create. Even “art with a small a”
can be a means to refine taste and enhance the
quality of life; true Art has the potential to open new
channels of thought and surprise the viewer into new
ways of looking and seeing. A vase by Pablo Picasso
is only incidentally a vessel that can contain flowers–
it is, first and foremost, a container for his intellectual,
spiritual and creative experiments. Accordingly, fancy
design, color and even composition are merely the
formal elements of the work and do not define the
whole of the artistic effort.
I tell my students that every shape, form or
technique they master is the equivalent of a single
word in a dictionary. As we accumulate our artistic
vocabulary, we begin to develop our own grammar.
Once we have amassed a vast number of forms and
technique, we have the tools to create a unique
language that is the highest form of self expression.
Only when an artist has discovered the medium and
the language that best matches his chemistry, culture
and personality, can he begin work as a real artist
who does not merely reproduce life, but has the gift
to transmit it. Whether the medium is bronze, marble
paint or glass, Art transforms the material into an
original language with the pulse and vibration of life
itself. I have read of an art critic who had a sure way
of identifying authentic ancient Maltese art objects:
he found himself crying before them. The “painful
joy” he felt was his own intuitive response to the
life and the excellence which still infused the work
centuries later.
This places a very great responsibility on the
artist. It is not enough to bemoan the plagiarism and
knockoffs flooding the market. Indeed, the phrase
“intellectual property rights” implies that there is a
measure of thought and intellect, if not true humanistic
expression, in the works that we produce. At
the end of the day, if we do not maintain the classic
standards of our education, through exposure to literature,
music, sculpture, etc., if we do not constantly
work to expand the boundaries–both technical and
intellectual–of our art, we will have no recourse but
to resort to mere repetition by marketing an idea that
has been done (if only by ourselves) over and over.
Gallery owners, too, must be unafraid to take the risk
of promoting the newer, experimental work of the
artists they represent, rather than pushing for more
of the popular, proven crowd pleasers.
I find myself bemused that after so many years
spent out of the public eye, I felt compelled to
respond with these musings in this forum. Perhaps
it comes with age–the responsibility I feel to
maintain the ideals and direction of the Glass Studio
Movement, and to underscore their continued
relevance to the young artists working today. Or
perhaps it is because I am afraid that in the current
debate we risk losing sight of the extraordinary
potential and possibilities inherent in the creation of
our art. Or perhaps it is my link in the chain: a way to
pass on the beauty of the glass experience as it has
been handed down to me in a family tradition that
began in Venice 700 years ago.
Gianni Toso studied at the Abate Vincenzo Zanetti,
Murano, Italy, and graduated with a Maestro d'Arte in
1962. His work is held in public and private collections
around the world, including Corning Museum of Glass,
Corning, New York; the Glass Museum of Dusseldorf,
West Germany and others. He has had many solo and
group exhibitions, and has been a guest artist at the
California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, California;
the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, Ohio; the Gerrit
Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam and other places.
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