CHIHULY Venetians

CHIHULY VENETIANS

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CHIHULY VENETIANS A Silver Anniversary Celebration of Dale Chihuly’s Venetian series 1988 - 2013

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Exquisite hours, enveloped in light and silence, to have known them once is to have known a terrible standard of enjoyment.

Certain lovely mornings of May and June come back with an ineffaceable fairness.

Venice isn’t smothered in flowers at this season, in the manner of Florence and Rome; but the sea and sky themselves seem to blossom and rustle.

Henry James(1)

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Venice will be simply glorious…

After the wet, the colors upon the walls and their reflections in the canal are more gorgeous than ever and with the sun shining upon the polished marble mingled with the rich toned bricks and plaster, this amazing city of palaces becomes really a fairyland created, one would think, especially for the painter…

One could certainly spend years here and never lose the freshness that pervades the place.

James Whistler(2)

Chihuly Venetians: Sculptures and Drawings

by Donald Kuspit

Venice has long fascinated writers and painters, often because it’s a city built on the sea, as though miraculously in no need of land, at other times because of its amazing palaces, but what most of all makes it an aesthetic fairyland for the visual artist are its colors—glorious and gorgeous, as Whistler wrote, all the more so when they inform the sea and sky, making them seem to blossom, as James wrote. Venice has always stood for Color, in contrast to Florence, which has stood for Line, their difference epitomized by the difference between Titian and Michelangelo. Chihuly also stands for Color, but, as the Drawings and sculptures of his Venetian series indicate he is also a master of Line.

All of the works in the Venetian series blossom and rustle like flowering plants—organic nature, at its most flourishing, is Chihuly’s inspiration--as though composed of Venetian sea and sky. Many of the sculptures are sea blue, others sea green, the green of the sea inseparable from the green of plants. Venetian red also appears, along with orange and yellow, all suggestive of sunlight as it changes during the day. Venice is famous for its light as well as color, the light of the sky reflected in its water, giving it shimmering depth, an aura of infinite plenitude, bespeaking its grand sky. Light is the essence of Chihuly’s sculpture, absorbed, reflected, and distilled by the glass, a sort of immaterial material by

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reason of its molten transparency. Fluid as water, it can be given any and every shape, as Chihuly seems to do. Glass is a metamorphic material, like paint, but it projects in space, as paint does not, giving it greater presence. Lined up, the organic sculptures, their colors seeming to materialize immaterial light, seem like miniature palaces, complementing the grand palaces that line Venice’s Grand Canal, and suggesting their organic character. The sculptures epitomize the “exquisite hours” James spent in Venice, measuring up to the “terrible standard of enjoyment” the city set for him. They are an aesthetic dream fulfilled, conveying the wonder of color, light, water that make Venice an elemental as well as ornamental city.

Sometimes the stem of the plant is a vase, flowers ornamentally growing from it in convulsive abundance, some seemingly free form, others curved outward, like bull’s horns, still others curved in on themselves. The flowers are serene and forceful at the same time. Chihuly’s sculptures are baroquely lyrical, and of major importance art historically, for they restore ornament to vitality, making it once again aesthetically viable. “No ornament that possessed real vitality was born during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,” the art historian Hans Sedlmayr writes, in large part because of “the divorce between structure and decoration,” but Chihuly’s Venetians re-unite them to new vital effect.

The geomorphic vase and the biomorphic flowers—structure and decoration-seem to grow into and out of each other, a dialectical interpenetration and inseparability that is “the essence of ornament.” “Both as to its shape and color, [ornament] grows naturally out of the body that carries it.”(3) The full-bodied vase is nature at its most basic, the elaborate ornament encircling it indicating that it is healthy and alive. “The spiritual relationship” between them, as Sedlmayr calls it, defies “the inorganic” in “favor” in modernity.(4) “The…destruction of the earth, the nourisher of man,” is done in the name of the inorganic, Sedlmayr notes, suggesting that the growth of ornament signals that there is still hope for the earth, that man is not yet completely “divorced” from nature.(5)

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Chihuly’s relationship with glass, emblematic of his relationship with nature — glass is made of earth (it’s liquefied sand, as it were)—is the source of his creativity. Creativity has been said to involve the union of opposites, which is what Chihuly accomplishes when he unites color and line. Firing the molten glass with which he sculpts also brings opposites together, if more riskily than in his Drawings, in which color and line tend to be seamlessly one. Sometimes line contains color, more often color becomes restless line, sometimes formlessly growing, at others times delineating a plant in the process of growing. Becoming and being seem to fuse in Chihuly’s Drawings and sculptures. The Drawings are experimental studies for the sculptures, which have an experimental complexity of their own, but they are the final products of the developmental process—the wide-ranging curiosity and “trying outs”— evident in the Drawings. Chihuly’s creativity is inexhaustible, as his amazing productivity shows, suggesting that he is in perpetual process of self-integration, sustained by his instinctive energy, a gift of nature. Changing liquid into a solid by firing the glass, he suggests his own fiery and changeable nature.

Chihuly’s Drawings are indebted to Abstract Expressionism, and his sculptures are indebted to Figurative Expressionism, that is, the expressionistic representation of any three-dimensional object, human or non-human. Both show the empathic engagement with nature that Wilhelm Worringer, in The Gothic Ornament, argued was conveyed by ornament, suggesting that the fusion of Empathy and Abstraction, to refer to Worringer’s other influential book, makes ornament the most consummate art, universally appealing because it is emotionally and intellectually engaging simultaneously. Chihuly’s art is grounded

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Dale Chihuly, 1991

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in systematic knowledge of natural structure as well as in natural feeling for nature. His Venetian Drawings and sculptures are “wet reflections” of nature, to play on Whistler’s words, that is, mirror images of nature, more or less expressively malleable, as appearances tend to be when reflected in water, but also “reflective” in the sense of being thoughtful. They are not mindlessly instinctive, as expressionism is often said to be, but analytically precise studies of abstract form, and as such have the quality of purely abstract art however evocative of nature. They seem to dissect nature, showing it to be a tissue of colorful forms, and re-combine them into a new, ever-fresh nature. Nowhere is decay evident in Chihuly’s nature, however dark its colors sometimes become.

We are all born with a feeling for nature, being part of nature, and nature has been studied, worshipped, and used since the beginning of human time. We repress the emotions nature arouses in us, indicative of our deep attachment to it, so that we can study it in a more detached scientific way, but the emotions inevitably return. We court them in appreciative outings in nature, tamed in parks or wild in virginal forests, like those in the Northwest where Chihuly grew up and lives. They intensely and irrepressibly return in Chihuly’s Venetian series, the multifaced “artificial paradise” that Baudelaire said the best art is.

Donald Kuspit is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Art History and Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His most recent book is “Psychodrama: Modern Art as Group Therapy” (London: Ziggurat Press, 2011).

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Drawings "I want to emphasize how important the drawings came to be in determining what I wanted to make. While the team and I are working, I can walk over to the drawing board and begin to draw. Being able to move back and forth between the pad and the drawing table is what really allowed the series to move so quickly...

Drawing is a fluid process, just like glassblowing." — Chihuly

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Dale Chihuly, 1995 15

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Venetian Drawing 22 x 30�

1988

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Venetian Drawing 30 x 22�

1989

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Venetian Drawing 30 x 22�

1990

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Venetian Drawing 42 x 30�

1993

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Venetian Drawing 42 x 30�

1993

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Venetian Drawing 22 x 30�

1995

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Venetian Drawing 30 x 22�

1998

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Venetian Drawing 30 x 22�

2007

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Venetian Drawing 30 x 22�

2008

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Piccolo Venetians "The Venetians are such a technical tour de force you’re limited to what you can do if you’re working at this huge scale. There's a lot you can't do—it's just too big to handle. We were working so big we were restricting ourselves. I decided we'd go all the way back and make them small. I call them the Piccolo Venetians."

— Chihuly

Venetian Drawing 22 x 30” 1995 34

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Orange Piccolo Venetian with Black Leaf and Coils 14 x 5 x 5" 1994

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Silvered Gilded Wild Rose Piccolo 16 x 6 x 6�

2000

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Silvered Sea Blue Piccolo Venetian with Burgundy Gilded Handles 17 x 10 x 10" 2009

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Silvered Aquamarine Piccolo Venetian with Magenta Flowers 15 x 11 x 11" 2009

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Venetians "Lino [Tagliapietra] had been coming to Pilchuck for years, but I had never worked with European masters. My work had always been unorthodox and asymmetrical, and the idea of working with a European master didn't make sense. But Lino and I decided that we'd try to do something together, so I designed a series that was a take-off from some Venetian Art Deco pieces I had seen from the 1920s. I was able to sketch them, and from those sketches, Lino began to work. We had a great time putting these together....I was lucky to have not only Lino, one of the really extraordinary glass masters of the world, but also Ben Moore, who speaks Italian. Benny would organize the teams and Lino would be the mentor. From there, we'd put together anywhere from twelve to eighteen glassblowers, primarily from Seattle, to do the most extreme pieces I felt like imagining." — Chihuly

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Dale Chihuly and Lino Tagliapietra, 1989

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Silvered Clear Venetian with Three Fiddleheads 19 x 16 x 8�

1989

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Purple Lake Venetian 25 x 20 x 9�

1988

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Rembrandt Rose #90 Venetian 20 x 13 x 13" 1989

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Olive Green Venetian with Orange Flower 32 x 10 x 13" 1990

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Silver Blue Venetian 20 x 10 x 9" 1990

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Red Orange Venetian with Lily and Coil 37 x 12 x 10" 1991

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Cassel Yellow Venetian with Gilded Lapis Lazuli Leaves 30 x 16 x 15�

2002

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Mottled Ochre and Indigo Venetian with Prunts 15 x 20 x 20�

2008

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Silvered Venetian with Saturn Orange Flowers 43 x 16 x 12�

2009

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Galena Blue Venetian with Blue and Gold Ridges and Flowers 24 x 16 x 16�

2010

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Muted Emerald Venetian 30 x 11 x 12" 2011

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Pansy Violet Venetian 23 x 11 x 11" 2011

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White Venetian 22 x 16 x 16" 2011

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DALE CHIHULY 1941 Born September 20 in Tacoma, Washington, to George Chihuly and Viola Magnuson Chihuly.

1965 Receives B.A. in Interior Design from University of Washington.

In his basement studio, Chihuly blows his first glass bubble by melting stained glass and using a metal pipe.

1966 Works as a commercial fisherman in Alaska. Enters University of Wisconsin at Madison and studies glassblowing in the first glass program in the United States, taught by Harvey Littleton.

1967 Receives M.S. in Sculpture from University of Wisconsin. Enrolls at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, where he begins exploration of environmental works using neon, argon, and blown glass. Awarded a Louis Chihuly Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant for work in glass.

Italo Scanga, then teaching in Pennsylvania State University’s Art Department, lectures at RISD, and the two start a lifelong friendship.

1968 Receives M.F.A. in Ceramics from RISD. A Fulbright Fellowship enables him to travel and work in Europe later in the year. Spends the first of four consecutive summers teaching at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine. Becomes the first American

glassblower to work in the Venini factory on the island of Murano.

1969 Returns to Europe and meets glass masters Erwin Eisch in Germany and Jaroslava Brychtová and Stanislav Libenský in Czechoslovakia.

Established the glass program at RISD, where he teaches for the next eleven years.

of Ice and Neon, Glass Forest #1, and Glass Forest #2 with James Carpenter, installations that prefigure later environmental works by Chihuly.

1972 Collaborates with James Carpenter on more large-scale architectural projects. They create Rondel Door and Cast Glass Door at Pilchuck and Dry Ice, Bent Glass and Neon, a conceptual breakthrough, in Providence.

1974 Working at Pilchuck with James Carpenter and a group of students, with the support of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, he develops a technique to pick up glass thread drawings to incorporate into larger glass pieces. In December at RISD, he completes his last collaborative project with Carpenter, Corning Wall.

at the Venini Fabrica, Murano, Italy, 1969 1970 Meets James Carpenter, a student in RISD Illustration Department, and they begin a fouryear collaboration.

1971 On the site of a tree farm owned by Seattle art patrons Anne Gould Hauberg and John Hauberg, the Pilchuck Glass School experiment is started. Pilchuck Pond, Chihuly’s first environmental installation at the school, is created that summer. In fall, at RISD, he makes 20,000 Pounds 72

1975 At RISD, begins Navajo Blanket Cylinder series. Kate Elliott and, later, Flora C. Mace fabricate the complex thread drawings. He receives the first of two National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist grants. Artistin-residence with Seaver Leslie at Artpark, on the Niagara Gorge, in New York State. Begins Irish Cylinders and Ulysses Cylinders with Leslie and Mace.

1976 An automobile accident in England leaves him, after weeks in the hospital and 256 stitches in his

face, without sight in his left eye and with permanent damage to his right ankle and foot. After recuperating, he returns to Providence to serve as head of the Department of Sculpture and the Program in Glass at RISD. Henry Geldzahler, curator of contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, acquires three Navajo Blanket Cylinders for the museum’s collection — a turning point in Chihuly’s career and the start of a friendship between artist and curator.

1977 Inspired by Northwest Coast Indian baskets he sees at Washington State History Museum in Tacoma, begins the Basket series at Pilchuck, with Benjamin Moore as gaffer.

Continues teaching in both Rhode Island and the Pacific Northwest.

1978 Meets Pilchuck student William Morris, and the two begin a close, eight-year working relationship. A solo show curated by Michael W. Monroe at the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C., is another career milestone.

1979 Dislocates his shoulder in a bodysurfing accident and relinquishes the gaffer position for good. William Morris becomes his chief gaffer for several years.

1980 Resigns his teaching position at RISD but returns periodically in the 80s as artist in-residence.

Begins Seaform series at Pilchuck.

In Providence, creates another architectural installation: windows for Shaare Emeth Synagogue in St. Louis, Missouri.

1981

Begins Macchia series.

1982 First major catalog is published: Chihuly Glass, designed

by RISD colleague and friend Malcolm Grear.

1983 Returns to Pacific Northwest after sixteen years on East Coast.

Further develops Macchia series at Pilchuck in fall and winter, with William Morris as chief gaffer.

1984 Begins work on Soft Cylinder series, with Flora C. Mace and Joey Kirkpatrick executing the glass drawings. Honored as RISD President’s Fellow at the Whitney Museum in New York.

team of glassblowers at Pilchuck, begins Putti series. With Tagliapietra, Chihuly creates Ikebana series, inspired by travels to Japan and exposure to ikebana masters.

1990 Purchases historic Pocock Building on Lake Union, realizing his dream of being on the water in Seattle. Renovated and renamed The Boathouse, it serves as studio, hotshop, and archives. Returns to Japan.

1985 Purchases the Buffalo Shoe Company Building on the east side of Lake Union in Seattle and begins restoring it for use as a primary studio and residence.

1986 Begins Persian series with Martin Blank as gaffer, assisted by Robbie Miller. With Dale Chihuly Objets de Verre at Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Palais du Louvre, in Paris, he becomes the fourth American artist to have a one-person exhibition at the Louvre.

1987 Establishes his first hotshop in Van de Kamp Building near Lake Union in Seattle. Donates permanent collection to Tacoma Art Museum in memory of his brother and father.

Marries playwright Sylvia Peto.

1988 Inspired by a private collection of Italian Art Deco glass, Chihuly begins Venetian series.

Working from Chihuly’s Drawings, Lino Tagliapietra serves as gaffer.

1989 With Italian glass masters Lino Tagliapietra, Pino Signoretto, and a 73

Dale Chihuly and Lino Tagliapietra, 1989 ” ...After a couple of days the pieces became much more involved. It wasn’t long before something started to happen. It opened first in the drawings.... around the fourth or fifth day I started to make bold drawings in charcoal. The series started a drastic change from rather refined classical shapes to very bizarre pieces: handles changed to knots, prunts became claws, colors went from subtle to bright, big leaves and feathers appeared.”

1991 Begins Niijima Float series with Richard Royal as gaffer, creating some of the largest pieces of glass ever blown by hand. Completes architectural installations. He and Sylvia Peto divorce.

1992 Begins Chandelier series with a hanging sculpture at Seattle Art Museum. Designs sets for Seattle Opera’s 1993 production of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.

1993 With Lino Tagliapietra, begins Piccolo Venetian series. Creates 100,000 Pounds of Ice and Neon, a temporary installation in Tacoma Dome.

1994 Creates five installations for Tacoma’s Union Station Federal Courthouse. Supports Hilltop Artists, a glassblowing program in Tacoma for at-risk youths, created by friend Kathy Kaperick. Within two years, the program partners with Tacoma Public School District.

1995 Chihuly Over Venice begins with a glassblowing session in Nuutajärvi, Finland, and subsequent blow at Waterford Crystal factory, Ireland.

1996 After a blow in Monterrey, Mexico, Chihuly Over Venice culminates with fifteen Chandeliers installed around Venice. Creates his first permanent outdoor installation, Icicle Creek Chandelier.

1997 Expands series of experimental plastics he calls Polyvitro. An installation of Chihuly’s work opens at Hakone Glass Forest, Ukai Museum, in Hakone, Japan.

Dale Chihuly, Palazzetto Stern Chandelier, 1996, 12’6” x 5’11”, Venice, Italy 74

1998 Participates in Sydney Arts Festival in Australia. A son, Jackson Viola Chihuly, is born February 12 to Dale Chihuly and Leslie Jackson.

Creates architectural installations for Benaroya Hall, Seattle; Bellagio, Las Vegas; and Atlantis, Bahamas.

1999 Begins Jerusalem Cylinder series with gaffer James Mongrain.

Mounts an ambitious exhibition, Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem 2000, at Tower of David Museum of the History of Jerusalem. Builds a sixty-foot wall outside from twentyfour massive blocks of ice shipped from Alaska.

2000 Creates La Tour de Lumière sculpture as part of Contemporary American Sculpture exhibition in Monte Carlo. More than one million visitors enter Tower of David Museum to see Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem 2000, breaking the world attendance record for a temporary exhibition during 1999–2000.

2001 Chihuly at the V&A opens at Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Groups a series of Chandeliers for the first time, as an installation for Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

Presents his first major glasshouse exhibition, Chihuly in the Park: A Garden of Glass, at Garfield Park Conservatory, Chicago. Artist Italo Scanga dies after more than three decades as friend and mentor.

2002 Creates installations for Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City. Chihuly Bridge of Glass, conceived by Chihuly and designed in collaboration with Arthur Andersson of Andersson•Wise Architects, is dedicated in Tacoma.

2003 Begins Fiori series with gaffer Joey DeCamp for opening exhibition at Tacoma Art Museum's new building. Museum designs a permanent space for its Chihuly artwork. Chihuly at the Conservatory opens at Franklin Park Conservatory, Columbus, Ohio.

2004 Orlando Museum of Art and Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida, become first museums to collaborate and present complementary exhibitions of Chihuly’s artwork. Installs glasshouse and outdoor exhibition at Atlanta Botanical Garden.

2005 Marries Leslie Jackson. Installs major garden exhibition at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, outside London. Exhibits at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, Coral Gables, Florida.

2006 Mother, Viola, dies at age ninety-eight in Tacoma. Begins Black series with a Cylinder blow.

Presents exhibitions at Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, and New York Botanical Garden. Chihuly in Tacoma—hotshop sessions at Museum of Glass—reunites Chihuly and glassblowers from important periods of his career.

2007 Exhibits at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, Pittsburgh. Creates stage set for Seattle Symphony’s production of Béla Bartók’s opera Bluebeard’s Castle.

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2008 Presents major exhibition at de Young Museum, San Francisco.

Travels to Rhode Island for exhibition at RISD Museum of Art. Exhibits at Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix.

2009 Begins Silvered series. Presents garden exhibition at Franklin Park Conservatory, Columbus, Ohio.

Participates in 53rd Venice Biennale with Mille Fiori Venezia installation.

Creates largest commission with multiple installations at island resort of Sentosa, Singapore.

2010 Exhibits outdoors at Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. Presents exhibitions at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, Nashville.

2011 Holds exhibitions at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Tacoma Art Museum.

2012 Exhibits at Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden. Chihuly Garden and Glass, a long-term exhibition, opens at Seattle Center.

Exhibits at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond.

2013 Montreal Museum of Fine Arts holds exhibition of Chihuly art.

Schantz Galleries is proud to publish Chihuly Venetians to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the series by Dale Chihuly.

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Thank you

to Dale Chihuly for your continued creativity and your grand vision and imagination, which has inspired and thrilled people all over the world.

Jim Schantz and Kim Saul Schantz Galleries 2013

Thank you to to Andy Schlauch and Susan Marabito for helpinng us to choose the artwork and to Ken Clark, Rebecca Heck, Goretti Kaomora, Tiffany Moss, and Sara Peil for assistance with proofing and editing of this publication.

Artwork Photographers: David Emery, Claire Garoutte, Robin E. Kimmerling, Scott Mitchell Leen, Teresa Nouri Rishel, Chuck Taylor Design by: Kim Saul Š 2013 Schantz Galleries Stockbridge, Massachusetts Tel (413)298-3044 www.schantzgalleries.com ISBN: 978-0-9857380-0-6

Notes: From Essay by Donald Kuspit (1)Quoted in Hugh Honour and John Fleming, The Venetian Hours of Henry James, Whistler and Sargent (Boston and London: Little, Brown, 1991), 105 (2)Quoted in Ibid., 48 (3)Hans Sedlmayr, Art in Crisis: The Lost Centre (London: Hollis & Carter, 1957), 91-92 (4)Ibid., 164 (5)Ibid., 190 page 14: From an unpublished statement: Venetians: Dale Chihuly page 34: From video: Chihuly and the Masters of Venice, 2001 page 44: From video: Seattle Art Museum, AK Productions 1992 page 73: From Venetians: Dale Chihuly, published by Portland Press 1989 Details: Front and back covers: Silvered Clear Venetian with Three Fiddleheads on page 47 page 2: Silvered Gilded Wild Rose Piccolo Venetian with Curls on page 38 page 5: Mottled Ochre and Indigo Venetian with Prunts on page 60 page 6: Silvered Aquamarine Piccolo Venetian with Magenta Flowers on page 42 page 9: Galena Blue Venetian with Blue and Gold Ridges and Flowers on page 65 page 10: Silvered Venetian with Saturn Orange Flowers on page 62

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Chihuly Venetians

A Silver Anniversary Celebration of Dale Chihuly’s Venetian Series 1988–2013 All artwork images © Chihuly Studio

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