A rejuvenating balm for winter-battered bones and spirits can be found in the Baltimore Museum of Art’s exhibition of tropical flavored, candy colored and delightfully fanciful glass sculptures by the Seattle artist Dale Chihuly, an unrivaled master of his medium.
The museum describes the 5,500-square-foot, 100-work assemblage as “magical” and “a fantastic environmental experience.” In this instance, that’s less hyperbole than understatement. Chihuly not only makes his pieces exude warmth and dazzlement; he seems somehow able to transform these deftly crafted glass objects into living things.
A walk through the installation called “Macchia Forest” is like a stroll upon another planet–one populated by irresistibly beautiful flora that seem capable of every happy and affectionate emotion. His “Sea Forms” are as fascinating as the underwater life surrounding a Caribbean reef, which they much evoke.
Another, even more other-worldly feature of this show is the kaleidoscopic, transparent tunnel called “Persian Pergola.” Chihuly’s bizarre “Nijima Floats”–glorious spheres of lustrous sheen weighing up to 80 pounds and measuring as much as 3 1/2 feet across–make you want to hug them, or climb aboard one and sail off to those fabled lands of children’s books.
Chihuly grew up in Washington State, but acquired his master of science degree in sculpture from the University of Wisconsin and his master of fine arts degree at the Rhode Island School of Design.
He went from that place to Murano, Italy–which is to glass what Paris is to painting–and studied at the Venini Fabrica as the first recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship in the study of glass.
The artist eventually returned to Seattle and founded the Pilchuck Glass School, leading a movement that has made that city the American counterpart to Italy in the art of glass.
BMA Director Arnold Lehman called Chihuly “the artist who … elevated glass to a material of fine arts.”
The show opens Wednesday and closes April 28 at the museum (Art Museum Drive at North Charles and 31st Street, Baltimore; 410-396-7100). It will later travel to the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Dixon Gallery in Memphis.
Also on display at the BMA are 86 pictures from the 1920s through the 1950s by the great Depression photographer Dorothea Lange. It closes March 31.
Modern Japan
The rich cultural traditions of Japan’s classical past permeate the otherwise contemporary prints on view in “Shin-Hanga: New Prints in Modern Japan” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
“Modern art” arose in Japan not long after it did in Europe and the United States–though more in terms of design than themes. Japanese artists such as Watanabe Shozaburo (1885-1962) sought to wed old to new by combining modern design with the ancient craft of woodblock painting.
As a result, you will find in this sublimely uplifting show a portrait of a traditional Japanese woman in kimono–smoking a cigarette with all the decadent nonchalance of a Marlene Dietrich.
LACMA (5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles; 213-857-6000) is exhibiting 106 such marvelous pieces, but in two stages. The first group, on view through March 31, focuses on the technique of these early 20th-Century artists, as applied to the forms of birds, flowers and beautiful women. The second, exhibited from April 7 through June 16, embraces romanticized landscapes and townscapes.
Ancient art
There is no more spiritual moment in Christian theology than the crucifixion of Christ. It is the subject of 18 extraordinary illuminated manuscript illustrations, both Medieval and Renaissance, on exhibit through April 7 (Easter) at California’s Getty Museum (17985 Pacific Coast Hwy., Malibu; 310-458-2003).
These priceless, ancient pages are remarkable not only for their powerful religious imagery and preserved state, but for the wide variety of visual interpretation of the Crucifixion. Some lend an air of ordinariness to the holy circumstance–one Bavarian miniature of the 15th Century showing Roman soldiers casting lots over Christ’s clothing–while others imbue the scene with divine awe. One 16th Century artist moved Calvary to the German countryside.
Liquid art
Dutch tavern drinkers (quite a jolly lot of them) and other mundane characters of the 17th-Century Netherlands beckon in the Taft Museum (316 Pike St., Cincinnati; 513-241-0343) show, “Adriaen van Ostade: Etchings of Peasant Life in Holland’s Golden Age,” which runs Feb. 23 through April 21.
Ostade (1610-1665) was a pupil of Frans Hals and a contemporary of the great Rembrandt, who was also a brilliant etcher. They seemed to share a convivial nature as well.
A later Dutch painter, Vincent Van Gogh, depicted peasants as far more miserable folk than these.
Tres vivid
With its historic Vermeer exhibition closing Sunday, Washington’s National Gallery of Art has opened the wonderful Louis-Leopold Boilly show of paintings from Napoleonic France that proved so popular last year in its premier venue at Ft. Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum. Highly popular in his time, Boilly crafted vivid, lively, polished canvasses with subjects ranging from revolutionary street scenes to the domestic life of the well to do. His small children are near monsters, his ladies are splendors of loveliness and one is made to wonder why the world of fashion ever tried to improve on the empire gown.
The show runs through April 28 at the Gallery, Washington’s premier art museum (Fourth Street and Constitution Ave., N.W.; 202-737-4215).
New York view
“Picturing Gotham: New York City Through the Eyes of Its Artists” is a remarkably wide-ranging collection of largely affectionate views of America’s greatest urban artistic subject, with works dating from the 19th Century to such modern era pieces as Thomas Hart Benton’s 1927 “New York Today” skyscraper epic and Edward Hopper’s ghostly 1921 “Night Shadows.” It runs through March 2 at the Hirschl & Adler Galleries (21 E. 70th St.; 212-535-8810).
Man vs. God
Broadway is creaking with another load of musical revivals this season, but a classic drama–performed by two great veteran actors–is being revived too. “Inherit the Wind,” a fictionalized interpretation of the historic 1925 Scopes Monkey trial of Darwinism vs. Creationism, is being staged by New York’s National Actors Theatre, with George C. Scott and Charles Durning playing Henry Drummond (Clarence Darrow) and Matthew Harrison Brady (William Jennings Bryan).
Though they took place nearly three quarters of a century ago, the events that inspired this play rage again today in political debate and school board meeting room. It’s entirely apt.
The drama will be performed from March 18 through April 14 at the Royale Theater (242 W. 45th St.; 212-239-6200). Preview performances start Feb. 27.
