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Louis Comfort Tiffany:
Artist for the Ages
October 15, 2006 - January 15,
2007
A comprehensive exhibition
and examination of the works of Louis Comfort Tiffany will be on view at
Carnegie Museum of Art October 15, 2006 - January 15, 2007. Louis Comfort
Tiffany: Artist for the Ages features more than 130 works of art in
a wide range of media including stained glass windows, Favrile glass, mosaics,
enamels, ceramics, paintings, photography, metalwork, furniture, and jewelry.
Carnegie Museum of Art is the final stop on the national tour of this historic
exhibition, which was organized by Exhibitions International and Marilynn
A. Johnson, former curator of American decorative arts at The Metropolitan
Museum of Art. It is the only venue on the tour to exhibit Tiffany's over-sized
bi-fold door from the Mark Twain House, which has not been on view outside
of the Hartford, CN, house since 1958.
Born in 1848, Tiffany was the eldest son of Charles Lewis
Tiffany, founder of the luxury goods and jewelry store Tiffany & Co.
While it was expected that he involve himself with the family business,
Louis Comfort Tiffany preferred to study painting, the first of many careers.
During his lifetime, Tiffany was also an interior decorator, landscape designer,
architect, and designer of decorative arts in all media including glass,
ceramic, metal, wood, fabric, and paper. Though not a craftsman, Tiffany
was a perfectionist who hired the very best men and women artisans to work
in his studios.
Tiffany learned marketing and entrepreneurship from his
father. "We are going after the money there is in art, but the art
is there, all the same," said Tiffany to Candace Wheeler, one of his
partners. His participation in the international exhibitions of the
time -- in cities like Philadelphia, Paris, Chicago, and Turin, Italy --
made Tiffany and his work widely known in the United States and abroad.
In 1865, Tiffany took the first of many tours to Europe
and North Africa; these experiences provided a foundation for the themes
exemplified in this exhibition and that ran throughout his work: nature,
the Near and Far East, antiques and archaeology, and abstraction. Tiffany's
innovative aesthetic bridged and transcended the avant-garde trends of the
late 19th century-the Aesthetic Movement, the Arts and Crafts Movement,
and Art Nouveau. With the modern aesthetic of the post World War I world,
however, Tiffany's designs were considered out-of-date, and by the time
of his death in 1933 he was nearly forgotten.
Renewed interest in Tiffany's work by collectors and scholars,
such as Museum of Modern Art design curator Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., furniture
designer Edward Wormley, and art historian Robert Koch, surfaced in the
post World War II years. Museums like The Museum of Modern Art added Tiffany
to their collections and by the late 1960s, entertainers such as the Beatles,
Paul Simon, and Barbra Streisand were acquiring Tiffany's work. Today Tiffany's
reputation as a great master is beyond dispute.
Louis Comfort Tiffany: Artist for the Ages is divided into three themes:
- Nature Is Always Beautiful
-
- Tiffany was an avid naturalist who relied upon nature
as a renewing source of inspiration. This section features objects representing
Earth, Marine Life, Winged Creatures, and Flowers,
including a necklace made of gold and nephrite that denotes grapes on a
vine; Pushing Off the Boat, Seabright, New Jersey, 1887,
a fishing scene; a stained glass lamp with dragonfly motif made between
1900-1910; and a Morning Glory Vase, c. 1905, made with a complex
technique developed by Tiffany Studios where five kinds of glass were blended
resulting in a radial pattern of colored whorls.
-
- Light Comes from the East
-
- "Orientalism," was a fascination of Westerners
in the late 19th and early 20th century, and Tiffany adopted the stylized
ornament of Arab and Asian cultures in his work. Objects like a Favrile
glass scent bottle, c. 1900, inlaid with gold and precious stones; a gourd-shaped
vase, c. 1906; a "Spiderweb" wallpaper design from 1881; and
an armchair made from the wood of a holly tree, 1879, all suggest the arts
of the Near and Far East.
-
- Time Is the Measure of All Things
-
- During Tiffany's lifetime, ancient history and archeology
had enormous public appeal. In this period, Heinrich Schliemann set out
to unearth Homer's Troy, New York was installing its gift from Egypt, "Cleopatra's
Needle," a c. 1500 BCE obelisk, and Howard Carter opened the tomb
of Egyptian king Tutankhamun. Tiffany studied the antiquities that were
unearthed, then borrowed their design and reproduced their iridescence.
His "Cypriote" glass, for instance, imitated the pitted surface
of long-buried glass, and his electroplated ceramic vase with scarabs adopted
a popular motif from the ancient world.
While he delighted in the aesthetic of ancient cultures,
Tiffany could also be viewed as a modernist, particularly with his glass
objects. He appreciated the accidental and random effects that occurred
during the production of a work of art-often departing from traditional
glassmaking, and he manufactured interchangeable pieces that could be used
in various ways using modern industrial methods. "This love of the
controlled accident," said Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. in 1955, "is one
of Tiffany's strong links to the modern design of our age."
Catalogue
A 240-page, fully illustrated catalogue by curator Marilynn
Johnson accompanies the exhibition and is available for purchase at the
museum store or at www.cmoa.org <http://www.cmoa.org/>.
Tour
Louis Comfort Tiffany: Artist for the Ages opened at the Seattle Art Museum (October 13, 2005 - January 4,
2006), then traveled to the Toledo Museum of Art (February 2 - April 30,
2006) and the Dallas Museum of Art (May 30 - September 3, 2006), before
concluding at Carnegie Museum of Art.

(above: Louis Comfort Tiffany, American, 1848-1933, View
of Cairo, c. 1872, oil on canvas. Private collection)

(above: Louis Comfort Tiffany, American, 1848-1933, Egyptian
Pyramids Framed by Temple Columns, 1908, watercolor on paper. Private
collection)

(above: Louis Comfort Tiffany, American, 1848-1933, Window
Panel: Anniversary, 1891, Leaded glass, 26 1/2 x 21 3/4 inches. Mark
Twain House and Museum, Hartford, CT)

(above: Louis Comfort Tiffany, American, 1848-1933, Window
with Garden Landscape, 1902-1920, Leaded Glass, 37 x 65 1/2 x 4 inches.
From the Richard H. Driehaus Collection, Illinois)

(above: Louis Comfort Tiffany, American, 1848-1933, Window
Panel with Swimming Fish, c. 1890, Leaded glass, oak frame, 48 1/2 x
36 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches. The Mark Twain House & Museum, Hartford, CT)

(above: Louis Comfort Tiffany, American, 1848-1933, Enamel
Box Cover, c. 1900, Copper, enamel, glass, 7 7/8 x 5 3/4 x 1 1/4 inches.
Courtesy of Lillian Nassau Ltd., New York)
Wall text from the exhibition
- Louis Comfort Tiffany: Artist for the Ages
-
- Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) is the first American
artist to achieve iconic status through the creation of decorative arts
objects. Although trained as a painter, Tiffany focused his genius on the
applied arts; and his signature style, instantly recognizable in his stained
glass windows, lampshades, and iridescent glass vases, synthesized and
transcended the European avant-garde movements of the late 19th century.
-
- Tiffany was able to distill and meld aspects from the
major currents shaping the art of Europe. He combined the Aesthetic Movement's
pursuit of pure beauty, the Gothic Revival's dedication to medieval art,
the Arts and Crafts Movement's reverence for the handmade object, Art Nouveau's
embrace of nature, and the popular fascination with all things Japanese
inspired by newly established trade relationships with Japan. He was a
major force in bridging the traditional divide between art and craft.
-
- Well educated and well traveled, with the advantage of
connections to Tiffany & Co., his father's important silver and jewelry
company, Louis Comfort Tiffany witnessed a resurgent interest in decorative
arts while still a young man. By 1879 he was decorating the homes of the
rich and famous; and glass-windows, mosaics, and lighting fixtures-was
a prominent element in his sumptuous interiors.
-
- From the 1880s to the 1920s, Tiffany's various companies
produced a wide range of offerings, from furniture to textiles, enamels,
metalwork, art pottery, and jewelry. Objects of his design are remarkable
in their diversity, impressive in their originality, often radical in technique,
but most of all surpassingly beautiful in their jewel-like colors and shimmering
light. On view here are more than 135 artworks arranged according to several
important themes in Tiffany's work (nature, Eastern cultures, antiquity,
and abstraction).
-
- Although Tiffany's fame usually is associated with stained-glass
windows and lampshades, and to a lesser degree iridescent glass vessels,
these masterworks are best understood and appreciated when viewed along
with his work in other media. Louis Comfort Tiffany: Artist for the
Ages explores the full range of Tiffany's production, revealing his
unified vision and lifelong pursuit of a utopian world of beauty.
-
-
- Nature Is Always Beautiful
-
- Tiffany adopted as his motto the simple adage, "Nature
is always beautiful." He confronted the natural world directly, in
all its aspects. This was a lesson learned by countless European and American
artists fascinated by the Japanese prints, porcelains, lacquerware, and
metalwork flooding the European market in the 1860s and 1870s, as a result
of newly opened trade between Japan and the West.
-
- As an avid naturalist, Tiffany delighted in the discoveries
of marine biology. He was entranced by botany, too; flowers and plants,
both common and exotic, abound in his work, as do the ripe fruits that
symbolize abundance. When he turned his attention to the animal kingdom,
he was drawn to winged creatures -- birds and insects -- that occupy the
zone between earth and sky. The tantalizing iridescence of their wings
and feathers was a quality that he emulated in his glass. Finally, Tiffany's
fascination with the art of ancient cultures and geological events inspired
stunning objects whose surfaces imitate the luster of semiprecious stones
and volcanic magma.
-
-
- Light Comes from the East
-
- In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Europeans
and Americans were fascinated with the exoticism and opulence of Eastern
cultures (a phenomenon known as Orientalism). Tiffany was no exception.
Never a slavish imitator, Tiffany used Asian motifs as a starting point
for the formation of a personal design vocabulary.
-
- His interest in Japanese art influenced his approach
to nature as well as his choice of ornament. He borrowed and reinterpreted
shapes, patterns, and techniques from Chinese ceramics. He adopted the
art of glass mosaic that he had seen in Byzantine churches. He used the
forms of Arab ornament in his early interiors and absorbed the richness
of pattern and color harmonies that he had discovered in his travels in
North Africa. Tiffany traveled extensively throughout the Middle East,
and he asked his friend and associate Lockwood de Forest to bring back
examples of intricately wrought jewelry, furniture, and decorative woodwork
from his travels to India in 1881.
-
-
- Time is the Measure of All Things: From the Past
-
- History was the dominant fascination of the 19th century.
The romance of archaeology, which brought to light evidence of the ancient
past in all its immediacy and complexity, captivated the public and especially
Tiffany. The antiquities of Egypt proved endlessly fascinating and inspired
many adaptations in his work.
-
- Excavations unearthed examples of ancient glass from
Egypt (particularly Tel El Amarna) and from the Roman world. Tiffany studied
these surviving vessels and admired the traces left by time on their surfaces.
Their exquisite iridescence was the random result of contact with minerals
in the soil, an effect Tiffany reproduced through his own innovations.
His iridescent glass caused a sensation in the art world and was widely
imitated.
-
-
- Time Is the Measure of All Things: Toward the Future
-
- Despite his delight in exoticism, penchant for ornament,
and disdain of much in modern art, Tiffany was himself in some ways a modernist.
Tiffany's work seems to reflect aesthetic precedents of modern trends in
two ways. First, his delight in accidental and random effects, such as
pinched forms, vibrant stripes, random dots, and vivid splashes of color
in glass, were radical departures from traditional glassmaking. These effects
were part of Tiffany's effort to explore the full potential of his medium.
-
- Second, he embraced functionalism in several forward-looking
designs. Functionalism and mass production are characteristic of a rational
strain of modernism. Despite the choice of the term "Favrile,"
which implied that his glass was handcrafted, Tiffany was neither nostalgic
for the past nor averse to using the means of modern industry. His companies
manufactured versatile pieces that could be assembled in various ways-he
recognized the economy of using interchangeable components.
-
-
- Tiffany's Legacy
-
- Unprepared to abandon the aesthetic principles of a lifetime,
Tiffany, who despised modernist art that openly challenged academic tradition,
found himself out of step with the post World War I world. Iridescent vases
and flowery glass lamp shades were by then considered remnants of a fussy
prewar world that was recalled with contempt and seemed eons away from
the streamlined modernity that beckoned. By the time of his death in 1933,
Louis Comfort Tiffany was nearly forgotten.
-
- Paradoxically, it would be two pioneers of modernism
who, after World War II, would look with fresh eyes at the work of Tiffany
and recognize in his achievement something that resonated with their own
concerns -- Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., a scholar and a founder of The Museum
of Modern Art, and decorator Edward Wormly. The general public soon responded
as well, making the name of Tiffany as renowned as the names of such well-loved
artists as Renoir or Monet. Tiffany's work began to be collected by The
Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the 21st century,
his greatness is again beyond dispute.
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