Art: Place for Glass

Stained-glass design has been on the decline for seven centuries, ever since its peak splendor in Chartres’ cathedral. Describing Chartres, Henry Adams said that “no other material, neither silk nor gold . . . can compare with translucent glass, and even the Ravenna mosaics or Chinese porcelains are darkness beside them.” Some modern artists have begun to rediscover this truth. Last week brought two ambitious shows of modern stained glass.

¶ In Recklinghausen, Germany, in a converted bomb shelter, 25 artists offered their experiments in stained glass for churches. Since more than 7,000 German churches were destroyed during World War II, these men may have plenty of commissions in the next decade. They favor abstract art, wedded to gothic glass techniques, and hope to woo churchmen away from the sweetly realistic style so long in fashion. The Netherlands’ Johann Thorn Prikker, who died in 1932, has done as much as any stained-glass designer to set the new direction for his German colleagues. He was represented in the show by two brilliant, semi-abstract windows: one with a dove to symbolize the Holy Spirit and the other with a fish to symbolize the Christ. More somber were Ignatius Geitel’s windows illustrating the Apocalypse, one of which showed an apocalyptic horseman with a greenish face, red hair and yellow halo.

¶ In Manhattan, a midtown gallery was showing stained glass by 18 living Americans, many of them well-known painters. Among the standouts was a rectangular abstraction by I. (for Irene) Rice Pereira, done in two layers of glass whose straight lines seemed to shift their positions whenever the viewer shifted his. Equally original, but with more feeling, was Peter Ostuni’s abstract evocation of three shadowy figures, composed mainly of cracked plaques and crushed chunks of colored glass melted directly onto a white pane.