Masters of Studio Glass: Richard Craig Meitner
April 4–October 18, 2009
West Bridge
The intellectual, poetic, and always changing work of the American artist Richard Craig Meitner (b. 1949) reflects a variety of influences and ideas, from Japanese textiles and Italian painting and applied arts to science and the natural world. The colorless glass surfaces of his quixotic objects often incorporate assorted materials such as rust, enamel, bronze, tile, paint, and print. Meitner revels in unusual juxtapositions of forms and ideas, in unanswered questions, and in the intersections between art and science.
"Perhaps we can say that art and science are attempts, by very different methods, to get at the same truths. Both are directed at finding out more about ourselves, and the universe we inhabit, by studying and recording. Science attempts to explain the universe by assuming causality, linear time, and the existence of hidden rules or patterns which, if diligent enough, we can discover and understand. Art attempts to explain the universe more intuitively, emotionally, and even magically. Science depends largely on the genius of the intellect, and art on the genius of the spirit."
—Richard Craig Meitner, Glass Art Society Journal (2001), p. 66.
Meitner's aim in making images and objects, he says, is to create moments of astonishment and surprise, “magical” moments when the viewer, questioning what he or she is seeing, begins to think about things and the relationships between them in new ways. “Magic,” he says, “is a moment in which something happens that does not fit into your belief system.” When you are not thinking along established neural paths, you are thinking creatively.
Meitner’s desire to change the ways in which things are perceived and his on-going pursuit of beauty link him with the French Surrealists, who also worked in the realm of the marvelous (la merveille), where beauty was convulsive, a force of power and meaning. Meitner’s objects are related to the Surrealists’ “object-poems,” universes unto themselves where the physics of poetry reigns.
Through his work, Meitner does not aim to make statements about anything and he is not trying to tell the viewer what he knows. Rather, Meitner is trying to communicate what he does not know, and he does so using pictures rather than words. For him, art functions as it ideally should, which is as a place where where questions are asked and not necessarily answered, a place where any and all things may be considered. If you think you understand Meitner’s objects at first glance, you need to look again.
“Masters of Studio Glass: Richard Craig Meitner” showcases a range of the artist’s work that is held in the Museum’s permanent collection, which includes early blown vessels, with graphic images made of fired enamels, to later multi-media sculptures. The 30 objects in the exhibition, dating from 1978 to 2001, span 23 years of the artist’s prolific career, and they show the many facets of Meitner’s artistic vision. The exhibition also presents one of Meitner’s installations, a series of four sculptures titled Ognico/Sahala/Suasta/Gione (For Everything There is a Season). This installation on the theme of the four seasons was commissioned for the Venezia Aperto Vetro exhibition in Venice, Italy in 1998.
Richard Craig Meitner was born in 1949 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Inspired by the career of his great-aunt, the famous Austrian physicist Lise Meitner (1878-1968), and other scientists in his family, he began his university studies in science. However, Meitner ended up completing his undergraduate coursework in 1972 with a degree in fine arts from the University of California at Berkeley. Later that year, he traveled to Amsterdam for postgraduate study at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, one of the few European art academies offering instruction in glass. Thirty-seven years later, Meitner continues to live and work in Amsterdam, where he has maintained an independent studio since 1976. From 1981 to 2000, he was the head of the glass program at the Rietveld Academie with Dutch artist Mieke Groot.
Meitner has exhibited, lectured, and taught workshops in Australia, the United States, Japan, Sweden and much of Western Europe. His work is represented in 48 museum collections worldwide, including the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York; Detroit Institute of the Arts, Detroit, Michigan; Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo, Japan; Musée de Design et d’Arts Appliqués Contemporains, Lausanne Switzerland; Musée des Arts Décoratifs du Louvre, Paris, France; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Museo Vetrario, Murano, Italy; Museum Boymans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Museum für Kunsthandwerk, Frankfurt, Germany; Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York; Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague, Czech Republic; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom.
Summer of Contemporary Glass
Masters of Studio Glass: Richard Craig Meitner is one of three exhibitions of contemporary glass
on view at the Museum this summer. Learn more about the other exhibitions: