Concepts and Aesthetics

Activity: Participating in or organising an event typesParticipation in conference

Description

an international conference dedicated to mod- ern and contemporary glass art that has experienced a multifaceted development from the revival of Venice’s traditional glass techniques at the beginning of the 20th century to the Studio Glass Movement and New Glass from the 1960s to the present. The conference is jointly organized by the Vitrocentre and Vitromusée Romont, the Institute of Art History of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini and Le Stanze del Vetro. It will take place in conjunction with the exhibition “Iconic Pieces. Verres emblématiques de Venise” co-organized by the above-- mentioned institutions and shown at Vitromusée Romont. The art of glassmaking on the island of Murano experienced a revival from the end of the 19th century with its various hot and cold techniques and important glass manufactories such as Barovier & Toso, Seguso Vetri d’Arte or Venini & C. 20th and 21st Glass art is characterised by a new sense of tradition and continuity, but also by ruptures. Since the Studio Glass Movement in the 1960s, pioneered by Harvey Littleton (1922–2013) in the USA and Erwin Eisch (1927–2022) in Zwiesel (Germany), international glass artists have been able to break with the conventional under- standing of glass as a material in terms of design, aesthetics and function. While the artistically designed glass objects of early Studio Glass artists often still had functions of everyday use or were figurative/abstract sculptures, the international glass art scene today is characterised by greater material, medial and technical diversity. Today, glass art shows different facets: such as illusionistic design possibilities, the combination with other materials and media – such as wood, metal, iron, photography and film – or the creation of spatial installations. However, glass art has not only undergone an aesthetic but also a functional change and is also used as a means of questioning current topics and development such as globalisation, climate change, sustainability or socio-political crisis.
This conference is dedicated to questions related to major centres of glass art such as Venice, Scandinavia or the USA, as well as more peripheral places of production in order to examine the modern and contemporary glass as a global phenomenon.
Period22 Sept 2023
Event typeConference
LocationRomont, SwitzerlandShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational