Cityscape

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Object Name: 
Bowl
Title: 
Cityscape
Accession Number: 
82.4.8
Dimensions: 
Overall H: 23.2 cm, Diam (max): 45.6 cm
Location: 
On Display
Date: 
1981
Web Description: 
For Cityscape, Jay Musler (b. 1949) chose a spherical container blown of industrial Pyrex glass, which he cut in half. He then cut the rim of the hemisphere into a jagged edge, sandblasted it, and airbrushed it with oil paint. Cityscape evokes an urban landscape at sunset, the profiles of buildings uniformly darkened by the setting sun glowing red-orange in the distance. Although Musler is best known for his sculpture assembled from pieces of painted flat glass, Cityscape is one of his most widely recognized works. It is an excellent example of how studio glass artists have interpreted traditional domestic glass forms, such as the functional bowl, as sculpture. In an effort to dissociate sculpture in glass from craft, many contemporary artists have avoided using traditional containers. However, in Cityscape, the viewer respects the interior space as nonfunctional. The sculpture’s relatively large size and its combination of decorative techniques reflect new trends in studio glassmaking in the 1980s.
Provenance: 
Musler, Jay (American, b. 1949), Source
1981-05-27
Color: 
Inscription: 
c Jay Musler CORCSG
signature
Primary Description: 
Glass; blown, cut, sandblasted and airbrushed oil paint.
Color Ignited: Glass 1962-2012
Venue(s)
Toledo Museum of Art 2012-06-14 through 2012-09-09
The Museum is renowned for its extensive glass collection and for being the site of the historic 1962 Toledo Workshops. Those workshops, led by Harvey Littleton at the invitation of then-Museum Director Otto Wittmann, nurtured the artists now considered pioneers of the American Studio Art Glass movement and, through extension, helped to rejuvenate studio glass in post-war Europe. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the birth of studio glass, TMA presents Color Ignited: Glass 1962–2012, an enticing “coming of age” look at the medium. International in scope, it showcases works by Toledo Workshops participants as well as by the major artists working in the medium since. The exhibition focuses on the role of color—from the conceptual to the political to the metaphoric—in artistic expression. More than 80 objects from private collections, galleries, other museums and TMA’s own collection are shown, including works by Littleton, Dominick Labino, Marvin Lipofsky, Dale Chihuly, Dan Dailey, Judith Schaechter, Ginny Ruffner, Fritz Driesbach and Klaus Moje. Jutta-Annette Page, curator of glass and decorative arts at the Toledo Museum of Art, and Peter Morrin, director emeritus of the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Ky., curated the exhibition. Many of the Toledo Workshop participants were schooled in pottery, and as a result, many early works were vessels, some stylized, some with rays of color, some opaque and some transparent. There are vessels by Tom McGauchlin and Edith Franklin from the original workshops, as well as fused glass, neon glass, mirrored pieces and sculptures. Color Ignited is the inaugural exhibition in the Museum’s new Frederic and Mary Wolfe Gallery of Contemporary Art. The Wolfe Gallery space was the home of the Museum’s glass collection until 2003, when construction began on the Museum’s Glass Pavilion. A fully illustrated exhibition catalogue, with essays by Page, Morrin and Robert Bell, senior curator of decorative arts and design at the National Gallery of Australia, will be available in the Museum Store.
Masterpieces of American Glass
Venue(s)
Museum of Applied Arts 1990-07-27 through 1990-09-02
State Hermitage Museum 1990-09-15 through 1990-10-21
Museum of the State Institute of Glass 1990-11-02 through 1991-01-04
 
La escultura en vidrio (2017) illustrated, p. 350 (bottom right);
Contemporary Glass Vessels: Selections from the Corning Museum of Glass (2015) illustrated, p. 41, 100-101 (fig. 90, plate 27); BIB# 149403
Escort Guide to the Galleries (2013) illustrated, p. 49; BIB# 134015
Color Ignited: Glass 1962-2012 (2012) illustrated, p. 97, plate 51; p. 189; BIB# 130144
Makers A History of American Studio Craft (2010) illustrated, p. 417; BIB# 118619
Casting Poetic Sentiment: Glass Art Creation Methodology (2008) illustrated, p. 240, fig. 303; BIB# 107146
Modern and contemporary art glass (2006) illustrated, slide 166; BIB# 130418
Art You Can See Through. The Corning Museum of Glass (1994) p. 14;
The Corning Museum of Glass and the Finger Lakes Region (1993) illustrated, p. 36, #54; BIB# 35681
Glassworks (AAF) (1992-06) p. 66;
The Art of Glass: Masterpieces from the Corning Museum (1992-06) illustrated, back cover;
Hikari no shouchu: sekai no garasu = The glass (1992) p. 174, #289; BIB# 58995
Panorama: Muzeinoe steklo (1992) illustrated, back cover (middle); BIB# AI99388
Reviews: Contemporary Glass: A World Survey ... (Stained Glass) (1990) p. 256;
Masterpieces of American Glass (1990) illustrated, pp. 74, 96, pl. 122; BIB# 33046
Masterpieces of Glass: A World History From The Corning Museum of Glass (1990) illustrated, pp. 228-229, pl. 106; BIB# 33819
The Corning Museum of Glass Annual Report 1982 (1983) illustrated, pp. 7, 11; BIB# AI97140