Dallas Museum of Art Presents
Louis Comfort Tiffany: Artist for the Ages
May 28, 2006 through September 3, 2006
The Dallas Museum of Art presents Louis Comfort Tiffany: Artist for the Ages, the first comprehensive touring exhibition and examination of Tiffany’s work in the United States in decades, featuring more than 120 works including selections of the artist’s classic stained-glass windows and Tiffany lamps. The exhibition will present new material and ideas in a fresh way, emphasizing the beauty inherent in Tiffany’s art.
Louis Comfort Tiffany: Artist for the Ages will demonstrate the enduring quality of Tiffany’s finest art; present works that define Tiffany as an eclectic artist engaged in a dialogue with the leading reform movements of the time—the Aesthetic movement, the Arts and Crafts movement and Art Nouveau; and trace Tiffany’s development as an artist, particularly in glass, where his greatest accomplishments occurred. The exhibition features glass creations including vases, lamps, windows, and mosaics, as well as works in other media.
Organized by divisions noting his primary influences, the installation presents the development of Tiffany’s ideas and reflects the breadth his aesthetic. The objects in the exhibition are arranged according to themes that run throughout Louis Comfort Tiffany’s work—nature, the Near, Middle, and Far East, antiquities and archaeology, and abstraction. Tiffany’s works are grouped into four main sections:
Nature Is Always Beautiful – featuring rare paintings by Tiffany, floral lamps and Favrile vases, and a selection of stained-glass windows inspired by nature, including two panels from the Four Seasons Under the Sea series
Light Comes from the East – including furniture from the Bragdon, Kemp, and Havemeyer houses, lamps, mosaics, vases and other objects reflecting the influence of Byzantine, Moorish, Chinese and Japanese art
Time Is the Measure of All Things I: From the Past – including works suggestive of the ancient Mediterranean world such as “Tel El Amarna” vases and “Cypriote” vessels honoring Luigi Palma di Cesnola’s excavations at Cyprus
Time Is the Measure of All Things II: Towards the Future – demonstrating the artist’s own experiments in the design of furniture for his own home and glass vessels that seem to anticipate later forms of modernism
Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933) came to world attention through his innovations in interior design and the decorative arts at the end of the nineteenth century. Son of Charles Tiffany, founder of the luxury goods firm Tiffany & Co., young Tiffany struck out on his own, first as a painter and later as a pioneer in the new field of decoration and domestic design.
Tiffany’s exploration of stained-glass window design for homes and churches led him to invent and produce new types of colored and textured glass that he dubbed “Favrile” glass—referencing the Old English word “fabrile,” meaning made by hand. By 1892, Tiffany had begun to experiment with blown glass vessels in an attempt to expand his offerings to a wider audience. In the following years, Tiffany unleashed a flood of creativity in glassmaking. Shown and collected in Europe as well as in the United States, Tiffany’s work was widely acclaimed.
Louis Comfort Tiffany: Artist for the Ages was organized and is circulated by Exhibitions International, New York. Support for the national tour has been provided by the Tiffany & Co. Foundation.
Exhibition support in Dallas and the opening member events are generously underwritten by the Dallas Museum of Art League. Additional support provided by One Arts Plaza by Billingsley Company and by the Donor Circle Membership Program through leadership gifts by Charron and Peter Denker, Edmund and Adelyn Hoffman, and Kathy and Rodney Woods. Promotional support provided by The Dallas Morning News and The Adolphus Hotel.
Image:
Louis Comfort Tiffany, Laburnum Floor Lamp, before 1910, leaded glass and bronze, courtesy of The Neustadt Museum of Tiffany Art, New York, Photo © Richard Goodbody
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