Chihuly Over Venice [Hardcover]

Dana Self (Author), William Warmus (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1996

Bound like an artist's sketchbook this book documents the culmination of this amazing artistic odyssey that took the artist from his Seattle Boathouse hot shop to Nuutajarvi, Finland; Waterford, Ireland; Monterrey, Mexico; and finally Venice to blow glass. In the factories in those locations, Chihuly and his team of American glass blowers worked with native artisans more accustomed to making functional objects than art. Together they created the 14 chandeliers that graced the campos and canals of Venice for a remarkable time in September 1996. In her essay Dana Self, curator of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, muses on the relationship of Chihuly's glass and 'The Spectacle of Beauty'. She concludes that "Chihuly's fantastical explorations demonstrate that beauty does produce a meaningful experience of the world." Writer William Warmus chronicles the culmination of this two-year project with his diary entries. Full-colour photographs record for readers the installations as they were assembled. An extensive chronology traces the artist's career.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 136 pages
• Publisher: Portland Press (Wa); First Edition edition (December 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576840050
• ISBN-13: 978-1576840054
• Product Dimensions: 12.4 x 9.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,195,434 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I'd never considered glass as art before.., March 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Chihuly Over Venice (Hardcover)

After seeing the PBS show and owning the video, the book was a must. It is printed on gorgeous paper and provides not only full color photos, but detailed text. The author takes the reader through each installation with sufficient detail, story and technical information. As a coffee-table art book, it sits on the top of my pile now, and has successfully recruited new art glass fans at my house!

7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chihuly Is Wonderful!, March 20, 2004

By 

Michael Miano (Middleport, NY USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Chihuly Over Venice (Hardcover)

This book is required for anyone who loves art. Beautifully photographed and bound, this work will bring pleasure to all who see it for many years to come. Chihuly is a genius!

The only thing approaching a dark cloud over Chihuly and this book is the unfortunate presence of William Warmus, who fancies himself a writer. This is my first encounter with Warmus and it was a thoroughly unpleasant one. The 16 pages of useless, if not nonsensical, notebook entries from Warmus are in the beginning. They add nothing and the reader is advised not to waste time with them. Dana Self follows Warmus with a relatively short, but equally worthless, piece in which the nature of beauty is explored. (Has there EVER been any human on this planet who has not had a pretty good idea what is beautiful?) Anyway, though Self describes Chihuly's art as "wildly excessive," Self underlines what we already know - that "in experiencing beauty and pleasure, what we feel motivates our response." Was anything ever more obvious? Do yourself a favor and skip the Warmus and Self sections and go directly to the wonderful photographs, which show both the close-up detail and the distant view of each of the glass sculptures. For those new to Chihuly, there is a complete chronology of his life and work in the back of the book.