Crystal Arrow (from the Boat Form Series)

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Crystal Arrow (from the Boat Form Series)

Artist Bertil Vallien (Swedish, born 1938)

Date1987

DimensionsH: 41 3/8 in.; W: 75 3/4 in.; D: 7 15/16 in.

MediumCast glass, copper, metal and wire

ClassificationGlass

Credit LineGift of Dorothy and George Saxe

Object number

1991.138

Not on View

Label TextSwedish designer and sculptor Bertil Vallien began his series of metaphysical boats in the 1970s, first in clay and then in glass. Sand-casting became his preferred technique. Molten glass was ladled into a spade-cut sand mold that produced a rough exterior “skin” of the boat, emphasizing the light-absorbing ability of glass to encapsulate light within the sculpture. The smooth, transparent top surface permits views into an interior scattered with glass and symbolic metal artifacts in arrested suspension. Vallien explains, “I chose the boat because it is such a beautiful shape –it contains both mystery and symbolism. The boat signifies a voyage, the Voyage of Life.” The arrow above the boat’s stylized passenger references the past and the future, speed and direction—the journey endlessly continuing, yet seemingly frozen in time.Exhibition HistoryNew York, Heller Gallery, Bertil Vallien: Cast Glass Sculpture, 1987.

Tokyo, Seibu Museum of Art, and Kyoto, The National Museum of Modern Art, Scandinavian Craft Today, 1987-1988 (exh. cat.) (traveled to Tokyo, Yurakucho Art Forum; New York, American Craft Museum; Cleveland, Cleveland Institute of Art; Mobile, Alabama, The Fine Arts Museum of the South at Mobile).

Toledo Museum of Art; The Saint Louis Art Museum; Newport Beach, California, Newport Harbor Art Museum; Washington, D.C., Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art Smithsonian Institution, Contemporary Crafts and the Saxe Collection, 1993-1995, pl. 54 A, B, p. 82, cat. no. 114, p. 208.