The collection of 48 paintings, drawings and works in glass of the avant-garde artist Maurice Marinot has finally found itself centre stage at the National Gallery of Ireland. Marinot, the French-born “Wild Beast of Glass”, was a relentless experimentalist. Expelled from the École des Beaux-Arts for being a “dangerous non-conformist”, he first became associated with Les Fauves, or the “wild beasts” — a group of early 20th-century artists characterised by their emphasis on bold colour and vibrant abstraction, the most notable of which were Henri Matisse and André Derain. However, after a revelatory visit to the glass factory of the Viard brothers in Bar-sur-Seine in 1911, Marinot turned his attention away from painting and towards glass, retaining his avant-garde spirit as he explored this new medium with an almost scientific passion for experimentation and innovation.
Now, more than 50 years after they were first donated by Marinot’s daughter Florence, the artist’s works are on display in the exhibition Maurice Marinot — On Paper, In Glass, excellently curated by Niamh MacNally. The exhibition takes place in just one single room. In its centre, three raised pedestals showcase selections of the artist’s geometric, vividly colourful glasswork, illuminated in a bright and clear light — an array of Fauvist crown jewels. To create the sharp, geometric, precisely-cut patterns that he became recognisable for, Marinot would submerge his glassworks in vats of acid that would etch out the designs that he desired. Attempting to impress the forms of water, fire and ice into his pieces, the artist suspended crowds of miniscule air bubbles in his glassworks and introduced veins of tiny cracks into his pieces. His experiments with hotworking — using hook-shaped instruments to mould molten glass into complex shapes — brought a further physical and technical intensity to his artistry. Marinot’s work on paper also lines the walls of the exhibition, his style recognisably similar to that of his artistic compatriot, Matisse. Women, particularly daughters and mothers, find themselves the subject of many of his paintings, an illustration of Marinot’s delicate focus on the feminine.
Near the entrance, a monochrome film from 1934, Un Grand Verrier Maurice Marinot, showcases the artist at work in his atelier. The film, on loop in the corner of the exhibition, is mesmerising. Marinot’s intense and dynamic physicality, sweat rising to his forehead, is intertwined with snippets capturing flowing water and burning fire, an allusion to the artist’s inspiration from nature. What’s lacking, however, are subtitles to match. The film is narrated in French, but to the audience, there is only silence. This means we miss some fantastic comments, including the narrator’s description of acid etchings as a “ritual gesture” for Marinot, and an elegant description of a glasswork’s genesis: “And through the tunnel of the arch where it will slowly cool, the piece will enter into life… to join its peers with pure forms”. Nonetheless, the silent film is potent in bringing the artist — and, even more so, the process of his art — to life. Glass, we come to understand, is an intensely demanding medium. Once out from the furnace, the countdown starts — the molten glass begins its process of “becoming” and the artist cannot delay. It is painting en plein air (in the open air) taken to its glassy, spontaneous extremes. Marinot commented that he found himself in a “great battle” with the “fleshy, muscular material” of the molten glass, a material “which is born in a struggle, in fire, in smoke, which in turn resists or obeys, which obeys when I force it while respecting its nature”. Cloaked in a dark trench coat, the film shows Marinot blowing glass with the strain of a musician blowing an enormous flute, twirling his metal blowpipe in the air like an Olympic gymnast would swing a weighted baton. It’s this physicality and technical elegance that transforms Marinot into an almost larger-than-life character, and it is this which signals that Un Grand Verrier is, in many ways, a cornerstone of the exhibition — and just as much a piece of multimodal art as the rest of the exhibition is.
Throughout his career, Marinot remained deeply invested in foregrounding artistic form. He didn’t wish to hide the process behind the artwork, but rather believed that the best form “is the one that gives the best idea of the blowing that created it and whose curves, accentuated by the pure splendid gleam conferred upon it by light, best express its method of creation”. The medium, to Marinot, was not a meaningless support for the art itself, but rather contained within itself a capacity for creative expression. Making the medium sacred, Marinot refused to create art from moulds, nor did he use mass production. Instead, he worked exclusively by hand, toiling each day in an unending physical competition with his glass. Throughout his life, he created over 2,500 pieces. In 1944, however, his studio in Troyes was bombed by Allied forces who mistook it for a German ammunition depot. Nearly all of his life’s work was destroyed. His glass pieces are thus extremely rare, underscoring the significance of this exhibition.
As such, Marinot’s exhibition is evidently much needed, a long-overdue exploration of the influential avant-gardiste’s remaining works. Just as important, though, is the exhibition’s timely and refreshing showcase of a craftsman’s passion and authenticity — its portrait of an artist’s deep, slow and joyous struggle to bring his art into being.
Maurice Marinot — On Paper, In Glass, curated by Niamh MacNally, runs from August 2nd until January 25th at the National Gallery of Ireland. Admission is free.
