Judith Schaechter, “Child Bride” (2001), stained glass, detail view (all images by the author for Hyperallergic)
ROCHESTER, New York — Judith Schaechter’s stained glass works reach so far in different directions that trying to classify them becomes a taxonomy problem. Her medium, techniques, and references are deeply rooted in Medieval and Renaissance art, but her execution, agenda, and subject matter are unusual for stained glass. Her work is based in craft, but her finished products are highly conceptual. Her imagery and symbols are both personal and universal. Even the title of her retrospective at the University of Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery, Path to Paradise, contains a kind of contradiction, alluding to a quote from Dante’s Divine Comedy: The path to paradise begins in hell.
Judith Schaechter, “My One Desire” (2007), stained glass, detail
Religious rapture is an excellent frame through which to view Schaechter’s stained glass compositions — most of which are not windows, but light boxes. (Even those that begin as windows eventually become light boxes.) MAG’s Curator in Charge/Curator of American Art, Jessica Marten, developed the retrospective with Schaechter over the past four years. This show furthers Marten’s reputation — acquired with a 2018 retrospective of Rochester artist Josephine Tota — as a champion of weird, ecstatic, preternaturally driven female artists. In Marten’s lecture on Path to Paradise, she beautifully delineated Schaechter’s knack for deeply transforming her references into expressions of personal experience and handwork. It is the kind of devotion to practice that lifts art from profession to calling.
Judith Schaechter, “Sin Eater” (2009), stained glass, detail. This tableau features one of Schaechter’s rare male subjects.
Judith Schaechter, “The Battle of Carnival and Lent” (2010-11), stained glass, installation view
The exhibition’s centerpiece (which initiated the relationship between Schaechter and Marten) is “The Battle of Carnival and Lent” (2010-11). This six-paned, 56 by 56-inch work is one of 17 windows that comprised an installation by Schaechter originally sited at the Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site. The tumult in the scene plays out as a maximalist struggle between virtue and vice, the grotesque and the beautiful, the celebratory and the punitive. While it references the similarly titled 1559 painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, it shows an understated yet undeniable affinity with the work of Hieronymus Bosch. Schaechter’s artworks demand slow looking and repeat viewings. It is almost impossible to absorb “The Battle of Carnival and Lent” in a single viewing — and this is just one of some 40 works by Schaechter, drawn together from 35 different collections.
“The Battle of Carnival and Lent” (2010-2011), detail view.
Judith Schaechter, “Beached Whale” (2018), stained glass, detail
Judith Schaechter, “Immigration Policy” (2017), stained glass, detail
“Still Life with Bankrobber” (1996) exemplifies Schaechter’s obsequious attention to detail: on a white tile floor, a prostrate bank robber is surrounded by a mask, gloves, a gun, and other sundries. Taking in the narrative might initially distract from the jarring geometrics of the composition; each of the small, hexagonal tiles that compose the background of the image — there are hundreds — is slightly different because of the perspective. Even in works in which elements repeat (sometimes including entire figures), the artist takes on the arduous task of cutting a unique shape each time.
One notable exception to this is “Specimens” (2004), which features a menagerie of Schaechter’s odd little creatures, first hand-drawn and then etched into multiple layers of glass to achieve different color and texture effects, suspended in an eight-by-six-inch grid of identical specimen jars. This is one of the few works made with an assistant — a process that ultimately has proved incompatible with her hands-on working method — but it is an excellent showcase of Schaechter’s powers of engagement through pattern, color, and “militant ornamentalism” (a phrase she credits to her friend, Philadelphia artist Adam Wallacavage).
Judith Schaechter, “Specimens” (2004), stained glass, detail
Judith Schaechter, “The Life Ecstatic” (2016), stained glass, detail. This character, colored and orientated differently, also appears in “Three-Tiered Cosmos” (2016).
Schaechter emerges as a powerful feminist voice as she teases out the female figure in art history and re-presents her as radically complex — complexity being the one of the greatest luxuries denied to women across the history of humanity. Even her segregation of stained glass from religious institutions reads as a feminist action, in the context of Schaechter’s vision. Unlike the sunlit glass art in houses of worship, Schaechter’s boxes — their form an allusion to both female biology and the glory box as hope chest — are removed from the unblinking eye of a patriarchal system. Hers is a compelling world, and one nearly impossible to comprehend in full or look away from.
The Path to Paradise: Judith Schaechter’s Stained-Glass Art is scheduled to continue through May 24 at Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester (500 University Ave., Rochester, New York). The exhibition was curated by Jessica Marten.
Editor’s note: Please note that physical viewing hours for this exhibition have been temporarily suspended in light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Cognizant of the importance of discussions around art and culture during this time, we encourage readers to explore the exhibition virtually here as many of us continue to self-isolate.
I enjoy this review. Stained glass is a medium I never even entertained for contemporary art practice so–it’s very cool to learn of this work.
Slow looking… The Tate Gallery published an article saying take your time looking at art, complaining that people rush by the work without really looking. It seems that when people rush by a work, it’s not that the work is amazing, most likely it’s boring. A Museum of Modern Art curator has a youtube video telling us how to see Duchamp’s work. If we need to be told how to see an artist’s work, perhaps the artist’s message is unclear.
In 1996 (then MOMA curator) Rob Storr spoke of the transformation of the art world from the “Cedar Bar to the seminar”, which made art intellectual and discarded non-verbal syntax. That’s when Marshall McLuhan, in a quote often misattributed to Andy Warhol, said that art is anything that you can get away with. When art is anything you can get away with, then the worse you can get away with is always the best strategy, leading to some pretty bad art. Roger Scrutton said it is now an effective requirement of finalists for the Turner Prize in Britain to produce something that nobody would think was art unless they were told it was. At that point the artist’s message is strategically incomprehensible, but that’s terrible! I think we’re cornered, we can’t escape it; we need to define what good art is. Don’t be scared, it’s not that difficult.
I’m assuming a good work of art would attract our attention so we don’t have to be scolded into looking at it, and I’m hoping that good art makes a statement, so we don’t have to be told what to think about it.
This work is interesting, there’s no need “to demand” or to force people to look at it.
Yes, I was recently at an exhibition of outdoor sculpture, and almost every single piece was some kind of boring conceptual joke, for example an enormous cell phone, and a thing that looked like something the dog left on the rug and someone then spray-painted. This sort of thing is so dated! I am sorry to see young people encouraged to put their precious time into it.
To find something better, one might want to examine the techniques and modalities of commercial art, especially advertising. Commercial art has to work immediately and directly, or it’s not effective. In the realm of painting and drawing, the great days were probably in the early and mid 20th century, say 1920 to 1970. You used to be able to find books with collections of the best from that period at the Strand Bookstore. Ebay maybe? And here and there on the Net, of course.
Meanwhile, Judith Schaechter rocks mightily. One of the greats.