The Glass Wall (Dedicated to Linda McCartney)

Brian Clarke's The Glass Wall (Dedicated to Linda McCartney) is a monumental stained glass artwork, which stretches over 22 m long and 4 m high and was first exhibited at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York, 1998. Spanning 1012 ft², the work is divided into eight panels of different colours, each gridded with 35 squares of leaded glass. The finished work was acquired by the Corning Museum of Glass, New York, in 1999 as part of its permanent collection and was installed at the entrance until 2012.

Brian Clarke's The Glass Wall (Dedicated to Linda McCartney) is a monumental stained glass artwork, which stretches over 22 m long and 4 m high and was first exhibited at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York, 1998. Spanning 1012 ft², the work is divided into eight panels of different colours, each gridded with 35 squares of leaded glass. The finished work was acquired by the Corning Museum of Glass, New York, in 1999 as part of its permanent collection and was installed at the entrance until 2012.

In 1998 Clarke said:

‘This ‘wall of glass’, this membrane of fluid forms and liquid colour is derived from my fascination and love for heraldry, in particular the fleur de lys. It is dedicated to my beautiful friend Linda McCartney.’

In her review of the exhibition at Tony Shafrazi Gallery for the New York Times, Grace Glueck writes:

‘A tour de force of contemporary stained glass, its brilliantly nuanced colors range from near-transparent white to rose and sparkling blue. Though its subject matter is entirely secular, it conveys a feeling of great cathedral spaces...It consists of eight panels, each gridded with 35 squares of leaded glass, differing in their colors and emphases. In the first panel, a panoply of shimmering greens, the eye teases out the freely drawn fleur-de-lis; in another panel, it glows prominently in a hearty pink-rose touched by white against a background of celestial blue. In the last panel, milky whites define the motif on a rose ground. In panels between, traceries of the fleur-de-lis can be read, but overall the panels are seen as shimmering curtains of pure translucent white or color. Mr. Clarke's extraordinary sense of color and architectural design, expressed in a scale that is entirely appropriate, make 'The Glass Wall' a strikingly beautiful work.’

In 2001, Clarke returned to this composition on a smaller scale in a separate study composed of seven panels, made for the Flowers for New York exhibition at the Corning Museum of Glass in New York, curated by Michel Witmer in 2002.