CLUB SANDWICH 85

LINDA'S STAINED-GLASS EXHIBITION

Mark Lewisohn discovers how there's no gain without pane

            Some of you, we understand, were puzzled by a section of Geoff Baker's piece in the last CS ('A Year Of Living Famously'), in which he spoke in his "honoured capacity as a stained-glass window", Even for those readers familiar with the writer's oblique style, this was an odd one. But Baker was right. He is now hanging (as many Fleet Street editors have wished) in a museum in Switzerland.
            Allow me to explain. If, between now and April, you can get along to Le Musee Suisse du Vitrail, in Romont, near Geneva, you will be able to see a number of quite exquisite stained-glass windows. And the images in these windows will be familiar: they're Linda McCartney photographs, stunningly set into glass.
            The breathtaking exhibition, which opened last August (and may travel to stained-glass museums in other countries) is the result of a collaboration between Linda and Brian Clarke, the Mccartneys’ good friend of some 20 years. Brian is an internationally renowned artist and creative force whose work, to name but two examples, resulted in the distinctive painting on the Tug Of War album cover in 1982 and the world-record-sized stage sets for the New World Tour of 1993.
            But why stained-glass? Brian explains - "Linda has always had a fascination with coloured glass. This extends into all areas of light passing through filtered colour, like paperweights, for example, and marbles. When I was a child I too was obsessed by the beauty s of marbles, the reds and the blues and all the other colours. Linda's photography is very largely about light. Many photographers are about shadow and others seek psychological insight or, as Cartier-Bresson calls it, 'that decisive moment'. Linda's photos often show how light plays on the surface of water, or highlights the form of a flower or an animal or a person. She shows the way that light brings life to things, and is driven by the desire to capture on film a kind of reality that we miss if we don't push the button at the right moment."
            For the last ten years Brian has been working on developing certain techniques in stained-glass, which allows him to permanently transpose photographic images into the material. As soon as the method was perfected, he began looking for photos that were themselves "about light", and then he realised that many of Linda's photos were absolutely right for the format. So they put their two interests together.
            The first product of the collaboration was given to the Hammersmith Cancer Hospital (in West London), where, to this day, it catches the eve of visitors and patients alike. Then they began to produce other examples - enough, eventually, for the exhibition - and the results are stunningly beautiful. Says Brian, "Linda is a bone fide artist, and her vision, combined with my own work, seems to gel. Her work is ingredient 'a', mine is ingredient 'b', and when 'a' and 'b' are combined you don't get 'a + b', you get 'c'. And 'c' is really exciting, because we don't where it will take us."
            The process of selecting the images fell to Linda and Brian, and their ideas and choices were bounced off Paul, and also Martin Harrison (who wrote the words in Roadworks), both of whom made important contributions. The resulting stained-glasses vary in size - some, to quote, Brian Clarke again, "are huge" but their favoured format is about 44 cm square, less than 18 inches.
            As Brian notes, the process is an exciting blending of old and new forms. "In Switzerland in the 15th/16th century, stained-glass was made in what they called kabinettscheibe, which translates to 'cupboard pieces'. Those small pieces were portable works of art that poor people - who used to move their flocks of sheep up and down the hills, depending on the season - would carry around with them, hanging them in their mountain house in the summer and their valley house in the winter.
            "Now we are using the same process with photographs at the end of the 20th century - it's fascinating and full of promise."
            Judging from these exhibits, this isan understatement.