Illuminations | Luxembourg + Co.
This show, juxtaposes three 20th century artists with four pieces of stained glass: two medieval, two Victorian. These 19th century stained glass windows are pretty but stolid: it’s a shame that they dominate the gallery room, for being so big - and hung directly against the gallery’s high, west-facing windows.
Time to concentrate on the actual artworks. From Piet Mondrian, a luminous early-career landscape. Paul Klee, a couple of pulsating watercolours. And my favourite, the minimalist Brice Marden with some designs for the Basel cathedral windows, from the 1970s.
Marden was commissioned by the city of Basel in 1977 to design the stained glass, and spent nearly a decade on the compositions, even after Basel dropped the project.
The dark, brooding, flickering almost algorithmic patterns have a heft and power to them. Even if I didn’t know the designs were obsessively worried over, I’d have guessed from the work itself. There’s something beautiful but fragile about them. Like the glass they never made it to.
Illuminations is at Luxembourg + Co. (London). 4 June - 31 July 2026