Decorative Art

RICHARD MARQUIS
(American, born 1945)

d’Marquis Bubbleboy #2, 1998
Blown glass, glass shards, murrine
Partial and promised gift, Adele and Leonard Leight Collection 1999.16.8

Richard Marquis’s whimsically titled, vaguely figural glass sculpture combines intense color and pattern with technical mastery. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Marquis adapted the extremely difficult technique of historical murrine glass, which was made on the island of Murano near Venice, Italy, where Marquis first studied glass in 1969. Here, murrine are the small pieces of multicolored patterned glass arranged around the statue’s surface and in the faux teapot. Made by slicing smaller pieces from a larger cane of fused strands of glass, murrine is traditionally characterized by floral or geometric patterns. Marquis, however, has incorporated humorous elements like smiling faces and stars into his murrine. The abstract figure of the Bubbleboy is topped by a literal teapot form, which serves as a hat and further adds to the figurative and whimsical nature of the sculpture.