Vessel Gallery London - Contemporary Art-Glass Sculpture and Decorative Art. Exhibitions, Sales and Commissions.

Title

Aristotle’s Amphorae II

EDITION

Unique

dimensions

H 41 cm W 17 cm D 17 cm

Material

Handblown & sculpted glass with steel

price

£ 7800

about

'Aristotle’s Amphorae II' is a unique artwork by the American and Swiss artists, Philip Baldwin and Monica Guggisberg. 

Free blown, double overlay & carved glass with metal stand (which is included in the height).

In the artist's own words;

"We arrive at our Western origin story: the roots of rationalism, and its handmaiden, science – a brief era of some 150 years, from Pythagoras to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, with the latter informing subsequent ages as no other. Are we pleased with the results that have led, seemingly inexorably, to the present era? Might we yet contemplate another way forward?

Follow the flow of Western civilisational thought back to its headwaters and you arrive at Aristotle, Plato, Socrates and Pythagoras. As a ‘brand’ Aristotle carries the flag. His synthesis of the empirical mode of investigation with the application of formal logic is embedded in our scientific - materialist worldview. 

Geometry, rational discourse, the power of mathematics and systematic thought filtered down from Pythagoras and others have all fed into Western thinking. Miraculously their ideas survived a thousand years of evolving Christian orthodoxy before re-surfacing anew in the awakening of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, surviving through the Industrial Revolution and on to our present day. 

Galileo, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and others have built on their theories, bringing us to the present moment in which we ‘follow the science’. Is it possible something is out of balance here – that our steadfast adherence may be ill-advised? 

That said, Aristotle deserves his due. Our amphorae pay respect to the architecture of his mind and the knowledge that has evolved from it over the millennia."

Baldwin & Guggisberg

Aristotle’s Amphorae II