Contemporary stained glass - Christopher Wool

Christopher Wool has worked as a painter for 30 years or so; stained glass is a new medium for him. He was commissioned to make five windows for this church in La-Charite-sur-Loire, France, or rather, for the low white extension on the right -

Here's an interior view of what he came up with -

The structural lines of the leading are an extension of the loopy lines of spray-paint he's been using. Apparently the most difficult decision was whether to add colour - but the colour certainly seems to bring the windows to life.

The fabrication was not done by Wool; he developed the design in collaboration with Pierre-Alain Parot.

A book on the project, from which these pictures come, is available (in French).

These windows caught my interest because of another set of contemporary windows, by Pierre Soulages, which I saw in a book some years ago (and which got me interested in Soulages' work - he's known as "the painter of black"). He did 95 windows at the Abbey of Conques. Those are about "black, thickness, and rhythm" - which can to some extent be said about Wool's windows.

Other contemporary stained glass of note is Gerhard Richter's big window in Cologne Cathedral (72 colours), and the mostly-blue/gold windows in the small church at Tudeley by Marc Chagall.