By subverting the causal assumptions we make in language based on our experience, Chihuly creates a new order based on his own personal vision, thus surprising us. Surprise may contribute to the desire that is inherent in our gaze, for the unexpected often adds to our experience of pleasure. The mystery of glass compounds the experience because glass is the only traditional medium that cannot be touched by the naked human hand while it is being formed. Looking becomes, then, one of the key components in the making of glass, as well as in the appreciation of it after it is complete. And in that pleasurable looking filled with desire and longing, we also find enchantment.
History amplifies our shifting gaze and our bodily and intellectual responses to beauty.
Chihuly's fantastical explorations into industry, art, capitalism, commercialism, history, pleasure, and finally and always, the beautiful demonstrate that beauty does produce a meaningful experience of the world. Beauty, far from a guilty pleasure, allows us to examine the re-creation of meaning through a path of pleasure and the wonder of looking. Glass Art , May-June 1996, Volume 11, Number 4, p.40.