Stephen Dean – interview: ‘A ladder fitted perfectly into a place that combined the terrestrial with the celestial world’

Dean discusses Crescendo, his installation of a 15-metre ladder decorated with his signature coloured dichroic stained glass, in the Saint-Denis Cathedral Basilica in Paris

Stephen Dean, Crescendo, Saint-Denis Cathedral Basilica, Paris. Images courtesy and copyright of the artist.

by LILLY WEI

Crescendo is the title of an art installation by the New York-based French American artist Stephen Dean in the Saint-Denis Cathedral Basilica in Paris, an edifice that was pivotal in the development of gothic architecture. Located in the northern suburbs, the original seventh-century abbey church was sited over what was believed to be the tomb of Saint Denis, a patron saint of France and the first bishop of Paris. It was renovated several times, most notably in the 12th century under Abbé Suger (cleric and whisperer to kings Louis VI and Louis VII) when its magnificent stained-glass windows were added. French royalty were buried in Saint-Denis for more than a millennium and the coronation of several French queens took place there. Crescendo is groundbreaking as the first non-religious artwork to be installed in its apse.

The following is an edited and excerpted conversation between Stephen Dean and Lilly Wei discussing the installation and what the artist wanted to achieve.

Lilly Wei: How did this project for Saint-Denis come about? It is such a storied basilica. After all, as the burial site for almost all the kings and queens of France, it must have been special, even if you are not a monarchist, not to mention its glorious stained-glass windows and immense scale.

Stephen Dean: Yes, it was. It came about because the renovation of the apse of Saint-Denis was scheduled for completion in 2022. The basilica’s administration wanted to celebrate the event and were looking for ways to do that. It was very open-ended, exploratory. I was invited to visit the cathedral and was asked if I was inspired by the place and by the stained-glass windows.

Stephen Dean, Crescendo, 15-metre-high glass ladder. Installation view at Saint-Denis Cathedral Basilica in Paris, September 2023 – January 2025. © Stephen Dean, courtesy the artist and Noirmont art production.

LW: And were you?

SD: Well, of course (laughing).

LW: A project like that must be complicated.

SD: Yes, it was, since the cathedral is under the jurisdiction of the state, but the clergy also must approve. It is an active place of worship, with mass celebrated daily and many people coming in and out: pilgrims, tourists, visitors, congregants. I started by making sketches of the architecture and talked to the priests who performed the mass to see if it fitted. And then the bishop needed to look at the sketches. Saint-Denis is managed by the Centre des Monuments Nationaux and, as the commissioning institution, its approval was also required. Overall, it took a year and a half to complete, complicated by the Covid pandemic.

LW: Who commissioned you? You said you were the only artist being considered. Isn’t it unusual not to have it as an open call with proposals?

SD: Yes, it is, and it happened by chance. I met Serge Santos, the administrator of the basilica, and his wife at a show I had in Paris that included one of my glass sculptures – a postcard rack with dichroic glass – as well as watercolours that are studies of colour and light. We talked and he invited me to come to Saint-Denis. I did a sketch, which I brought with me. It was just a diagonal line. I didn’t yet know what I would do, but I knew it had to be a diagonal line.

LW: And the diagonal line became an enormous ladder?

SD: Yes, a ladder fitted perfectly into a place that combined the terrestrial with the celestial world. It is a presence in so many religions, maybe all – Jacob’s ladder for Judeo-Christians, Muhammad’s ascension to the heavens from the Dome of the Rock for Muslims, and it appears in Buddhism. Beyond religion, it is an emblem of upward movement, of soaring, flight, which is one reason for the title, Crescendo, also about ascension. 

Stephen Dean, Crescendo, 15-metre-high glass ladder. Installation view at Saint-Denis Cathedral Basilica in Paris, September 2023 – January 2025. © Stephen Dean, courtesy the artist and Noirmont art production.

LW: When did you make your first ladder? It’s a structure that you use consistently – a signature structure – with dichroic glass in the space between rungs.

SD: I made my first ladder sculpture about 20 years ago. I very much liked the idea that a ladder could lean against something without a complicated installation, with practically no installation. You could take it there, place it, take it away under your arm, very nomadic. It was such a simple structure, just two parallel lines crossed by shorter parallel lines, the space between used to inset the dichroic glass. The linear construction of these light sculptures is like a grid and the space is appropriated for my intervention. It relates to the series of watercolours that I make on advertisements, crossword puzzles and weather maps which, like the structure of the ladder, provide a predetermined geometry. The watercolour, like the shifts in colour of the dichroic glass, on the other hand, is a very spontaneous, rhythmic way to react to a pre-existing structure. I am applying abstract markings over some kind of reality, over pre-existing realities.

LW: Tell me about dichroic glass and the inclusion of it in your work.

SD: I discovered dichroic glass and its colour capabilities when I worked briefly as a lighting designer. I was interested in the world of theatre and what happened backstage and how the lighting was created. The discovery of dichroic glass dates to at least the Romans in the fourth century who used it decoratively, intuitively. In the 1960s and 70s, Nasa repurposed it for space exploration, which included protecting spacecraft in orbit from debris and extreme temperatures. I like the trajectory of its application from the decorative arts to space technology and how it is used in the entertainment industry as well as in art and architecture. I first used dichroic glass in postcard racks – which I call prayer mills – all the glass reclined within the structure. That fractured the experience. Each piece is angled, so it breaks down perceptual continuity, shattering the space. You can see through the glass and the lines of the rack are tinted. The ladder frame is flat and not affected like that, even if multiple dimensions are created. The journey of repurposing forms – the postcard rack and the ladder are very mundane objects – as well as going from one discipline to another is of great interest to me as an artist.

Stephen Dean, Crescendo, 15-metre-high glass ladder. Installation view at Saint-Denis Cathedral Basilica in Paris, September 2023 – January 2025. © Stephen Dean, courtesy the artist and Noirmont art production.

LW: And the glass constantly changes colours, opacities, translucencies.

SD: It’s tricky with these pieces. You and the person next to you will look at the same object but will not have the same experience. It depends on the natural light, the artificial light, what’s in the background, foreground, the position of the viewer – the glass is hypersensitive and reacts to everything.

LW: What were the prohibitions in working in such a historic venue?

SD: It was the first time in the history of the basilica in which a secular artwork was installed in the choir. I was told I could do what I wanted, but I couldn’t touch anything. We had to find areas of the building that had been landmarked and not landmarked. We went to the attic to look for its structural points so we could apply weights. We built I-beams that ran across the width of the building and ran cables down about 25 metres to the ground through pre-existing holes; the ladder itself is about 15 metres, the biggest that I’ve made to date. Then, with remote controls, we hoisted the ladder in sections. The frame is aluminium and hollow so the cables could run through it, which kept the ladder taut, preventing it from buckling while also controlling the angle, adjusting for sightlines that come into play and perspectival distortions. As instructed, the ladder doesn’t touch anything.

LW: You said it was a mirage of sorts. Would you explain what you mean by that?

SD: Walking around the ambulatory, you could see the interplay of light but before that, as soon as you walked into the cathedral, you could sense the light as a phenomenon before you saw the ladder. For me, it was important to develop this as a kind of illusion, something barely perceptible, an unusual presence, the transition of the visual to the ineffable, immaterial. And it is as important for me as the actual ladder which can disappear, depending on where you are in the ambulatory.

Stephen Dean, Crescendo, 15-metre-high glass ladder. Installation view at Saint-Denis Cathedral Basilica in Paris, September 2023 – January 2025. © Stephen Dean, courtesy the artist and Noirmont art production.

LW: You designated it a secular object, but placed in that site, does it become sanctified by association?

SD: Yes, perhaps, but there is a lot of play in that, between an inherited spirituality and a provoked spirituality that triggers a very personal experience that doesn’t belong to any specific religious protocols. It’s a dialogue between stained glass and the sculpture’s glass which colours the air, which is something I had in mind from the outset and happens because you have these two different kinds of energy fields. The ladder is also like a filmstrip to me, the pieces of glass filtering the architecture, the sequence of the glass is like a kaleidoscope shifting, the colours changing, splintering, from a saturated red to a super-intense and weird yellow green, for example, as it breaches the space, and crashes against the walls. I like the cinematic aspect of that and that’s not sacred.

LW: So sacred and profane? You must have seen a lot of cathedrals when you were growing up.

SD: I did, it was inevitable. One memory from that time still puzzles me – how does stained glass work? Inside, it is glorious but when you are outside, it’s dull, dark. There is no hint of what’s inside. That always fascinated me. Saint-Denis must have been like a total spaceship in the 12th century when life was monochromatic, the environment grey-scaled, dun-coloured. The stained glass was hi-tech for the 12th century. You entered the cathedral and there was an explosion of light and colour, of stories being told in the glass, in the paintings and sculptures, with not a hint of that radiance outside. It was such a strong dichotomy between interior and exterior, such a powerful opposition.

LW: And what do you think of the neighbourhood today, which is mostly immigrants? That’s a powerful opposition too.

SD: It is one of the poorest postal codes in France and a place of great contrast, but also of new ideas. Saint-Denis has a long history of being a migrant neighbourhood, but it is still a place where royalists gather to pay tribute to Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI twice a year. It’s upbeat, vibrant, and the younger generations living there have a great will to transform it, to use anything to enhance their quality of life. The church is part of that community. It is not a closed building but opened to the public and to the neighbourhood. If religion is an issue for this ethnically diverse community that is predominantly Muslim, Saint-Denis is also a place of history, architecture, art and other cultural activities. In the three years that I spent there because of the project, I felt at home. It was like New York – it has the same energy.

• Stephen Dean’s installation Crescendo is at Saint-Denis Cathedral Basilica until 5 January 2025 (extended to 6 April 2025).