Originality At All Costs   1      2      -      PRINTER VERSION

Published in The Studio Potter, 12(1), December 1983, 77-78.

One of the most persistent concerns voiced by some people about unglazed woodfired work is how to translate or turn it into a new and uniquely American expression. Apparently it seems to disturb a few gallery owners, critics, and university professors that a group of potters, working not only in this genre, but in glazed work as well, are influenced by the work of another culture and historical period. What appears to bother them most of all though is that these potters, who exist outside the confines of academe, not only admit to this influence but are unrepentant when urged to become more "original" and "creative."

This unrepentance does not come from the mental intransigence attributed to those concerned only with the back-to-nature lifestyle of the 1960s, but rather it comes from the discovery by the intellectually curious of a body of concepts existing in Oriental thought that is peculiarly compatible with their own. Their intellectual curiosity, not the desire to provide middle-class America with a good three-dollar mug, brought them to pottery in the first place. They saw in pottery the potential to express their concerns and found in Oriental thought the concepts that allowed them to realize the unlimited possibilities existing in this seemingly narrow context.

Not only is it ignorance of the concepts that lie behind and support Oriental pottery which causes confusion and uncertainty about the work of these potters, but it is also an undeniable lack of understanding of these potters' method of perceiving art. In addition, there is a lack of realization that possibly another set of values could be equally valid in determining the ultimate worth of art. Instead, these critics insist on measuring and evaluating Oriental art with aesthetic concepts and concerns that are totally Western. It would be equally absurd to suggest that Western art can be understood from an exclusively Oriental perspective. It is through an understanding of each of these particular viewpoints that we are able to realize the intentions of an artist who may work in either of these traditions. The art critic Timothy Harris has, perhaps, best contrasted these two approaches:

"One could roughly characterize Occidental and Oriental art as being, respectively, inclusive and exclusive. The Western artist has generally aimed at including everything which he feels is relevant and at creating out of these elements a coherent and structured "whole" which exists in contradistinction to the chaos of events. The corollary of this in the Western scheme of things is the high value attached to universality, to an art, which includes, or gives the semblance of including everything. Think of the position, which Michelangelo's painting occupies, in the Western psyche.

But much of Eastern art works by exclusion, by concentrating on one small aspect of the world to such a degree that we may feel it has little to say, and in a direct sense, this is probably so. But indirectly it communicates a great deal. Though it may have little explicit content, it has a correspondingly large implicit content, and creates in the mind of the sensitive spectator an endless evocation of things and thoughts, like the ripples widening from a dropped stone. It is for this reason that a short poem by Tu Fu or a haiku by Basho can be as great and, in its own way, as universal as the Divine Comedy, though we may at first find this difficult to accept."1
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