Originality At All Costs   1      2      -      PRINTER VERSION

>> These differences in approach and concerns can most aptly be illustrated in clay by comparing the differences between raku as it exists in the United States and Japan. The sense of exclusion is obvious in the 16th-century tea bowls of Chojiro, and to many the exterior or physical differences between some of these bowls is indistinguishable and their value almost incomprehensible. In American raku we see the inclusion principle at its best, which is, at the same time, its worst. Countless varieties of contorted forms are subjected to various tortures. Potters put their works in garbage cans filled with everything from manure to human hair in an effort to smoke the surfaces. They pour oil on them, paint them, luster them, and in general try anything to create something new and original. In contemporary ceramics they appear to pursue "originality" by adding to or expanding the physical process. To be "creative" and "original", the physical appearance of their work must constantly seem to be changing. Timothy Harris points out, however, that:

Contrary to the opinion of many critics, the quest for originality at all costs leads only to the impoverishment of art or chaos. The point is not that one artist has been influenced by another, but how he uses this influence. An artist who lacks the ability to think for himself will produce inferior copies of his mentors works; a true artist utilizes aspects of other artists' styles to create something new and original. The same, incidentally, applies in any field of human endeavor —"creativity", a term which has been drained of nearly all significance by fashionable educationalists, second-rate journalists, gossip columnists, PR men, pop psychologists, and other bores is not the prerogative of artists.2

It is this insistence on "originality at all costs" that has led some gallery owners, critics, and university professors to assume mistakenly that, by contriving novel shapes and glaze effects, new concepts and feelings can somehow be created. This approach is popular among mediocre ceramists because it absolves them from dealing with ceramic history as well as understanding their own reasons for making what they do. It is far simpler for them to follow the trends and fashions of "modern" ceramics that make no reference to the past or to function or, if they do so, they do so metaphorically.

If we are serious about understanding and appreciating ceramic art, then we must look beyond the style or the historical references of work—whether it be the unglazed, woodfired style of the Momoyama period, the California funk art style of the 1970s, or the "necco wafer/new wave graphic" ceramics of the 1980s—to the point the artist is attempting to address by employing that style. It is in this aspect of the work rather than in the stylistic mannerisms of a particular period that we are able to see the true genius of a piece and to determine its ultimate value. It is Michael Cardew who has best expressed these concerns:

"We do not want to make Chinese or Korean or primitive pots. But we have seen clearly what they have which our own so badly lack, and having seen it we are not likely to lose sight of it again."3

References
1. Timothy Harris in a review of Insik Quac. Asahi Evening News, November 3, 1978.
2. Timothy Harris in a review of Shiro Hayami. Asahi Evening News, July 28, 1978.
3. Michael Cardew, "An Essay on Pottery." Ceramics Monthly, October 1982.
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