Mystery and the Art Experience 1 2 3 - PRINTER VERSION
>> manifest itself within the narrow confines of taste. Taste by definition deals with the known and when it is used as our measuring stick for aesthetic beauty, the pleasure we derive from an object comes not from its sense of mystery but rather from ones ability to identify the characteristics that cause it to fit within the parameters of ones taste. For example, the proponents of "American mingei" have their own frames of reference for what they believe are the qualities of good ceramic art and have fashioned a kind of philosophy that defines those characteristics. While the advocates of "modern ceramics" have an entirely different set of criteria that ceramic works must possess in order to be relevant in contemporary culture and have created their own jargon to argue the primacy of their position in culture. Both of these constructs are calculated attempts by ceramics artists to satisfy their specific audience.
Mystery and the art experience though, cannot be easily processed or planned; in fact its nature resists any attempts at formularizing it or the intellectual codification of the aspects of its existence. For example, when a person first has an art experience, it usually comes to them unexpected. They may be in a museum looking at painting, sculpture, pottery or photographs, when suddenly an object seizes them and creates a kind of mental confusion. They may be strongly drawn to it, for example, when in fact they thought they would or should detest it. It unexpectedly causes them to transcend their prejudices and taste and somehow makes the world seem a larger and a more beautiful place to inhabit, a place where suddenly all things seem possible. Their fears and worries vanish and they leave feeling like they are walking on air. At least, that is how it happened to me. This intense experience is fleeting though and it is the desire to re-experience it that causes people to seek out art whenever and wherever they can find it. I believe that artists are people more sensitive to this experience than others and that they cannot wait for someone or someplace to provide that next experience for them, and they are willing to spend their entire existence struggling to create it for themselves.
Not only is this notion of a transcendental art experience highly suspect to some, but, when I suggest that it may be brought on by an object as mundane as a cup, the level of skepticism is even higher. The reason some find it difficult to believe that a piece of pottery can deliver this experience is twofold; first they have lived with these common objects so long that they have ceased to see them as mysterious, as being capable of carrying any higher meaning and second; as a culture, we generally do not consider the physical or tactile aspects of a ceramic object—an integral component of a useful object—as possessing any kind of aesthetic expression. One of the interesting things about the rejection of pottery by postmodern art as being unworthy of the moniker "art" is that this rejection coincides with the rejection by postmodern art of the very idea of any kind of art experience. The tendency of one who has experienced this profound and life altering experience with a piece pottery—one that I have indulged in to some degree—is to try to convince others of its existence by making rational intellectual arguments that outline how a cup, for example, has the potential to produce such powerful feelings. I have learned though that people cannot be convinced by intellectual arguments that a cup or bowl can deliver the intense feelings associated with the art experience. One only learns of it by having it happen to them.
The question is, how does a potter transform a cup from being a ordinary object into one of mystery that is capable of transporting us from our mundane circumstances to an inner world where we are
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© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign
>> manifest itself within the narrow confines of taste. Taste by definition deals with the known and when it is used as our measuring stick for aesthetic beauty, the pleasure we derive from an object comes not from its sense of mystery but rather from ones ability to identify the characteristics that cause it to fit within the parameters of ones taste. For example, the proponents of "American mingei" have their own frames of reference for what they believe are the qualities of good ceramic art and have fashioned a kind of philosophy that defines those characteristics. While the advocates of "modern ceramics" have an entirely different set of criteria that ceramic works must possess in order to be relevant in contemporary culture and have created their own jargon to argue the primacy of their position in culture. Both of these constructs are calculated attempts by ceramics artists to satisfy their specific audience.
Mystery and the art experience though, cannot be easily processed or planned; in fact its nature resists any attempts at formularizing it or the intellectual codification of the aspects of its existence. For example, when a person first has an art experience, it usually comes to them unexpected. They may be in a museum looking at painting, sculpture, pottery or photographs, when suddenly an object seizes them and creates a kind of mental confusion. They may be strongly drawn to it, for example, when in fact they thought they would or should detest it. It unexpectedly causes them to transcend their prejudices and taste and somehow makes the world seem a larger and a more beautiful place to inhabit, a place where suddenly all things seem possible. Their fears and worries vanish and they leave feeling like they are walking on air. At least, that is how it happened to me. This intense experience is fleeting though and it is the desire to re-experience it that causes people to seek out art whenever and wherever they can find it. I believe that artists are people more sensitive to this experience than others and that they cannot wait for someone or someplace to provide that next experience for them, and they are willing to spend their entire existence struggling to create it for themselves.
Not only is this notion of a transcendental art experience highly suspect to some, but, when I suggest that it may be brought on by an object as mundane as a cup, the level of skepticism is even higher. The reason some find it difficult to believe that a piece of pottery can deliver this experience is twofold; first they have lived with these common objects so long that they have ceased to see them as mysterious, as being capable of carrying any higher meaning and second; as a culture, we generally do not consider the physical or tactile aspects of a ceramic object—an integral component of a useful object—as possessing any kind of aesthetic expression. One of the interesting things about the rejection of pottery by postmodern art as being unworthy of the moniker "art" is that this rejection coincides with the rejection by postmodern art of the very idea of any kind of art experience. The tendency of one who has experienced this profound and life altering experience with a piece pottery—one that I have indulged in to some degree—is to try to convince others of its existence by making rational intellectual arguments that outline how a cup, for example, has the potential to produce such powerful feelings. I have learned though that people cannot be convinced by intellectual arguments that a cup or bowl can deliver the intense feelings associated with the art experience. One only learns of it by having it happen to them.
The question is, how does a potter transform a cup from being a ordinary object into one of mystery that is capable of transporting us from our mundane circumstances to an inner world where we are
>>
© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign