Kitsch as Avant-Garde 1 2 3 4 5 - PRINTER VERSION
>> 'and' binds them. Not only is the idealized ceramic center not complete and whole—some kind of oneness and undifferentiated unity/synthesis without repression of difference—but it is also 'not a duality'—a relation of complementary. The 'sherd', as the breaking/binding virgule, the division 'between' doubles, takes place between any two terms of any ceramic opposition. As the between, it cannot be synthesized; on the contrary, it is 'analytic'—escaping alternatives and eluding the either/or situation."
Such verbiage not only attempts to create an aura of intellectual legitimacy around ceramics, but also tries to move ceramics critically "away from itself" so that it can be interpreted in the broader context of Postmodernist fine art.
Institutions like the Renwick Gallery and the Everson Museum, to name only two, have also worked hard to place contemporary ceramic art within the context of fine arts. Several years ago, The Renwick's Clay on Walls sought to portray ceramic art as something more like painting. Raylene Decatur, the show's curator, said she picked ceramic artists who had "chosen to incorporate the stylistic elements from painting, drawing, and assemblage". Barbara Perry, curator of ceramic art at the Everson Museum, observed in the catalogue essay for American Ceramics Now —The 27th National Ceramics Exhibition, organized by the Everson: "The juried part of the exhibition mirrors the pluralism that characterizes the contemporary art scene"—hardly a surprising observation considering that two of the three jurors for the exhibition—Barbara Haskell of the Whitney Museum and Henry Hopkins, director of the Weisman Collection—are fine arts people. What exhibitions like these and Clay Revisions have in common is a seemingly desperate desire to show the fine arts world not only that there are intellectual rationales for the ceramics field's continued obsession with technique and material, but also to provide some kind of trend or movement that can be pointed out as entirely indigenous to the ceramics field itself.
The problem is not the strategy itself. The problem is that the field's curators, writers, and many of its artists view the ceramic arts from a culturally narrow, modernist perspective. This predisposition precludes the field from any historical or cross-cultural examination of the vessel that might lead them to conclude that the vessel should be taken seriously on its own terms.
Halper typifies this culturally narrow modernist perspective when she describes the Japanese raku teabowl as "a relatively simple affair compared to its English cousin, the teacup". She calls the raku teabowl a hymn to the spontaneous nature of the potter and describes the English teacup as a complex object that reflects its aristocratic heritage. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Japanese ceramic art would think that Halper had confused the two objects and transposed them by mistake. Far from being spontaneous, the raku teabowl was elaborately sculpted: one might compare the degree of attention given them to the attention Henry Moore gave his maquettes. The raku teabowl, not unlike Moore's sculptures, was a self-conscious attempt by an artist-potter to express the aesthetic and intellectual concerns of his time. There were few of these bowls made and their status and importance then and now rivals the most important painting and sculpture of the West. These bowls achieved this status not in spite of, but because they were functional. It is the dynamics of function inside the context of the tea
>>
© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign
>> 'and' binds them. Not only is the idealized ceramic center not complete and whole—some kind of oneness and undifferentiated unity/synthesis without repression of difference—but it is also 'not a duality'—a relation of complementary. The 'sherd', as the breaking/binding virgule, the division 'between' doubles, takes place between any two terms of any ceramic opposition. As the between, it cannot be synthesized; on the contrary, it is 'analytic'—escaping alternatives and eluding the either/or situation."
Such verbiage not only attempts to create an aura of intellectual legitimacy around ceramics, but also tries to move ceramics critically "away from itself" so that it can be interpreted in the broader context of Postmodernist fine art.
Institutions like the Renwick Gallery and the Everson Museum, to name only two, have also worked hard to place contemporary ceramic art within the context of fine arts. Several years ago, The Renwick's Clay on Walls sought to portray ceramic art as something more like painting. Raylene Decatur, the show's curator, said she picked ceramic artists who had "chosen to incorporate the stylistic elements from painting, drawing, and assemblage". Barbara Perry, curator of ceramic art at the Everson Museum, observed in the catalogue essay for American Ceramics Now —The 27th National Ceramics Exhibition, organized by the Everson: "The juried part of the exhibition mirrors the pluralism that characterizes the contemporary art scene"—hardly a surprising observation considering that two of the three jurors for the exhibition—Barbara Haskell of the Whitney Museum and Henry Hopkins, director of the Weisman Collection—are fine arts people. What exhibitions like these and Clay Revisions have in common is a seemingly desperate desire to show the fine arts world not only that there are intellectual rationales for the ceramics field's continued obsession with technique and material, but also to provide some kind of trend or movement that can be pointed out as entirely indigenous to the ceramics field itself.
The problem is not the strategy itself. The problem is that the field's curators, writers, and many of its artists view the ceramic arts from a culturally narrow, modernist perspective. This predisposition precludes the field from any historical or cross-cultural examination of the vessel that might lead them to conclude that the vessel should be taken seriously on its own terms.
Halper typifies this culturally narrow modernist perspective when she describes the Japanese raku teabowl as "a relatively simple affair compared to its English cousin, the teacup". She calls the raku teabowl a hymn to the spontaneous nature of the potter and describes the English teacup as a complex object that reflects its aristocratic heritage. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Japanese ceramic art would think that Halper had confused the two objects and transposed them by mistake. Far from being spontaneous, the raku teabowl was elaborately sculpted: one might compare the degree of attention given them to the attention Henry Moore gave his maquettes. The raku teabowl, not unlike Moore's sculptures, was a self-conscious attempt by an artist-potter to express the aesthetic and intellectual concerns of his time. There were few of these bowls made and their status and importance then and now rivals the most important painting and sculpture of the West. These bowls achieved this status not in spite of, but because they were functional. It is the dynamics of function inside the context of the tea
>>
© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign