Kitsch as Avant-Garde 1 2 3 4 5 - PRINTER VERSION
>> ceremony that allowed them to speak so eloquently. When the purity and eloquence of the raku teabowl is compared to the forced and mannered vessels in Clay Revisions, the show's argument that the most important element of the modern vessel is its dismissal of function seems absurd.
Fortunately, a few serious critics do not dismiss function as important criteria for judging the significance of a vessel. In contrast to Halper, Donald Kuspit, in his closing address at the 1987 NCECA (National Council in Education for the Ceramic Arts) conference in Syracuse said that he felt it was "self-destructive" for the ceramic object to abrogate its functional character: "It seems to me important that the ceramic object not lose its mundane function. For in becoming contemplatively significant without losing its functionality it elevates the mundane activity of life it serves into an object of contemplation itself." (NAE, October 1987).
In an article in American Craft (April/May 1988), Jane Addams Allen said that functional objects, because they are based on human needs, have the potential to reinforce our sense of human identity as no other work of art can, and that they "embody cultural ties to the past that cannot be loosened without a loss of meaning and integrity". She went on to say, "For this reason, it is tragic that so many of the most talented workers in clay, wood, and textiles have decided that making functional objects is a lower calling, one unworthy of the creative imagination."
Most of the work in Clay Revisions fails, not because it has discarded function, but because it has not contributed in any substantial manner to the language of either painting and sculpture or that of the ceramic vessel. It may, as Jay Gates says, be a new creation from the wedding of the ceramics and fine arts tradition, but like the mule, another example of crossbreeding, it is impotent. It must always, as it does now, rely on both the fine arts and the ceramic arts as a source of visual and conceptual rejuvenation. If ceramic art is, as many people think, an art with its own language and perspective that has the potential to reinvigorate and challenge the fine arts, ceramists are going to have to offer something more cogent than the ambiguous vessels in Clay Revisions.
<<
© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign
>> ceremony that allowed them to speak so eloquently. When the purity and eloquence of the raku teabowl is compared to the forced and mannered vessels in Clay Revisions, the show's argument that the most important element of the modern vessel is its dismissal of function seems absurd.
Fortunately, a few serious critics do not dismiss function as important criteria for judging the significance of a vessel. In contrast to Halper, Donald Kuspit, in his closing address at the 1987 NCECA (National Council in Education for the Ceramic Arts) conference in Syracuse said that he felt it was "self-destructive" for the ceramic object to abrogate its functional character: "It seems to me important that the ceramic object not lose its mundane function. For in becoming contemplatively significant without losing its functionality it elevates the mundane activity of life it serves into an object of contemplation itself." (NAE, October 1987).
In an article in American Craft (April/May 1988), Jane Addams Allen said that functional objects, because they are based on human needs, have the potential to reinforce our sense of human identity as no other work of art can, and that they "embody cultural ties to the past that cannot be loosened without a loss of meaning and integrity". She went on to say, "For this reason, it is tragic that so many of the most talented workers in clay, wood, and textiles have decided that making functional objects is a lower calling, one unworthy of the creative imagination."
Most of the work in Clay Revisions fails, not because it has discarded function, but because it has not contributed in any substantial manner to the language of either painting and sculpture or that of the ceramic vessel. It may, as Jay Gates says, be a new creation from the wedding of the ceramics and fine arts tradition, but like the mule, another example of crossbreeding, it is impotent. It must always, as it does now, rely on both the fine arts and the ceramic arts as a source of visual and conceptual rejuvenation. If ceramic art is, as many people think, an art with its own language and perspective that has the potential to reinvigorate and challenge the fine arts, ceramists are going to have to offer something more cogent than the ambiguous vessels in Clay Revisions.
<<
© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign