Shakers versus the Rockettes 1 2 - PRINTER VERSION
Published in Ceramics Monthly, 39(4), April 1991.
Kurt Andersen wrote in Time magazine about the Whitney's 20th-century design exhibition that "in the battle for America's aesthetic soul, it is the Shakers vs. the Rockettes. Austerity," he added, "has tended to lose the fight to pizzazz."
Andersen could have been describing just as accurately the opposing tendencies in contemporary ceramics in the United States. The interest in unglazed wood-fired pottery is, I believe, a reaction against what many feel is the trend in the last 10 years toward exhibitionism and ostentatiousness in the ceramic arts, and reflects the desire of some potters to find a positive alternative to the two most prominent genres in contemporary ceramics where the "Rockettes" seem to be thriving. The first is so-called "functional" pottery, a euphemism for the kind of hackneyed, mass-produced, market-oriented pottery (made for craft fairs and boutiques) that has stigmatized pottery as a genre capable of nothing more than crass and commercial tourist ware. The second is the postmodern vessel, a product of the greenhouse like environment of many of our university ceramics departments: it is a hybrid of painting, sculpture, and the vessel that is epitomized by the gratuitous, manneristic use of ceramic technique and the redundant, self-indulgent display of the ceramist's personality.
Potters, who are influenced by and work within the Japanese idiom of unglazed, wood-fired pottery, came to pottery originally not because they had the burning desire to provide middle-class America with a good $2 mug, or because they felt the need to display their psychological hang-ups and emotional angst. They came to pottery because it moved them and spoke to them in a way no other art form did. It is the expression of that same kind of intense feeling and not the mere act of creating mugs, bowls and plates that is the goal of these potters. To them, wood firing—with its drama, romance and rough, naturalistic surfaces—seemed a perfect antidote to the gaudy, spiritless pottery that abounded at craft fairs across the country and the self-important, trendy vessels that filled the field's survey exhibitions. But more important than these attributes was the fact that wood firing as an "aesthetic" had a historical precedent in late-l6th-century Japan, where it was made with the kind of self-conscious artifice usually associated with modern art. That and the knowledge that wood firing is still culturally, and aesthetically important in modern Japan is what attracted American potters who were looking for a historical premise within the language of ceramic art for their own aesthetic inclinations and philosophical concerns.
But can a mere technique like wood firing be the basis for an important movement in contemporary ceramic art? And is it possible to have a consequential American aesthetic movement premised on Japanese aesthetics? Both of these questions are valid ones, which have to be answered if wood firing is going to become more than a kind of quaint pastime practiced by what appears to be a group of reactionary potters. However, the assumption (by some in the ceramics field) that questions about the validity of foreign influences, historical references, even the outright appropriation of either, should be rigorously applied to a specific group of potters influenced by Oriental thought, and not all ceramic artists, in general, suggests a kind of cultural chauvinism inappropriate to a country dependent on a global economy for its survival.
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© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign
Published in Ceramics Monthly, 39(4), April 1991.
Kurt Andersen wrote in Time magazine about the Whitney's 20th-century design exhibition that "in the battle for America's aesthetic soul, it is the Shakers vs. the Rockettes. Austerity," he added, "has tended to lose the fight to pizzazz."
Andersen could have been describing just as accurately the opposing tendencies in contemporary ceramics in the United States. The interest in unglazed wood-fired pottery is, I believe, a reaction against what many feel is the trend in the last 10 years toward exhibitionism and ostentatiousness in the ceramic arts, and reflects the desire of some potters to find a positive alternative to the two most prominent genres in contemporary ceramics where the "Rockettes" seem to be thriving. The first is so-called "functional" pottery, a euphemism for the kind of hackneyed, mass-produced, market-oriented pottery (made for craft fairs and boutiques) that has stigmatized pottery as a genre capable of nothing more than crass and commercial tourist ware. The second is the postmodern vessel, a product of the greenhouse like environment of many of our university ceramics departments: it is a hybrid of painting, sculpture, and the vessel that is epitomized by the gratuitous, manneristic use of ceramic technique and the redundant, self-indulgent display of the ceramist's personality.
Potters, who are influenced by and work within the Japanese idiom of unglazed, wood-fired pottery, came to pottery originally not because they had the burning desire to provide middle-class America with a good $2 mug, or because they felt the need to display their psychological hang-ups and emotional angst. They came to pottery because it moved them and spoke to them in a way no other art form did. It is the expression of that same kind of intense feeling and not the mere act of creating mugs, bowls and plates that is the goal of these potters. To them, wood firing—with its drama, romance and rough, naturalistic surfaces—seemed a perfect antidote to the gaudy, spiritless pottery that abounded at craft fairs across the country and the self-important, trendy vessels that filled the field's survey exhibitions. But more important than these attributes was the fact that wood firing as an "aesthetic" had a historical precedent in late-l6th-century Japan, where it was made with the kind of self-conscious artifice usually associated with modern art. That and the knowledge that wood firing is still culturally, and aesthetically important in modern Japan is what attracted American potters who were looking for a historical premise within the language of ceramic art for their own aesthetic inclinations and philosophical concerns.
But can a mere technique like wood firing be the basis for an important movement in contemporary ceramic art? And is it possible to have a consequential American aesthetic movement premised on Japanese aesthetics? Both of these questions are valid ones, which have to be answered if wood firing is going to become more than a kind of quaint pastime practiced by what appears to be a group of reactionary potters. However, the assumption (by some in the ceramics field) that questions about the validity of foreign influences, historical references, even the outright appropriation of either, should be rigorously applied to a specific group of potters influenced by Oriental thought, and not all ceramic artists, in general, suggests a kind of cultural chauvinism inappropriate to a country dependent on a global economy for its survival.
>>
© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign