Ceramics Battles Anti-Intellectualism At Recent Conference   1      2      3      -      PRINTER VERSION

>> The ceramic arts have a long and varied history that is viewed by some in the field as a source of inspiration and by others as an impediment to their search for "originality". The direction of contemporary American ceramic art may well depend on which of these two perspectives succeeds in establishing its influence over the field in general. The immediate question, though, is whether ceramics, in a search for acceptance by the more celebrated world of fine art, will surrender its identity or insist that the fine arts come to accept it within its own context. Herbert Read, in The Meaning of Art, observed that ceramic art "...is so fundamental, so bound up with the elementary needs of civilization, that national ethos must find its expression in this medium. Judge the art of a country, judge the fineness of its sensibility, by its pottery; it is a sure touchstone." Ceramists who have not discarded the rich history of ceramic art can provide those in the fine arts who still believe in connoisseurship and the traditional modes of art making with a viable alternative to the fine arts establishment's current obsession with, in Robert Hughes' words, "glitz, camp, childishness and art as fashion."
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