Garth Clark 1 2 3 4 5 6 - PRINTER VERSION
>> milieu. Now we find that that has changed and that perhaps 25 percent of our clientele can be described that way. The rest are as likely to go off and buy themselves an Ed Paschke or a David Salle or whatever. They are buying art, and from time to time they buy clay art.
RB: What exactly caused Rudy Autio's and Peter Voulkos' work to become so expensive? It seemed like you started at the point where people began to collect it because it cost $20,000. What caused it to reach that particular point in the first place?
GC: Several factors contributed to that. One is that the art market has become rather ravenous. There are all of these galleries and all these collectors, and there's a tremendous need for "product". I'm not using the word unkindly— perhaps a little cynically—but nonetheless, the art market, as it gobbled up this and gobbled up that, began to range out on the fringes and pick up the ceramic works. Another of the reasons that the market for ceramic art has grown as fast as it has is that it isn't so expensive. Ceramic art is a bargain.
RB: Only in relationship to painting.
GC: Of course. But everything is relative. It is a very different kettle of fish when a person suddenly finds that in order to stay in the painting field he's got to come up with perhaps $40,000 a month to get the hotter names in town. But to buy a major Autio he needs only $10,000. So even with the greatly increased prices, which have gone up tenfold and twentyfold in the last five or ten years. ceramic art is still very reasonably priced. Many people argue that it's tremendously overpriced. I think a lot of collectors are buying quite feverishly at the moment because they feel that we haven't seen the top of the price yet. A few artists are rising very strongly still, but I think that we've reached a bit of a plateau. I think that that's true of the arts in general. I don't think there are spiraling price hikes all over town. What got energies going was a number of things. I think that we had something to do with kicking it off, and when I say we, I'm referring to Margie Hughto and myself. In 1979 we organized an exhibition called A Century of Ceramics in the United States. It was the first time that ceramics had ever been brought together cohesively on a historical and particularly an art-historical basis. We organized a major symposium, which brought, among other people, Clement Greenberg on our side. A book was published which, while not a major work, is really the only text that exists. The show went on tour through the country for three years and was very, very well received in Washington, New York, Chicago, and the other cities it went to. It really ignited interest in the medium on many levels. People, first of all, began to understand that ceramics had roots—that in fact it wasn't found in a box underneath an orange tree in 1970, but that it was a whole evolution of different people trading ideas. They began to find that the way clay was used was very surprising and very intriguing. Interestingly, hanging around the exhibitions and listening to people talk, I think what surprised us most was that people knew so little of what had been done. Two or three dozen very serious collectors had their interest ignited directly as a result of the Century show.
RB: At that time, in 1979, had you started your gallery?
>>
© 1980 - 2025 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign
>> milieu. Now we find that that has changed and that perhaps 25 percent of our clientele can be described that way. The rest are as likely to go off and buy themselves an Ed Paschke or a David Salle or whatever. They are buying art, and from time to time they buy clay art.
RB: What exactly caused Rudy Autio's and Peter Voulkos' work to become so expensive? It seemed like you started at the point where people began to collect it because it cost $20,000. What caused it to reach that particular point in the first place?
GC: Several factors contributed to that. One is that the art market has become rather ravenous. There are all of these galleries and all these collectors, and there's a tremendous need for "product". I'm not using the word unkindly— perhaps a little cynically—but nonetheless, the art market, as it gobbled up this and gobbled up that, began to range out on the fringes and pick up the ceramic works. Another of the reasons that the market for ceramic art has grown as fast as it has is that it isn't so expensive. Ceramic art is a bargain.
RB: Only in relationship to painting.
GC: Of course. But everything is relative. It is a very different kettle of fish when a person suddenly finds that in order to stay in the painting field he's got to come up with perhaps $40,000 a month to get the hotter names in town. But to buy a major Autio he needs only $10,000. So even with the greatly increased prices, which have gone up tenfold and twentyfold in the last five or ten years. ceramic art is still very reasonably priced. Many people argue that it's tremendously overpriced. I think a lot of collectors are buying quite feverishly at the moment because they feel that we haven't seen the top of the price yet. A few artists are rising very strongly still, but I think that we've reached a bit of a plateau. I think that that's true of the arts in general. I don't think there are spiraling price hikes all over town. What got energies going was a number of things. I think that we had something to do with kicking it off, and when I say we, I'm referring to Margie Hughto and myself. In 1979 we organized an exhibition called A Century of Ceramics in the United States. It was the first time that ceramics had ever been brought together cohesively on a historical and particularly an art-historical basis. We organized a major symposium, which brought, among other people, Clement Greenberg on our side. A book was published which, while not a major work, is really the only text that exists. The show went on tour through the country for three years and was very, very well received in Washington, New York, Chicago, and the other cities it went to. It really ignited interest in the medium on many levels. People, first of all, began to understand that ceramics had roots—that in fact it wasn't found in a box underneath an orange tree in 1970, but that it was a whole evolution of different people trading ideas. They began to find that the way clay was used was very surprising and very intriguing. Interestingly, hanging around the exhibitions and listening to people talk, I think what surprised us most was that people knew so little of what had been done. Two or three dozen very serious collectors had their interest ignited directly as a result of the Century show.
RB: At that time, in 1979, had you started your gallery?
>>
© 1980 - 2025 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign