Lili Krakowski on fri 16 nov 07
Ok. What is it? I have been waiting all week to find out. Is it copying,
which Gertrude Stein called the highest form of flattery, is it
homaging--please tell me there is no such word--is it "in the school of"--is
it a lack of self confidence and imagination? What is it?
Esp. in clay. Once upon a time, twisted branches were used on Adirondack
Camp furniture. These camps were not places where people went to suffer and
endure the primitive life, but marvelous luxurious log-built palaces where
the rich went to recuperate from their urban excesses. I do not remember
who said that nothing succeeds like excess, but s/he had a point.
Anyway. At some point branches began to appear as pot handles. Admirable
idea, huge huge fun...Never used one--terrified to, as how to get Pekoe
stains out of the double damask--and then these branches, twigs and similar
vegetation appeared on "everyone"'s pots. Same thing as with skewers and
such like which, borrowed from chopstick rests, now pierce half the pots in
shows.
Is that appropriation? Is it copying? Is it imitation? Is it a tribute to
the ONE who HAD this idea?
Can I found a school of APPROXIMATION ART ? This will consist of pots that
try really really hard, but don't quite make it?
Lili Krakowski
Be of good courage
Snail Scott on sat 17 nov 07
On Nov 16, 2007, at 11:00 PM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
> Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:26:13 -0500
> From: Lili Krakowski
> Subject: Appropriation Art
>
> Can I found a school of APPROXIMATION ART ? This will consist of
> pots that
> try really really hard, but don't quite make it?
Ha! I'm gonna use this one to my students. Good one, Lili!
-Snail
Terrance Lazaroff on sat 17 nov 07
Hello Lill;
You have been in this business for some time and you should know that there
are very few virgins in art today. Much has been done already so the only
way for many to go is via using the existing object and trying to improve
upon it. The only problem with this is that the work will eventually
become over decorated, over exaggerated, and over hyped. Those who copy
for profit are doing just that. They are manufacturers, but they enjoy the
challenge of creating just the same.
A good example of copy depreciation is the Qing dynasty ceramics copying
the Ming ceramics but allowing the forms to become gaudy and poorly made.
I believe those who copy today as an art form will eventually find their
own signature, decoration or statement, sometime in the future and some
will not. The key question here is; are they happy?
I also ask why must we be so stuck on coming up with the absolute new wave.
Why can't we just make pots and if they look like someone else=92s so be it.=
If they copy a form and it pleases the artist, so be it. As long as they
make the object themselves and do not make direct casts they can consider
their work theme and not copy.
This is my feeling today as I have just spent a week enlarging a Chinese
image, transposing it to a large porcelain tile and trying to make a bas
relief that resembles the drawing. This has taken me a week and I am still
a long way from finishing. I don't expect to get the value of my time from
this project but I am getting a great deal of respect for those who do this
art form for a living.
Have a good day.
Terrance
primalmommy on mon 19 nov 07
Lili, it was not my intention to ignore your question. In a lucid moment
between home chaos and school chaos, I read it, and considered asking an
off-list poster to give me permission to forward her understandings to
the list -- but here you've gone and solved it without me.
My understanding of the subject, as presented to me by the art historian
teaching the seminar, is as broad as Wikipedia's appears to have been.
We have looked at paintings by famous artists who cobbed whole
settings/scenes/situations from frescoes, sculptures or other paintings.
We have looked at art about art and art about artists, including
painters' self portraits and portraits of studios. We have looked at the
work of the photographer (her name escapes me now...Anne? Something?)
who photographs other people's photographs. We have looked at Warhol and
Lichtenstein and other contemporary types.
Early in the semester we were asked to bring in an example of
appropriated art. Imagine Mona Lisa neckties, Homer Simpson doing "The
Scream", Birth of Venus selling vodka, all kinds of bastardizations of
art used in marketing. I brought in a photo from a Ceramics mag of a
pyramidal form made entirely of slipcast doodads. Skulls, santas,
bunnies, yard gnomes, pine trees, busts of various presidents and
dignitaries, blessed virgins, holly hobbies, etc -- all in stark
porcelain white, arranged monumentally. I read it as an attempt to
re-present "low" art as "high" art, making a statement about our culture
and our medium... and it intrigued me that a lot of the low art (hobby
shop, poured-mold classical statues and busts) were themselves
appropriations of "high" art at one time, before becoming "kitsch".
Then we were to make our own work of appropriation art. Jay did a
powerpoint on George Orr, the mad potter of Biloxi, and passed around
some pots he made to be remarkably similar to Orr's convoluted forms. He
talked about the process and his trials and errors.
Nancy brought a bisqued sculpture similar to her series of stupa forms
but inspired by -- another missing name, a Japanese artist who was on
the cover of August's American Craft magazine -- who makes odd pod forms
in wire. Jonathan made a dartboard a la Jasper Johns, with ceramic faces
above it. I made a couple of woodcut prints in the print studio,
reminiscent of medieval scenes where oddly angular peasants went about
daily chores. (I come from peasant stock, and can relate to the
baking/harvesting/hands on toil in those images.) The ones I did were a
woman in medieval garb tending a (modern, langstroth style) beehive, and
a woman (yours truly) at the wheel.
I had also stamped the potter's wheel block, in oxide, onto a square
handbuilt plate, glazed and fired it as exhibit B for my project. I
found it highly significant that, as it was fired in a community kiln, a
glop of kiln crud fell and melted onto the surface (though in not an
entirely unfortunate way).
This upcoming final project is the bulk of our grade, though. We are
expected to hand out copies of our chosen artist's vital info, artist's
statement, etc. and give a beefy presentation with images about the
whats and the whys and the wherefores of the work. The paper is to be
handed in afterward.
I got some good leads and suggestions off list, and a friend called to
suggest Jack Earl's work. I sorted all my options. My sense is that this
prof has been doing this seminar for a very long time, and is tired of
seeing the same old top ten contemporary artists. I decided not to go
with he "historical movements/cultural borrowings" in ceramic history,
though I find it interesting myself, and find something a little more..
(Lili..) "zeitgeistish"?.
I finally settled on Charles Krafft, whose cobalt blue, Delft-inspired
"disasterware" series once amused and alarmed David Hendley and I, on an
NCECA gallery bus tour. It was an odd little place upstairs from a
tattoo parlor or something. (Was it Portland? It was raining, and there
was an organic grocery co-op, so I think so.)
It will be easy work to talk about, no subtleties, and it fits the
description the prof seems to favor. Social commentary, obvious
borrowing of a style in order to subvert it. His traditional delft cow
is on its back with tongue protruding, titled "mad cow". A decorative
blue-painted wall plate shows the bombing of Dresden, Nazi motifs, or
the sinking of a passenger ship. He casts antipersonnel weapons and hand
grenades and flowers them with blue decorations or Arabic-looking
calligraphy. Some of his work is truly offensive, which will hold the
attention of the young arty types in class. And it's probably not
somebody my prof has seen before, which works too. His artist's
statement is pretty straightforward, as he is pretty much self taught
except for a china painting class he took with some local ladies.
Another ceramics grad student has chosen Robert Arneson. I'll wait and
see what the others are up to. There is a bumper crop of ceramics grads
this year at EMU and we're making waves in an otherwise pretty
2d-focused conversation.
Now it is one in the morning and I still have clay in my hair. My hubby
and kids were already asleep when I got back from the EMU studio
tonight, slow ride on foggy highways, late night BBC on the radio. Now
not a creature is stirring at my house, except for a few restless cats,
and a chinchilla on a squeaky running-wheel. Tomorrow I have a buck and
a doe to skin, and will clean out the chest freezer while Jeff and my
dad render them into chops and roasts stacked in vaccum-sealed freezer
bags. I'll be in charge of grinding the rest for burgers, chili and taco
meat. One minute it's the ipod and the power point.. the next I am back
to playing Pocahontas.
Yours
Kelly in Ohio
Hoping I don't get kicked off of David's mailing list, though we've not
yet made it to Maydelle.. my kids can't wait to see his hilarious flyers
every year.
http://www.primalpotter.com
http://www.primalmommy.com/blog.html
Click for free information and quotes for interest only loans.
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