Carol Casey on wed 20 feb 02
I'd like to thank Elizabeth for suggesting this
tribute. And everyone who has responded for taking so
much time to think and write about Peter Voulkos's
work and clay.
I suppose such an exercise is best when one discusses
those indigestible artists, who awe us while they're
alive and let us creep up closer to examine their work
after they've died . . . how many are there?
This continues to be invaluable to me as a way to
think about clay, who we are in it, and why it can be
so expressive--why it can be art.
Thanks again.
Carol Casey
--- Snail Scott wrote:
> What Peter Voulkos gave us was not craftsmanship in
> pursuit
> of an end result, but, (in the mode of Abstract
> Expressionism)
> a commemoration of material and process. The
> repetition of
> forms (the plate, the stack) provide a formal
> 'scaffolding'
> for the efforts of the maker to be recorded in such
> a way that
> the form itself is all but removed as an issue.
> Instead, it is
> the spontaneous, direct manipulation of the material
> that is
> given precedence. While Abstract Expressionism is
> mainly
> associated with painting, Voulkos showed how very
> suitable
> clay was for such work, allowing the direct force of
> the artist's
> efforts to be preserved in a way that conveys the
> physical nature
> of the artist's involvement directly back to the
> viewer. 'Action
> Painters' such as Pollock sought such a preservation
> of the
> artist's presence and gesture, but I don't believe
> that any
> process, when reduced to the interface of paint and
> canvas,
> can be recorded in its original physicality in the
> way that clay
> allows. The foundation of such work lies in the idea
> that the
> essence of the artist's self might be conveyed
> directly from the
> subconcious to the work, if the self-critical
> faculty of analysis
> that 'conventional' art requires can be set aside.
> Artistic
> judgement is not suspended, but is deferred (at
> least in part,)
> until the object is completed. It can then be
> considered with
> a different mindset than the one which created it.
> 'Making' and
> 'looking' are very distinct mental places, and
> divorcing the
> two results in a very different variety of art
> object, which
> says very different things about the process of
> creation.
>
> I believe that Voulkos' choice of forms allowed him
> to approach
> these ideas in nearly opposite directions. The
> plates are
> roughly thrown to create a 'tabula rasa' on which to
> record
> gesture and action. They're closely allied to the
> Action Painters'
> canvases in that they allow the surface to be
> modified without
> concern for the dictates of gravity which are so
> dominant
> in most claywork. The stacks, on the other hand,
> make gravity
> and the physical demands of clay the overriding
> aspect of the
> work. The weight of the clay, its plasticity, its
> mass and
> earthbound tendencies are not concealed by the
> rising lightness
> of a thrown vase form, or concealed behind surface
> ornament.
> The stacks are _about_ clay; the human traces of
> manipulation
> and construction seem only to emphasize the primal
> nature of
> the material. (For this reason, I've always been
> ambivalent about
> the works which he had cast in bronze, which seem to
> be more
> like souvenirs of the process than direct
> expressions. They
> do retain all the visual power of the clay versions
> even when
> seen in person, so perhaps it's no bad thing, but I
> wonder if
> even Voulkos succumbed to the lure of the higher
> prices placed
> on art rendered in bronze.)
>
> Voulkos gave us art, with clay as its subject.
>
>
> -Snail
>
>
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