Snail Scott on fri 9 jun 06
At 07:46 PM 6/8/2006 -0700, Tony F wrote:
>I am not sure why someone can not learn functional ceramics well, and then
take those
skills to push the work beyond itself and or push it into a non-functional
realm...
A lot of folks making very good functional
pottery seem to think that making it _less_
functional will magically transform it into
fine art.
One of the things that keeps so much ceramic
sculpture in the bush leagues is the pottery-
based baggage that it brings with it. The
skills and ideas and heritage of pottery can
be truly valuable to sculpture, but they need
to be evaluated in light of a different
intent, not dragged along out of unconsidered
habit.
A pot that doesn't work very well is not ipso
facto a work of art, any more than a sculpture
with a hole in the middle is a pot.
The reason why so many people "can not learn
functional ceramics well, and then take those
skills to push the work beyond itself" is that
too many of them learned their skills by rote,
never thinking of WHY these methods are used.
Historically, most pottery was taught this
way, and it worked pretty well. But, this
process seldom makes the very best pottery,
and adapts very poorly to making "work beyond
itself."
Sculpture is not just than pottery with all
those annoying restrictions (food safety,
ergonomics, function) taken away; it has its
own principles and practices. While it
probably IS more open to experimentation than
pottery, the too-common belief that you don't
actually need anything but pottery skills to
do it is what makes for so much amateurish
sculptural ceramics. Pottery and sculpture
have an overlapping skill-set, but not an
interchangeable one.
Often, the better the potter, the harder it
is to break away from the principles that
were acquired with so much study and practice.
All of us, in every field, assimilate the
ideas of the discipline we've made ourselves
a part of, often without conscious awareness
of it. When we step outside that field, we
bring those habits of thought with us, and
the more similar the new endeavor is to the
old one, the less likely it is that we will
even notice. If we do, we may even take it
for a virtue, and be blinded to subtle but
important differences.
Fine art is not better than pottery, but it
is a different thing. You don't get points
for a touchdown in a basketball game.
-Snail
Malcolm Schosha on fri 9 jun 06
Hi Snail,
What a beautifully thoughout, and written, message this is! If it is
your intention to teach sculpture, as I think I recall you mentioning
in an earlier message, you certainly will be a wonderful teacher.
Be well.
Malcolm
................................................
--- In clayart@yahoogroups.com, Snail Scott wrote:
>
> At 07:46 PM 6/8/2006 -0700, Tony F wrote:
> >I am not sure why someone can not learn functional ceramics well, and then
> take those
> skills to push the work beyond itself and or push it into a non-functional
> realm...
>
>
>
> A lot of folks making very good functional
> pottery seem to think that making it _less_
> functional will magically transform it into
> fine art.
>
> One of the things that keeps so much ceramic
> sculpture in the bush leagues is the pottery-
> based baggage that it brings with it. The
> skills and ideas and heritage of pottery can
> be truly valuable to sculpture, but they need
> to be evaluated in light of a different
> intent, not dragged along out of unconsidered
> habit.
>
> A pot that doesn't work very well is not ipso
> facto a work of art, any more than a sculpture
> with a hole in the middle is a pot.
>
> The reason why so many people "can not learn
> functional ceramics well, and then take those
> skills to push the work beyond itself" is that
> too many of them learned their skills by rote,
> never thinking of WHY these methods are used.
> Historically, most pottery was taught this
> way, and it worked pretty well. But, this
> process seldom makes the very best pottery,
> and adapts very poorly to making "work beyond
> itself."
>
> Sculpture is not just than pottery with all
> those annoying restrictions (food safety,
> ergonomics, function) taken away; it has its
> own principles and practices. While it
> probably IS more open to experimentation than
> pottery, the too-common belief that you don't
> actually need anything but pottery skills to
> do it is what makes for so much amateurish
> sculptural ceramics. Pottery and sculpture
> have an overlapping skill-set, but not an
> interchangeable one.
>
> Often, the better the potter, the harder it
> is to break away from the principles that
> were acquired with so much study and practice.
> All of us, in every field, assimilate the
> ideas of the discipline we've made ourselves
> a part of, often without conscious awareness
> of it. When we step outside that field, we
> bring those habits of thought with us, and
> the more similar the new endeavor is to the
> old one, the less likely it is that we will
> even notice. If we do, we may even take it
> for a virtue, and be blinded to subtle but
> important differences.
>
> Fine art is not better than pottery, but it
> is a different thing. You don't get points
> for a touchdown in a basketball game.
>
> -Snail
Taylor Hendrix on fri 9 jun 06
Hey Snail,
Some great points by the way.
I need your help, you being a sculptor and I not so much.
I've been reading Nigel Konstam's book _Sculpture: the art and the
practice_ and am a bit confused. If you know this book and know what
he means by the "two traditions" a.k.a. "the alternative tradition"
and "the classical tradition." This is his way of looking at things
and I'm not sure I am getting it.
I've really been wanting to try my hands at scupture but have been
stalling by reading up on it. This is something I do alot of when I
am scared to begin something.
Anyway, keep up the good fight,
Taylor, in Rockport TX
On 6/9/06, Snail Scott wrote:
...
> A lot of folks making very good functional
> pottery seem to think that making it _less_
> functional will magically transform it into
> fine art.
...
Lee Love on sat 10 jun 06
On 6/10/06, Taylor Hendrix wrote:
> I've really been wanting to try my hands at scupture but have been
> stalling by reading up on it. This is something I do alot of when I
> am scared to begin something.
Taylor, have you read the catalog book from Louise Cort's
exhibition of Noguchi's work and the Japanese ceramic sculptors he
influenced? It is pretty good.
Also, here is an article I found online, maybe I mentioned it
before: Crawling through the Mud:
http://ceramicsmuseum.alfred.edu/perkins_lect_series/cort/corttalk.html
Here are some quotes of the sculptor Yagi that I used in a discussion
on another list:
Yagi quotes :
on purposely deforming tea bowls:
"Yagi was deeply suspicious of the frame of mind required to recreate an
established mode, feeling that it involved self-deception. For example,
Yagi analyzed Arakawa's work after seeing a television program about the
older potter. [19] Yagi had often wondered how a contemporary potter
could successfully replicate the irregular forms of the
sixteenth-century Shino tea bowls, since "in old vessels the boundary
between what is created and what simply happens is ambiguous." He was
dismayed to see that Arakawa intentionally managed his throwing to
create "the sort of irregularity that makes pottery lovers weep."
Arakawa kept insisting to his interviewer, "It has to be natural," but
Yagi perceived that, for Arakawa, "natural" and "artful" were not
contradictory but inseparable. Yagi protested that the Living National
Treasures"
I always have questioned the conscious deforming of work to ape
accidental deformations. I think they usually end up feeling fake, or
pretentious.
Yagi on pretending to be 16th century:
"Yagi also refused to be deceived by the "natural" mode of work
represented by potters who worked under the wing of the Folk Craft
Movement. Just as Arakawa persisted in operating a highly inefficient
sixteenth-style kiln in order to fire his Shino tea bowls, the mingei
potters were obliged to adhere to expensive, inconvenient, and outmoded
processes that the leaders of the Folk Craft Movement deemed
appropriate. "Within the context of folk craft," Yagi criticized, "the
object itself has no connection to the logic of production.""
Personally, I am very happy that guys like Hank have figured out more
efficient ways of firing shinos.
--
Lee in Mashiko, Japan
http://mashiko.org
My google Notebooks:
http://tinyurl.com/e5p3n
"Let the beauty we love be what we do." - Rumi
Snail Scott on sat 10 jun 06
At 04:44 PM 6/9/2006 -0500, Taylor H wrote:
>Hey Snail,
>I've been reading Nigel Konstam's book _Sculpture: the art and the
>practice_ and am a bit confused. If you know this book and know what
>he means by the "two traditions" a.k.a. "the alternative tradition"
>and "the classical tradition." This is his way of looking at things
>and I'm not sure I am getting it...
I'm not familiar with that book, though I'll make
an effort to look for it now.
I'd guess, however, that the author is distinguishing
between traditional practices, also referred to as
'academic' (in the 19th-century sense, also called
'classical'), and so-called contemporary practice.
Contemporary, in this sense, isn't referring
necessarily to any work made presently, since
traditional-style work is still being made, but
to a stylistic lineage deriving from modernism
and its subsequent permutations, rather than
from academic practice. The term 'academic', here
doesn't refer to work done in schools, but derives
from the 19th-century offical art Academies,
especially the French one. 'Academic', like the
term 'contemporary', is a stylistic term, and
refers (basically) to work rooted in representation,
rendered in a manner derived from classicism, and
executed in the traditional 'fine art' materials
like bronze, stone, or even terra cotta.
I say 'traditional', he says 'classical'; I say
'contemporary', he says 'alternative': potayto,
potahto; tomayto, tomahto...
Ceramic sculpture is in an especially interesting
position, viv-a-vis the larger art world, because
it has two very disparate roots:
One root is in academism, and the use of terra
cotta to do sketches and study models, and to make
patterns for moldmaking (for bronze casting) or
to give the stonecarver something to work from.
Later, these became collected by patrons as final
works in their own right, and the spontaneity and
directness of the claywork became valued, not just
the highly finished surfaces of the bronze or stone.
The traditional ideals of composition, proportion
and accurate rendering from the natural model are
generally retained by people working in this idiom.
In clay, the working method is rooted in its origins
as a modeling material, and is generally worked
over an armature which is later removed if the work
is intended to be fired. This is the method you will
see in those books by Lucchesi or Grubbs.
The other root is the odd marriage between modern
art of the early 20th century, and the revived
studio pottery practice guided by people ranging from
Taxile Doat to Bernard Leach. When pottery made its
way into colleges (where traditional practice was
being displaced by modern practice), it met up with
modern art theory. Artists from this background began
to merge ceramics methods as practiced in studio
pottery with the aesthetics of modern art. This
meant the use of the wheel, slabs, and coils, (all
pottery-derived) to make hollow forms without
armature, the use of fired surfaces like glazes, and
surface alterations created by the firing process.
Stylistically, ceramic sculpture from this lineage
is similar to other art of its period: abstract
expressionism, minimalism, Pop art, post-modern, etc.
As post-modernism has made reference to historical
modes a valid meant of expression (though often with
ironic intent), ceramics has had the opportunity of
being a 'crossover' medium, utilizing aspects of
both traditions. The things that clay does well also
lend themselves to this, and the prevalence of
figurative work (sculpture depicting the human form),
reflects this.
This is (of course) a vastly simplified account, and
is my own personal analysis, which other people may
take issue with. As I said, I haven't yet read the
specific book you mention, but I hope I addressed at
least some of your question. If you'd like to expand
on (or narrow) the topic, I'd be happy to discuss it
further.
-Snail
Ivor and Olive Lewis on sun 11 jun 06
Dear Lee Love,
Please explain, without resorting to quotations, how your comments about =
Yagi and Arakawa resolve Taylor Hendrix's dilemma of distinguishing =
"Classical" from "Alternative" forms of Sculpture in the Western =
Tradition and where Shino fits into the picture.
I am confused.
Best regards.
Ivor Lewis.
Redhill,
South Australia.
Lee Love on sun 11 jun 06
On 6/11/06, Snail Scott wrote:
> As post-modernism has made reference to historical
> modes a valid meant of expression (though often with
> ironic intent), ceramics has had the opportunity of
> being a 'crossover' medium, utilizing aspects of
> both traditions. The things that clay does well also
> lend themselves to this, and the prevalence of
> figurative work (sculpture depicting the human form),
> reflects this.
One of the important things that potters bring to the mix is and
emphasis on the attention to materials. Clay is not just another
tool in the bag of tricks used to fabricate pre-conceived
<"Art Dork warning!>
http://ceramicsmuseum.alfred.edu/perkins_lect_series/cort/corttalk.html
I found this paragraph from Louise Cort's lecture interesting:
"I also have another goal in making you aware of the accomplishments
of the Sodeisha artists. Our society tends to view developments in
modern and contemporary art as the prerogative of Euroamerican
culture. We assume that all significant transformations in the art
world "happened first" in the United States or Europe and, thus, that
manifestations of similar impulses elsewhere=97particularly in Asia=97are
derivative. This unfortunate assumption reflects our ignorance of
developments elsewhere. For example, if I ask you to think of the
"ceramic avant-garde" and associate it with a time and place, chances
are that Peter Voulkos (1924-2002) and others associated with the Otis
Art Institute in Los Angeles in the late 1950s come to mind. Without
question that episode, which enlarged the domain of American ceramics
beyond domestic utilitarian wares to include abstract sculpture, had a
tremendous impact. It was not, however, the only mid-twentieth century
"ceramic avant-garde." Nor was it the first, since the Japanese
movement led by Sodeisha captured public attention (even international
attention) several years before comparable activities began on the
West Coast. "
--
Lee in Mashiko, Japan
http://mashiko.org
My google Notebooks:
http://tinyurl.com/e5p3n
"The accessibility of the handmade object in today's world seems vital
and radical, and hopefully tempers our hunger for 'progress' and
rationality" - , Michael Kline
Lee Love on mon 12 jun 06
On 6/11/06, Lee Love wrote:
>
> One of the important things that potters bring to the mix is and
> emphasis on the attention to materials. Clay is not just another
> tool in the bag of tricks used to fabricate pre-conceived
Sorry, this got away before it was finished.
The idea I found interesting in the Cort article, was that
while we think of Voulkos and the Otis group as being Avant-garde,
they were actually more attached to keeping notions of making pottery
connected to their sculpture. They picked up clay treatments from
watching Rosanjin score and puncture clay. The Sodeisha group,
inspired by the sculptor Noguchi, tried to put more distance between
their work and the traditional methods of pottery making.
http://ceramicsmuseum.alfred.edu/perkins_lect_series/cort/corttalk.html
--
Lee in Mashiko, Japan
http://mashiko.org
My google Notebooks:
http://tinyurl.com/e5p3n
"The accessibility of the handmade object in today's world seems vital
and radical, and hopefully tempers our hunger for 'progress' and
rationality" - , Michael Kline
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