Doric T. Jemison-Ball ll on sat 3 mar 07
A big can of worms to open indeed.....
It looks like silly season is upon us. But I can't resist joining in.....
First, aside from how you'd prefer to "label" him, I think we should all
agree Picasso was a great artist.
There is no question that Picasso actually got his hands dirty and made
things out of clay. If anyone doubts that, take a look at the ceramic
sculptures he made of OWLS.
As to the "PURIST" "ceramicist" or "ceramic artist" defination some of the
commentators used to imply PICASSO wasn't a ceramic artist, please remember
that Michaelangelo generally had students and apprentices do most of the
actually carving/shaping of his marble statues and generally only did the
final fine work and polishing. Does that make him NOT a sculptor and just a
painter as some folks seem to want to imply in PICASSO's case.
My favorite Picasso ceramics story goes this way-he did a series of plates
[yep-that he painted on.] but got impatient with how long it took to make,
paint and fire the plates. He was at that time focused on the painting of
things on plate shapes. So he switched to paper plates instead and did a
series of about 1000 or so paper plates until he got it out of his system.
So, you can call him Pablo, or a painter or whatever, but he was, without a
doubt, one hell of an artist.
My favorite Picasso story is that his dealer got concerned one summer that
folks were stealing his trash, ironing drawings that he threw away and
selling them on the art "black market". His dealer wanted him to burn or
otherwise destroy his art trash, rather than throw it away in the regular
trash. Picasso's response was to throw everything he did for the next six
weeks in the regular trash.
The person that introduced me to clay many years ago taught me an important
lesson early on. She had me take my first 14 pots and smash them with a
hammer. The point was to not get too attached to the things one makes, but
rather to remember that it it the process of making them that is important,
and more importantly, that is the "art'.
I don't think any of us can fault Picasso on his process, and thus we
shouldn't be too attached to whether he dug his own clay or not. What is
important, is that while hanging around with Miro, while he was playing with
clay, Picasso got excited about clay as a medium and spent time over the
rest of his life exploring what he could do with it. So, for folks who
sometime smart at the "craft" label that gets stuck on ceramics, we should
be happy to have the blessing of one of the greatest artists of the 20th
century that recoginzed ceramics as art.
[Please, for all the "craft" folks, don't open up a new thread flaming me
because I put down "crafts". Frankly, I think painted Gypsy wagons are some
of the highest forms of "art" around.]
Doric T.Jemison-Ball II
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