Time in Mid

Time in Mid-Twentieth Century Ceramics Essay When Peter Voulkos (1924-2002) was an undergraduate ceramics major at Montana State University in the late 1940 ». the students dug and processed their own day and developed their own glazes. The necessity of this entirely do-it-yourself approach may seem remote now. but ceramics, like many of the traditional crafts, had been largely displaced by-the industrial revolution. In la » Angeles, where Voulkos would establish his mature practice, dsc arcJretypil potters tool—the wheel—was largely unknown for much of rise twentieth century, and throwing on the wheel became widespread only in the laic 1940s.1 In addition, casy-to-manipulatc. low-fire earthenware was favored over more exacting stoneware, and even high-firc kilns were extremely scarec. Consequently. Voulkos was part of a generation that was more rediscovering the craft of ceramics than working tradition. Part of this rediscovery consisted in an engagement with both Faun pea n and Asian ceramists who either relocated to or toured the United States at midcentury. These foreign porters enunciated definite prescriptions for American ceramics, and competing notions of tlc nature of time in ceramics were central to their saricd programs. This emphases made ceramics temporality a fundamental isnic for potters like Voulkos who emerged in the 19508. Engjish potter Bernard leach came to the United States twice in the early 1950s, the second time with his Japanese associates front the nrfngri movement, the peat ceramist Shoji Haiuidt and the philosopher Soctsu Yanap and Voulkos I sot ted the three visitors for an extended work shop in Montana in 1952. leachs teaching, mingling his own arul nangri ideas, proposed what Oliver Watson, curator of ceramics at the Victoria and Albert Museum, has called the â€Å"ethical pot: a vessel rooted in simplicity ansi hmct ton.- In his influential publicatio n   Pottrri Book. Leach Lad out principles for the ethical ptxtcr. which are found in â€Å"the me so far as possible of natural materials in the endeavor to obtain the best quality of body and pfuc, in throwing and in a striving towards unity, spontaneity, and simplicity of form, and in general tlte subordi nation of ail attempts at technical dcvcmcss to straightforward, untdfÃ' Ã ¾Ã'‚Ð ¾Ã µ sous workmanship. Tlx spontaneity leach called for was directly derived front the irregularities and imper fections of Japanese ceramics. Through rigorous training and discipline. Japanese ceramets allowed chance to enter into tire look of the finished object. This encouragement of the accidental—small cracks in the body, bubbles or blotdtcs in tltc glazed surface—is related to a particular, holistic view of time. The mirtgrt potter Hamada indicated the absence of a (elm. or definite end state, in his pottery. l‘m not interested in results. Im just interested in going on. Hamada meant that the finished pot could not be nude to resemble any precon ceived idea of it. Use vessel needed to take form in a manner that allowed its maker to be acutely aware of tire particularities of tire time and space in which he or she worked. Thus the pot w-as not a projection of an ideal hut an object (hat came into existence through an openness to temporality and contingency. Both Lcachsand Hamadas p ractices stressed process over product and perception over coocrprion. This shift to an art tlut insists on the primacy of perception was taken up by Voulkos and became the dominant strain among Los Angeles-based potters in the 1950s. If lxrach and the mingri movement idea of time w its holistic. Marguerite Wildcnhain can best be described as organic. Wildcnhain had studied from 1919 to 1926 at the Bauhatis, where the teaching in ceramics privileged form over color and stressed a strict util itarianism. Wildcnhain » influence on American ceramics, particularly California ceramics, w-as moat pronounced through her reaching. ArÐ µ immigrated to the United States in 1940 and was first affiliated with tire California College of Arts and Crafts (now tire California College of Arts) before setting up her pottery at Pond Farm in Cucmcvillc. California, in 1942. Voulkos hosted her for an intensive five-week workshop in Montana in 1953. Wildcnhain instilled in her students ihc Bauhaus dictum of Tmth to materials. In 1Ð ºÃ ³ ease, this was an insistence that successful ceramics respect the essential properties of the medium as wdl as aim for a seamless integration of form and function. Richard Peterson, head of Scripps Colleges ceramics department in Q arc mom. California sointsour that Wildcnhain » pot-making was an ancmpc. from a very different perspective than that of nfngri to merge craft with ruture: â€Å"Everything sire slid was an object lesson in the inte gration of pottery with Nature clay bodies infused with her glares to become one. This integration of pottery with Nature meant that, for Wildcnhain. ceramic creation was an organic progression of throw ing, glazing, firing, as if these were bound together in a seamless evolution. Glazed calcareous clay ceramics from critille, Turkey EssayUnit Htg Horn has broad fields that are richly colored: a deep blue, for instance, makes one section on the right-hand side scent utterly flat. The plane adjacent to the left, splattered with a white slip, jutforward, making it appear unconnected to the flat blue and without any means of support. Unlike the ceramics of leach. Hamada. ot Wildcnhain, which in their adherence to traditional conceptions arc more readily comprdxndcd. Voulkoss large-scale pieces only coalesce when they ate experienced over extended tinx and from multiple viewing angles. This Is largely because they arc not conceptually cogent. Contrary to the aesthetics of the older ceramists, Voulkoss work presents a sisual cxpcrietxc that, like the temporality of their manufacture, is not cohesive but additive and aspectual,dis-mtcgrated stacks, surfaces, and moments never coming together into a unified whole.