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The Art Museum of New Bedford has recently transformed its interior space, doing away with unnecessary barriers and relocating the front desk greeting station to the foyer. The latest show takes wonderful advantage of the far less boxy and claustrophobic reconfiguration to showcase arguably the finest exhibition in the history of the institution.
“Radical Reinvention: Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture” explores the decades-old transformation of ceramics itself, as certain pioneering practitioners of the craft moved beyond traditional utilitarianism into work that shifts into the conceptual and contemplative.
When most people think about the ceramic arts, it is likely pottery that pops into mind, specifically the creation of plates and a wide variety of vessels, such as pitchers, mugs, cups, teapots, jars, urns and the like. But while all pottery is ceramic, not all ceramicists are potters, even if pottery is a key element in their own secret origin stories.
But when does an artisanal vessel become art itself? Perhaps it is when the creator forms it in such a way as it cannot contain liquid. The flower dies in the vase, the mug spills the beer, and the teapot leaks. The maker has turned it into an object of contemplation rather than utility.
There had been an unnecessary divide between the fine arts and artisanry for many years. Is a chairmaker not concerned with form, the weaver indifferent to color relationships, or the potter only restricted to functionality and not beauty?
The first conceptual work of art was made of ceramic, albeit in a factory setting. Marcel Duchamp’s ready-made “Fountain” was a urinal laid on its back and signed “R. Mutt, 1917.”
Its significance cannot be overstated. It was a pivotal moment, assigning meaning to an everyday object beyond its familiar function. Stripped of purpose, it could only be art.
In “Radical Reinvention,” there is “Lidded Vase” by Peter Voulkos, created in the mid-1950s. It appears almost as an icon of a transitional moment. Voulkos taught a three-week summer course at the legendary Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he met Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage and perhaps most significantly, Josef Albers, who spoke of finding the “informality within the form.”
The vase is a handsome earth-toned round vessel, seemingly teetering on the precipice between the past and the future, which is a perfect place to begin. He would go on to become the chairman of the ceramics department of the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles.
Betty Woodman was a functional potter during the 1950s and early ’60s. The vase was more than her subject, it was her muse, which led to deconstruction and reassemblage, as she shifted gears from the functional to something well beyond. She is represented by “Exotic Birds Diptych,” from 1994.
Two Picasso inspired roosters face off with their chests puffed up, inches away from each other on two separate pedestals, as if about to engage in an angry barnyard cockfight. In 2006, Woodman became the first living woman to receive a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Zemer Peled, who was born and raised in Israel and who received an MA from the Royal College of Art in London, has a small room within the exhibition devoted to displaying her fanciful small ceramic sculptures. The works are assemblages constructed of shards of porcelain, reconfigured to become something new and delightful.
Her “I Wanna Dance 2,” with delicate shades of lavender, pink, yellow and powder green, is part flower, part sea urchin and part “Mad Men”-era cocktail party dress.
Egyptian artist Ibrahim Said takes his influence from Islamic jug filter designs, which are a marriage of function and aesthetic sensibility. “Gold Rings” is extraordinarily elegant, but that said, it is an elegance that uncomfortably borders on the edge of flamboyance and decadence.
Deborah Coolidge presents a series of glass-covered, wall-mounted dioramas that evoke dreamlike nautical mysteries of much too small watercraft, skeletal hips and a ribcage, atop which boat-shaped pink lungs hover, and a kayak that flies in the sky above a tumultuous sea. Her “Messenger,” made of clay, wood and graphite, appears as a giant fang-shaped vessel in which a lone figure dwells. It is a mythology not yet deciphered.
Chris Gustin’s “Vessel #9901” appears as a cartoonish petulant version of the Venus of Willendorf, an arm crossed over her plump belly. That is meant as high praise. Gustin’s pneumatic forms manage to tap sensuality, body horror and/or a wink-wink, nod-nod comedic sensibility.
Nancy Train Smith’s “Three Face Eve” (from the collection of Fran Levin) may be a reference to the 1957 film “The Three Faces of Eve.” It starred Joanne Woodward as a woman with a multiple personality disorder, who sometimes was the timid and diffident Eve White or the wild and self-indulgent Eve Black or Jane, a stable woman with no memory of her past. Or it could just be that first Eve.
The sculpture has a trio of faces wrapping around the cylindrical work. A serpent is coiled on her head like an ornate crown. And there is a cornucopia of fruit, not just apples but pears and bananas, as well. It is an intriguing twist on the Original Sin and the Expulsion from Eden that is sure to follow.
Dana Sherwood’s sculptures are steeped in Egyptian, Greco-Roman and Christian mythology and serpents are a regular presence in her work, as are pomegranate seeds, octopuses, disembodied hearts and a multitude of eyes, likely referencing Argus, the hundred-eyed giant of Greek myth.
In “Proserpina and the Sphinx,” a naked woman with the halo and wings of an angel and the talons and the pointed tail of a devil appears ready to pounce. They are all worthy of contemplation.
Don Reitz, who has been described as “one of the most virtuosic throwers” that the ceramics world has ever seen and who claimed that he would have been a poet but for the dyslexia that led him to clay where he found his voice, is well-represented in the exhibition.
His “Ring Toss” appears as a cubist painting made three-dimensional, while his “You Can’t Understand It Unless You Live It,” with its enigmatic marks and sad scratches and sense of loss, really does make you want to understand it, even if that’s not possible.
Rodin said, “Sculpture is the art of the hole and the bump.” I think ol’ Auguste would welcome all these clay shapeshifters into the club.
“Radical Reinvention: Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture” will be on display at the Art Museum, 608 Pleasant St., New Bedford, through May 25.
Don Wilkinson has been writing art reviews, artist profiles and cultural commentary on the South Coast for over a decade. He has been published in local newspapers and regional art magazines. He is a graduate of the Swain School of Design and the CVPA at UMass Dartmouth. Email him at dwilkinson@newbedfordlight.org
Wonderful articles Don !
Superb event! A signal exhibition! Congratulations to Suzanne de Wegh and the Art Museum of New Bedford on this milestone showing! Just looking at these images, as above, is a stunning, distinctive experience.
Defintiely worth seeing and savoring!