Creation and Production
Posted by ben on 20 Dec 2006 at 04:25 pm | Tagged as: responses/reviews
Albert Camus wrote in his 1962 essay Creation and Revolution:
“Industrial society will only open the way to a new civilization by restoring to the worker the dignity of a creator; in other words, by making him apply his interest and his intelligence as much to the work itself as to what it produces…. Every act of creation denies, by its mere existence, the world of master and slave. The appalling society of tyrants and slaves in which we survive will only find its death and transfiguration on the level of creation.”
This passage came back to me today as I visited the website of one of my favorite ceramic artists, Marek Cecula, which declares on the front page: “mass production is an inspiration for originality.” Ceramics, more than almost any other art form, is forced to confront this tension between the creative act and the means of production. Even among many sculptural ceramicists, we can see echoes of functionality in the work. This is fitting, since the world of ceramic art has been dominated until very recently by folk revivalists like Bernard Leach and Kawai Kanjiro, and before industrialization was a largely functional art form for thousands of years. (I know this is a simplification, but, after all, this is a blog). Cecula, who designs functional ceramics for mass production, is also a highly respected artist, and has confronted the tension between creativity and functionality head-on. In his most recent show at Garth Clark, he took traditional, industrially produced European tea sets and stacked them in various ways. He then re-fired them in a traditional Japanese wood-fired kiln, which melted the sets just enough to make them appear deformed, while coating them in dust and soot, and fusing the separate pieces together. The resulting sculptures are born of the clash between mass production and unique creation; but also between Western and Eastern (specifically Japanese) understandings of aesthetic value. Much of his other work explores this territory in other ways, and it is all worth checking in with – but I’d recommend starting with this PDF of the catalog for IN DUST REAL.
[...] Posted by ben on 27 Dec 2006 at 09:52 am | Tagged as: music In my earlier Creation and Production post, I noted that “ceramics, more than almost any other art form, is forced to confront this tension between the creative act and the means of production.” At the time, that “almost” was meant to leave room for other functional art forms, such as furniture design or graphic design. I am now realizing that contemporary music faces this paradox in a different, but just as important way. Music, by its very nature, trades in feeling and spontaneity, and it when it becomes functional (e.g. Muzak) it betrays that nature. However, the tension between mass production and the creative act is very much a part of what musicians have to deal with, both in the sense that they are asked to churn out music in specific styles and in the sense that the work they create will (ideally) be duplicated millions of times over. Perhaps more importantly, if they ever do become successful, that success often hinges on a few recognizable songs, which are played ad nauseum. I recall seeing a Willie Nelson concert in which he introduced “On the Road Again” with the advice never to write a song unless you want to play it at every concert you do for the next twenty years. [...]
[...] Posted by ben on 28 Jun 2007 at 04:00 pm | Tagged as: upcoming events, sneak peeks Back in April I saw a reference on Glasstire to a major ceramics donation to the MFAH by Garth Clark and Mark del Vecchio. The size of the donation (375 pieces) and the stature of the donors (Clark’s New York gallery is one of the finest ceramics galleries in the country) piqued my interest, but at the time there wasn’t much more information to be had. Today I came across the press release for the donation, which offers some additional details. Artists mentioned in the release include many truly important ceramic artists (Peter Voulkos, Kawai Kanjiro, Marek Cecula, and Beatrice Wood among them) as well as sculptors who did significant work in ceramics (such as Sir Anthony Caro, Claes Oldenburg, and Lucio Fontana). There also appears to be a lot of depth to the collection, especially in the area of contemporary American ceramic arts. The collection will be fully unveiled in an exhibition slated for May, 2008, which will easily be worth the drive to Houston. [...]
[...] This weekend is going to be pretty dense with art in San Antonio, so I thought I’d give a little run-down here to help you sort through it all. Over at Southwest School of Art and Craft, Multiplicity opens on Thursday. This exhibit features some top-notch ceramic artists, including one of my favorites, Marek Cecula. Other artists featured are Shawn Busse, Bean Finneran, Kay Hwang, Denise Pelletier, Jeanne Quinn, Gregory Roberts and Juana Valdes. You can read a review of the show in Artlies (when it was at UT El Paso). If you’re going to see one show this week, make it Multiplicity. Southwest School is also showing new ceramic work by three “certificate students” (Miguel Abugattas, Janice Mann and Lyn Woods), and photography by faculty member Richard Kline. [...]
[...] ways. It is Marek Cecula’s very knowledge of commercial ceramic production that allows him to subvert the process as anartist. [...]
[...] Posted by ben on 29 Mar 2008 at 10:39 am | Tagged as: responses/reviews, essays The Guardian recently featured a piece by David Hockney in which he claims that the decline of the church is directly connected to the democratization of imagery. It’s true that religious institutions have a history of trying to control the kinds of images people create and see, and I’m sure their reasons for doing this have to do with maintaining their grip over people’s minds. But I think you could make virtually the same argument about the church’s control of music, sexuality, history, poetry, or any number of creative ventures (hmm… is history a creative venture?). And this is why Hockney gets it wrong when he says “the power is with images, not art.” The implication here is that power flows from the material truth of the camera, not from the spiritual truth of a work of art. In the past I have quoted Camus making the point that freedom is predicated on the creative act, not production, not representation. This is why churches have tried, and still try, to control creativity — and why their control of material wealth is ultimately secondary to their control of the spirit. [...]