Themes

Themes - Tradition Reconsidered


QTVR OBJECT (1.5 megs)

This grouping encompasses several trends that play off of traditional ceramic practice: the re-application of decorative art forms, the creation of a new tradition with the postwar vessel aesthetic, and the appropriation of cultural and historical styles. David Regan, Jerry Rothman, and Viola Frey draw meaning from the decorative art object's social history of use. Their soup tureens recall formal dinners ritualized with special china and cutlery, manners, and service. Other artists such as Kohei Nakamura and Chris Theiss employ the elaborate scale and workmanship of presentation pieces historically commissioned to honor significant people or monumental works. These artists add a layer of contemporary expression to traditional meaning. Postwar ceramic art is founded upon the work of Toshiko Takaezu, Wayne Higby, Richard DeVore and others who explored and developed an aesthetic paradigm based upon the vessel. Their interests in painterly expression and material poetics help put ceramics on par with sculpture and painting and have created a new tradition for subsequent generations of ceramists.

Others have chosen to re-interpret pre-existing ceramic traditions from folk and indigenous cultures or the high styles of European and Chinese history. Works by Betty Woodman, Bennett Bean, and Rick Dillingham incorporate the smoke-blackened surfaces of pit-fired wares and the forms and geometric decoration of Native American pottery. Adrian Saxe and Richard Milette perform a type of postmodern sampling in works that combine elements from ceramics history such as 18th century Sèvres porcelain, Chinese exports, and Dutch delftware.

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The Mint Museum of Craft + Design is supported by the Annual Fund Drive of the Arts & Science Council - Charlotte/Mecklenburg, Inc.; the North Carolina Arts Council, a state agency; the City of Charlotte; and its members.