View 1 surrogates >
Zoomable Image
Submit comments about this object >
|
 |
Cruciform Vase
1958
20th Century
28 1/2 in. x 21 in. x 7 1/2 in. (72.39 cm x 53.34 cm x 19.05 cm)
Peter Voulkos
(Bozeman, Montana, 1924 - 2002, Bowling Green, Ohio)
| Object Type: |
|
Vessel |
|
| Medium and Support: |
|
glazed & underglazed stoneware |
|
| Credit Line: |
|
Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Collection:
Purchased with an anonymous gift. 1992.080 |
|
| Accession Number: |
|
1992.080 |
|
| Comments: |
|
Peter Voulkos, born of Greek immigrant parents, studied under the G.I. Bill at Montana State University and at the California College of Arts and Crafts (M.F.A. 1952). Soon after completing his formal education, Voulkos initiated his break with the philosophy of functionalism in craft. He had by then thoroughly absorbed the traditional pottery aesthetic transmitted by such masters as Bernard Leach and Shaji Hamada. Encounters with John Cage and Merce Cunningham at Black Mountain College in North Carolina undoubtedly encouraged him to trust the spontaneous act of creation, which he applied to the construction of clay pots--now sculptures as much as they were containers. The unpremeditated forming gesture was hitherto the prerogative of painters, notably of the Abstract Expressionist school emerging in the 1950s. Voulkos proceeded to fashion a connection between the muscularity of Action Painting and the pottery tradition of the well-wrought urn; it turned out to be enormously liberating for several generations of ceramic artists. Fittingly, that connection was built by a son of ancient Hellas, where the art of figurative painting on sacred vessels was begun and never surpassed.
Voulkos was perhaps the first of those modern ceramic artists whose work began as pottery and culminated in painted sculpture. He quite literally breaks the pottery construction format: this cruciform vase consists of three separate containers which are not so much assembled as they are smashed or jammed together. The smashing method may account for the cracks we see at the joints. By its violence the vase also signifies the artist's strong affinity for the angry painterly gestures of the Abstract Expressionists. A somewhat similar process can be seen in the work of sculptors like David Smith and William Chamberlain, who converted the furious smears and splashes of the Action painters (notably Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline) into steel collisions, fractures, and dislocations of form.
In refusing to state clearly and unambiguously what he is about, Voulkos may be disclosing an affinity for Zen Buddhism; part of the Zen method is to keep the acolytes guessing. The Zen-influenced artist employs a similar approach: evasion, mystification, and camouflage. The idea is to disguise one's intent by erasing a form just when it is about to declare itself. That motive is common in the technique of artists ranging from Picasso to Larry Rivers. The overall purpose is to avoid definition like the plague: whenever we say what something "is," we are probably telling a partial truth or a complete falsehood. In art this comes down to dissolving contours, breaking shapes, and keeping things loose. Thus the artist eludes the critic's net.
The common feature of works inspired by Abstract Expressionist painting is a determination to violate the rules--of composition, technique, and fabrication--while calling attention to those violations. Thus Voulkos does nothing to conceal his large firing cracks. His wire-cut surfaces are left unfinished, his brushwork runs against the pottery forms, and his figurative allusions are incomplete, defective, or contradicted by references to nonfigurative objects, for example, a coffee can or a teapot.
Does "cruciform" in the title of this work have anything to do with a Christian cross? Does its form allude to the patriarchal cross of the Greek Orthodox Church? Although the title would appear to be an afterthought, there is the hint of a male figure painted into the head, neck, and shoulders of the vase. What we miss is the geometry of the cross. In traditional Christian iconography, the mathematical precision of the cross symbolizes the state's impersonality arrayed over and against the figure of a man/god in the toils of organic, that is, human, suffering. Here the cross itself would appear to be an organic entity.
Perhaps Voulkos had the Passion of Christ in mind; this is something art criticism cannot know. What we can say with some confidence is that there is a certain brutality in the way these clay and glaze gestures are combined with an ambiguous sort of humanity. In their totality the forms express the idea of struggle--which reminds us of the dilemma of Hamlet, who described a similar struggle in his famous soliloquy: "To be or not to be."
References
Clark, Garth. American Ceramics: 1876 to the Present. New York: Abbeville Press, 1987.
Leach, Bernard, with introduction by J.P. Hodin. A Potter's Work. London: Evelyn, Adams & Mackay, 1967.
Rawson, Philip S. "The Existential Base." In Philip Rawson, Ceramics. London: Oxford University Press, 1971, pp. 3-15.
Selz, Peter. Peter Voulkos (exhibition catalogue). New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1960.
|
|
|
description