Top Collection of American Ceramics Makes New York City Debut at The Ubs Painewebber Art Gallery

Tribute to Peter Voulkos Features Rarely Seen Early Works

Clay Works: American Ceramics from the Everson Museum of Art
January 16 – March 28, 2003

NEW YORK CITY, January 2003 – A new exhibition opening at the UBS PaineWebber Art Gallery explores the development of a distinctly American ceramic tradition in the 20th century. Clay Works: American Ceramics from the Everson Museum of Art, on view from January 16 – March 28, 2003, presents the renowned ceramic collection of the Everson Museum of Art, which has never before been shown in New York City. Home to the most comprehensive display of American ceramics in the country, the Museum’s reputation as the arbiter of American ceramics is due in part to the Museum’s series of Ceramic National exhibitions, which have displayed works by ceramists at the forefront of the medium since its inception in 1932.

Tracing the evolution of 20th-century ceramics through utilitarian and sculptural works, the exhibition features 120 pieces from the Everson Museum of Art Collection, including pieces by renowned ceramists Adelaide Alsop Robineau and Robert Arneson, as well as a tribute to Peter Voulkos, a master of expressive ceramics. Organized thematically, the exhibition features turn-of-the-century Art Pottery and explores the influence of Viennese and Asian styles. The largest section of the exhibition features complex vessel forms and innovative ceramic sculptures created since mid-century, many of which respond to the long tradition of utilitarian ceramics, imaginatively honoring or ironically commenting upon the historical perceptions of pottery.

Clay Works: American Ceramics from the Everson Museum of Art is made possible by UBS PaineWebber Inc.

Exhibition Highlights
Following on the heels of the nation’s centennial, the Art Pottery movement self-consciously set out to elevate the character of American ceramics by combining high standards of craftsmanship with a deliberately artistic intent. While many museums have exhibited ancient utilitarian vessels, the Everson Museum of Art has long collected innovative ceramic sculptures and non-traditional vessels, beginning with the 1916 acquisition of 32 porcelains by Adelaide Alsop Robineau. A Syracuse resident and leader of the Art Pottery movement, Robineau displayed the movement’s style in works like Lantern (1908) and Viking Ship Vase (1905), which also evince the natural world and Japanese exoticism popular in the Art Pottery movement.

A focus of the show will be the works of Peter Voulkos, one of the most renowned American abstract ceramists, who died in February 2002. A fearless innovator, Voulkos developed a unique style inspired by Japanese pottery and Abstract Expressionist painting, reinventing ceramics as a meeting ground for painting and sculpture. In his shocking 1973 series of “torn plates,” Voulkos created visually assertive works by tearing, gouging and puncturing the clay. His diverse artistic influences merged in works such as Tall Covered Jar (ca. 1956), which combines Abstract Expressionist painting with traditional Japanese ceramic form. Works by Voulkos’ talented California colleagues, such as Rudy Autio and Paul Soldner, will also be displayed.

Another renowned ceramist highlighted in the exhibition is Robert Arneson, a leader of the 1970s Funk movement. Arneson’s Five Splat (1976), a series of self-portraits capturing the reactions of a face being splattered with brown clay, and Mountain and Lake (1975), a momentous architectural installation, helped establish ceramics as a major sculptural medium.

Figurative sculpture is also featured in the exhibition. Thelma Frazier Winter’s The Juggler (c. 1949) is rooted in the irreverent Viennese tradition that reached American artists in the 1930s. This piece, depicting a medieval jester juggling upside-down, epitomizes Viennese humor and figural style. Viktor Schreckengost’s political work The Dictator (1939) features a seated Nero playing his lyre, as putti representations of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Hirohito climb his throne. Warning of the impending danger he witnessed in Europe, Schreckengost’s work is both witty and provocative. Rudy Autio’s Double Lady Vessel (1964) explores and reinvents this tradition by uniquely merging figurative, sculptural, decorative and vessel forms.

Diverse cultural and artistic influences can also be seen in the exhibition, such as the Japanese ceramic style as interpreted by Paul Soldner and Paul Chaleff, artists who embrace chance and honor the inner strength and richness of their materials. Other works display Pop Art influences, such as Roy Lichtenstein’s splatter-painted sculpture Dinnerware, or explorations of the Super-Object, exemplified by Richard Shaw’s Whiplash! (1978), a trompe l’oeil sculpture that meticulously mimics a house of cards, and Marilyn Levine’s Maki’s Shoulder Bag (1975), which realistically expresses the suppleness of a leather purse.