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Ceramics and the Haptic Lapse
I
by Damon Moon
I recollect a recent conversation with someone who was in charge
of putting together an elective program in ceramics. This once great
department (which shall remain nameless) was still full of sufficient
equipment and
materials to run a mid sized factory, but it could no longer attract
enough students or faculty support to offer a full time course of
study. Where once students had competed to gain entrance to a full
fee paying four-year diploma,
the three-year subsidized degree had been cancelled due to lack
of interest. Art school life had become a series of electives, the
educational equivalent of channel surfing. The bothersome discipline
of clay and wheel had long ago lost ground to the fidgets of undergraduate
conceit, and no amount of spin could disguise the fact that the
situation was terminal. With multi-skilling and the departure of
the last of the tenured staff it was only a matter of time.
In response to my highly undiplomatic suggestion that many ceramics
departments had brought this situation upon themselves, I was rather
archly informed that they still offered a unit called 'The Vessel',
by which I was to assume that they had the situation well in hand.
My thoughts turned to a formidable artist and educator I had the
privilege of knowing, who was once heard to mutter that it would
be better if, and I quote, '.all the ceramists would just take their
vessels and sail away', or words to that effect.
There is probably nothing intrinsically wrong with an environment
where students wander in, fiddle with a lump of clay, paint it blue,
stick a feather in the side and call it art. It happens in sculpture
departments all the time. It does no permanent harm, or good, which
is not to say that it is a wholly benign activity. The damage occurs
when such things are confused with several thousand years of a enerable,
and utterly different tradition, that of pottery.
How, you may ask, is this possible? Surely a lumpy feathered blue
thing cannot be mistaken for a pot?
The problem is one of nomenclature.
Pottery is not sculpture, and it is only nominally ceramics.
Pottery refers to types of objects and materials, the place where
these materials are manipulated and the objects are made, and the
general disciplines associated with making them. People who work
in this field are called potters.
Sculpture is a different activity entirely, well understood, albeit
periodically contested, within a western paradigm of art history.
It is also a widely used term describing certain types of non-functional
objects. What a sculpture is made of is entirely irrelevant, insofar
as it does not effect the categorization of the object as sculpture.
Sculptures are made from marble and ice, telephones and twigs, and
the musings of seagulls in the rain, as long as they have a presence
in German biennales. People who make sculptures are called sculptors,
when they are not being called installation artists, thus explaining
why their work only 'occupied the space' for a week.
Ceramics are a group of materials with defined chemical and physical
properties. Ceramics are also objects made from these materials.
A brick and a Ming vase, and our lumpy feathered blue thing, are
examples of these objects. Ceramists, or ceramicists, base their
work on these material choices, and if they have been to art school
they 'define their practice' as making objects primarily or exclusively
out of ceramic materials, otherwise known as clay. Ceramics is also
a hobby, where overglaze decoration is applied to a bewildering
variety of slip-molded forms, designed to be fired at low temperatures.
Sometimes these same techniques are utilized by 'ceramists', potters
and sculptors, where the desire for irony or bright colors can be
given full reign. A ceramist may make either pots or sculptures,
but they generally like to call these objects 'ceramics'. I'm not
sure why.
Lately, we have seen the arrival of a new group of practitioners,
the 'designer-makers'.
'Hi, my name is Troy, and I'm a designer-maker with a ceramics based
practice. I am currently developing a body of work, which explores
the gender politics of domestic objects, and locates the kitchen
as a site of abjection.'
Troy is a completely understandable product of the average ceramics
department, the logical outcome of a system which privileges Habermas
over Hamada. For the ceramics and painting student alike, the teaching
of art
history, when it struggles back to a time before Andy, may dwell
on 16th century Italy, but it won't be Majolica that
is celebrated. This is because there is a hierarchy of art, an ever
repeated narrative reified behind the massive
stone columns, or more lately titanium scales, which fence off the
paddocks where curators chew the cud of futures past. The temple
trains its acolytes, and, unlikely as it seems, some of them begin
life at places like art school.
Fine art is money and power, the designer gym where Western culture
flexes and preens, and the decorative arts are something you pass
on the way to a wonderful new eatery. In this world pottery is way
out of its league.
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