“Head or Heart?” by Owen Rye
Ted Adler has created considerable discussion from his paper at the
2006 Arizona woodfire event on aesthetics, which has been published in Log Book #29, and I congratulate him for that. My paper from the same panel has been published in Studio Potter December 2006 and represents my views on the same subject but here are some comments about Adler’s paper. They are modified from email correspondence between me and Jack Troy.
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It seems to me that we are viewing – have in fact been viewing for
some time, a resurrection of the old head and heart debate. From where
does our work originate – from our emotions, all intuition and passion
and no logic; or from our intellect, cool and considered and precise?
The chorused reply will of course say preferably both and I agree, but
we see a veering towards one end of the scale or the other in most
woodfired work – possibly more to the heart end.
Adler rightly sees a kind of stagnation present in the current language
(I assume he means what I would call the vocabulary) of woodfiring. I
share a concern that in order to keep alive what has been a vigorous
worldwide art movement over the past thirty years or so we need
reinvigoration – constantly. Adler’s closing remarks suggest very strongly
that we should look for a new aesthetic framework in theory as the
required injection of growth. I disagree. We have got this far without the
theorists intruding too much and I believe they should follow us, not us
them. We plant the seed, they shake the tree.
As a beginning, consider the environment of the woodfirer. Some exist
in the art school environment where contemporary theory and criticism
rule, and may feel some need to ‘fit in’, and to know something about
the French philosophers, the contemporary art and culture critics, and
the variety of others trying to make a name for themselves. Other
woodfirers live in the wilds of various countries and are far more in tune
with their natural environment and their place in it – and their
aesthetic responses to it. What seems just right to one type may include
nothing of what suits the other. From a distance this seems to me to
provide the current head/heart divide; and if that makes any sense Adler is
asking us to ensconce ourselves in our heads and as a probable
consequence deny our emotional/intuitional makeup.
Moving to another viewpoint altogether: the genius who decided first to
market prosciutto and provolone from the same stand thereby invented
the delicatessen, a great marketing device found all over the world.
Likewise the person who decided to market ceramics through a painting
gallery – when even sculpture was not held in very high regard –
inadvertently invented the kind of thinking Ted Adler espouses. (As a
footnote, I think it was an Australian gallery director who defined sculpture
as ‘what you trip over when you step back to look at a painting’).
The conjunction of ceramics and ‘regular art’ in the past fifty or
more years had far more to do with marketing than it did with cultural
theory. Potters saw painters making a lot of money and wanted some of
that. So – and here is the inadvertent bit – ceramics ended up in art
schools along with the ‘high art’. Attempts to make and justify
theoretical connections arose from this (in retrospect) probably
unfortunate conjunction which created the need for the ceramics department
representative to hold their head up in departmental meetings, and so to
maintain their quota of fancy words and thoughts. The painting department
felt the same need in relation to their arts faculty cousin who studied
contemporary cultural theory. Hence we have many Adlers around, hoping
to keep up. I have for many years questioned whether they need to and
if so whether they can.
Summary: I think the attempts to link ceramics into current cultural
theory accidentally originated with marketing strategies rather than the
need of ceramicists to articulate links with contemporary philosophy.
If this is correct we would be better off having symposia on marketing
strategies for ceramics – titled ‘How to sell a pot for the price of
a painting’.
Adler says he will frame the discussion about woodfiring in the context
of the origins of its value system and proceeds to examine
Nippon-centric attitudes, suggesting that we have vacuumed a Nipponese value
system. He asks, is the aesthetic focus of woodfire anything more than an
extension of colonialism?
Several thoughts. First, I see a distinctly more Nippon focussed
attitude in the US among some woodfirers than I do in Australia (and indeed
elsewhere in the Western world), and that may be shaping his thinking. A
rather preachy, rigid attitude about what is right and what is heresy
is not uncommon and is almost universal among those Americans who spent
time in Japan. That’s a shame because if you look underneath the
Japanese narrow-mindedness about maintaining their culture you see a
system of thinking which is pure mercenary genius, designed to maintain
local cartels. How otherwise, without that base of thinking, did the
Japanese proceed after the Second World War to become an economic giant on
the world stage? Its a pity some of the potters who are so Japan centric
have not been aware of that aspect of the ideology – or maybe they
are? If so they could teach us all a great deal about marketing.
To seriously examine the Japanese influence we must look at the
details. If someone says my work is influenced by Japanese ceramics I ask them
to tell me which Japanese potter/s I am influenced by – because I
don’t know myself. After all a painter here would be able to say if they
were influenced by Picasso or Rothko or whoever. Ultimately we can say
that in the most general terms there is a connection between some
types of woodfiring practised by US/Oz/English/German etc potters and some
Japanese potters. The main connection is that particular types of kilns
produce generally related results. It could equally be established
that my bisque kiln which is an updraft fibre lined metal drum placed over
a woodburning firebox shows a relationship between my work and Roman
terracotta. The kiln was loosely copied from Roman kilns, and it can
fire terracotta, but so what? That does not mean that I should be
attempting to escape the Roman origins of my work, does it? After all,
influence is everywhere. The music I prefer listening to originated with
Negroes (sorry, African Americans – but when it originated they were
Negroes) in the USA – and at this stage I do not know in any detail where
their influences lay. Or I enjoy music, the music I grew up with, that
ultimately has its origins in Ireland in the 1600s with Turlough
O’Carolan and who knows what he thought worth listening to? Should I abandon
all that? Should the current musicians?
Turning to an earlier point by Adler, I’m not sure that Zen carries
the concept of the ‘creative unconscious’ which sounds to me very
much like an idea promoted by Carl Jung. My friends who study Zen
seriously would probably say that if you can express an idea verbally then it
is not Zen. Unconscious expression would be incompatible with
‘stepping up and articulating what we are trying to say’ as Adler requests
us to do, so he seems a little confused himself. Zen thinking would lead
us to a state where the pot and the potter are one. The ‘modern’
version of much Zen thought has been put forward by Merleau-Ponty in his
rendition of phenomenology. A recent very useful book on the subject
of Zen is ‘The Zen Master, the Potter, and the Poet’ by Milton Moon,
a man who I admire greatly. He is our Australian equivalent of someone
like Warren MacKenzie in that he is about 85 and still making pots and
writing books.
Back to Adler- he seems to want us to intellectualise our work further
than we have done but we are potters, not philosophers. Some of us
woodfirers may be capable of advanced thinking – we do have some quite
intelligent people in our ranks. But philosophy is best expressed in
words and pots are best made from clay and fire, not nearly as effective a
medium of general communication. Many other art forms are far more
culturally significant than claywork and the theory fits those best. Why is
that a problem? The lament of some woodfirers that our work is not
valued highly by our culture is strong evidence that our work really has
very little value to our culture and any contribution it makes exists
very much on the margins of cultural consciousness. Is woodfire relevant
at the start of the 21st Century? Not really. Should it be? Not
necessarily. But – as I said in the essay for our last national woodfire
survey, if what we do is not essential to our culture, neither is arranging
flowers or singing in the shower, or wearing a different coloured shirt
each day. Or having a message printed on it. But if we were to lose
all these singularly unnecessary, but collectively essential activities,
we would lose our humanity and live as robots in a dull mercenary
cold-hearted and grey world. And all of these activities happen quite well
without any profound philosophy, they are simply an expression of how we
feel at the time. The theorists with the exception of a very few
philosophers, follow the developments, let’s not forget, they do not
originate them.
Wanting us to be philosophers belies our entire history. Most potters
who have ever lived have been illiterate. Potters I have spent time with
in third world countries have very simple answers to questions about
their work.
Q. Why do you make that like that?
A Because my mother/father told me that is how we make cooking pots.
Q Why do you mix sand with the clay?
A Because my father/mother said that is the way to do it.
Q Are you manifesting an expression of the unconscious?
A Huh??
Q Why are you not aware of Roland Barth’s theories of the Text, and
semiotics (etc, etc).
Make me wonder how they ever got anywhere if Adler is right. Basically
we are making decorative art. People everywhere in the world that I
have travelled have clay objects in their house that are just meant to be
looked at, and have pictures on their walls ditto. People like to
brighten up their environment. Sophisticated people (ie the bourgeois and
the rich and well educated) do it with sophisticated objects and like to
have something that nobody else has. We cater to them. Especially in
woodfire where we cannot help but make unique objects. Some of us make
things that can be used and apply our sophisticated thinking to the
question of function. Some don’t care much about that. To the extent that
we satisfy those demands, and give ourselves some pleasure along the
way – we have, to answer Adler’s final question – engaged ourselves
in the production of meaning. The meaning we have produced resides in
the feelings of the maker and the consumer, and the advancement of
philosophy as a subject lies elsewhere.
Our cabalistic responses to each others work may be expressed in words
but I think almost invariably what we are expressing is a feeling about
the work. That proportion feels wrong, or that glaze is too shiny for
that form, or this one is a real gem. If we very strongly felt the need
to place ourselves within a non-repressive ideology that allowed real
theoretical discussion I guess we would be good at that, but I for one
feel no sense of deprivation, no need to turn to the ‘dark side’. I
can drive a car with no great understanding of the latest engineering
theories.
I must say here that I have not found any great use for all this
thinking, I just go ahead and make work and look at the forms as I go,
modifying them to something that ‘looks and feels right’… glazing them,
or not in terms of what I imagine they will end up like; placing them
in the kiln, and firing, in a way I hope will give the ‘best’
results – and then being either delighted or rendered despondent by the
occasional unexpectedness of the results. I am an absorber of other work,
but not necessarily a conscious analyser unless someone asks me to
write about something – for making work the making is the analysis.
Finally, I agree with Adler that the newer generation needs to do
something new to keep the woodfire phenomenon going – if they wish to keep
it going. I am slightly surprised that it has not faded away
gracefully before now. We had our ‘prophets’ who got the thing going – so
maybe Adler is the new prophet of the new generation in which case I
wish them all well and await their insights with considerable interest.
And a final p.s. – Voulkos, the ceramic epitome of the abstract
expressionist movement – was almost certainly not generally regarded in
his later career in the US as a ‘potter’ or ‘ceramicist’ but as
at least, a sculptor and probably as an ‘artist’. That his work was
woodfired was probably not important to his reputation, and to the
price his work commanded. And I make a guess that he did not concern
himself with questions about the cultural meaning of his work.
The other popular fallacy, is that Mingei is all about “Japanese influence.” Actually, it has nothing to do with Japan. Mingei is about preserving local culture in the face of global post-modern homogenization.