Chase Hanson

I argue that today’s local tradition of studio ceramic art in California can be traced to the international art of Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada and through the mid-century focal point of artists such as Peter Voulkos, John Mason, and Paul Soldner. Although these artists working around the 1950s sharply diverged from traditions of either fine art sculpture or craft pottery, it is only through the intermingling of the two philosophies of fine art and craft that we get the hybridized practices and techniques of today. While the aesthetic lineages of mingei art and ethical pottery might be felt currently, the ceramic world was forever changed by the sculptural sensibilities of artists like Voulkos, whose ceramic aesthetic transformed the ways that artists work to this day. Although some of the mid-century ceramics reflected Abstract Expressionist influences and rejected the vessel form as a point of ideology, contemporary conceptualism synthesizes vessel traditions and abstract sculpture into one coherent whole. I argue that the roots of this development are seen in Voulkos’ own work. The concept of the Rocking Pot (1956) only works if it is understood through the dual lenses of sculptural and vessel analysis. The sculpture is a rejection of the functional requirements of a vessel, and yet holds to ceramic convention that would be ultimately irrelevant in a detached conception of fine art sculpture. I will be analyzing the studio art scene of the 1930s, and postwar developments in California into the 1950s-60s, leading up to the current conceptual period. I will examine the production of vessels through the two distinct lenses of craft and fine art development in order to understand their syncretization today. I will also address the reactions and sometimes rejections of art critics as they tried to understand this syncretization. As well, I will be looking into some of the ways that the turn of the century roots in the colonial context can be problematic in the way that historians and critics alike conceive of Orientalist primitivism expressed in ceramics.