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Critic’s Corner
Critic’s Corner
The tensions within craft have to do with allegiances and historical conditions established by different political generations. ...
Critic’s Corner
There is no living ceramist who was taught to think that factories could produce art except, of course, Warhol’s Factory. However, even that phenomenon received proper critical respect only recently, and grudgingly. For two generations, academies taught their art students to loathe Warhol (even as they furtively coveted his succès de scandale). In reaction to these disciplinary blinders, contemporary ceramic artists are reorienting production away from the studio to the factory. They are coming out of a conceptual closet to regain the tool kit and palette their predecessors forswore a hundred years ago for the sake of John Ruskin and ...
Critic’s Corner
The artisanal urge—the fundamental human desire to make something with one’s own hands—has never been so endangered as it is right now. Quite frankly, this is a situation that sends a chill down my spine. Consider the work of Jeff Koons, one of the most widely discussed and highly praised artists of the last 20 years. His Hanging Heart, [figure 1] an oversized version of a shiny magenta bauble suspended from a golden ribbon, obviously manufactured to the artist’s specs, recently sold at auction for $23.6 million. So far as I am concerned, Hanging Heart is a piece of ...
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