Pottery, Politics, Art


Book Description

Pottery, Politics, Art uses the medium of clay to explore the nature of spectacle, bodies, and boundaries. The book analyzes the sexual and social obsessions of three of America's most intense potters, artists who used the liminal potentials of clay to explore the horrors and delights of our animal selves. Richard D. Mohr revives from undeserved obscurity the far-southern Illinois potting brothers Cornwall and Wallace Kirkpatrick (1814-90, 1828-96) and examines the significance of the haunting, witty, and grotesque wares of the brothers' Anna Pottery (1859-96). He then traces the Kirkpatricks' decisive influence on a central figure in the American Arts and Crafts movement, George Ohr (1857-1918), known as the Mad Potter of Biloxi and arguably America's greatest potter. Finally, Mohr gives a new reading to Ohr's contorted, yet lyrical and ecstatic works. Abundant full-color and black-and-white photographs illustrate this remarkable art.




Subversive Ceramics


Book Description

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2016 Satire has been used in ceramic production for centuries. Historically, it occurred as a slogan or proverb written into the ceramic surface; as pictorial surface imagery; or as a satirical figurine. The use of satire in contemporary ceramics is a rapidly evolving trend, with many artists subverting or otherwise rethinking familiar historic forms to make a political point. Claudia Clare examines the relationship between ceramics, social politics, and political movements and the way both organisations and individual artists have used pots - predominantly domestic objects - to agitate among the masses or simply express their ideas. Ninety colour illustrations of various subversive, satirical and campaigning works illustrate her arguments and enliven debate. Claudia Clare explores work by artists from twenty-one different countries, from 500 BC to the present day. These range range from the French artist Honoré Daumier and the enslaved African-American potter David Drake to contemporary artists including Lubaina Himid, Virgil Ortiz and Shlomit Bauman, whose work and the means of its production has addressed or commented upon issues such as disputed homelands, identify, race, gender and colonialism.




Art & Fear


Book Description

'I always keep a copy of Art & Fear on my bookshelf' JAMES CLEAR, author of the #1 best-seller Atomic Habits 'A book for anyone and everyone who wants to face their fears and get to work' DEBBIE MILLMAN, author and host of the podcast Design Matters 'A timeless cult classic ... I've stolen tons of inspiration from this book over the years and so will you' AUSTIN KLEON, NYTimes bestselling author of Steal Like an Artist 'The ultimate pep talk for artists. ... An invaluable guide for living a creative, collaborative life.' WENDY MACNAUGHTON, illustrator Art & Fear is about the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way. Drawing on the authors' own experiences as two working artists, the book delves into the internal and external challenges to making art in the real world, and shows how they can be overcome every day. First published in 1994, Art & Fear quickly became an underground classic, and word-of-mouth has placed it among the best-selling books on artmaking and creativity. Written by artists for artists, it offers generous and wise insight into what it feels like to sit down at your easel or keyboard, in your studio or performance space, trying to do the work you need to do. Every artist, whether a beginner or a prizewinner, a student or a teacher, faces the same fears - and this book illuminates the way through them.




Confrontational Ceramics


Book Description

"This book looks at the use of ceramics as a tool for confrontation, where artists use this ancient and most plastic of media to make provocative commentaries about the inequities of the human condition. It is a massive overview of the ceramic scene from this perspective, showcasing representative artist' work juxtaposed against their statements, to provide the contexts for the issues against which they rail."--[book cover].




Style and Politics in Athenian Vase-painting


Book Description

In this study of Athenian vases of the late Archaic period, Neer tracks the design and imagery of the symposium, with its elaborate riddles and poems and the development of "naturalistic" techniques, such as foreshortening and shading. He also traces the birth of self-portraiture at the end of the sixth century and the treatment of overtly political subject-matter in the early democracy. The author thus reexamines basic ideas about Greek art and history, with particular regard to naturalism, realism, allegory, and the relation of ceramics to social life. Neer further demonstrates how formal ambiguity provided vase painters and their audiences with a means of creating new conceptions of civic identity.




Pots, Prints and Politics


Book Description

From the introduction of woodblock printing in China to the development of copper-plate engraving in Europe, the print medium has been used around the world to circulate knowledge. Ceramic artists across time and cultures have adapted these graphic sources as painted or transfer-printed images applied onto glazed or unglazed surfaces to express political and social issues including propaganda, self-promotion, piety, gender, national and regional identities. Long before photography, printers also included pots in engravings or other two-dimensional techniques which have broadened scholarship and encouraged debate. Pots, Prints and Politics examines how European and Asian ceramics traditionally associated with the domestic sphere have been used by potters to challenge convention and tackle serious issues from the 14th to the 20th century. Using the British Museum's world-renowned ceramics and prints collections as a base, the authors have challenged and interrogated a variety of ceramic objects - from teapots to chamber pots - to discover new meanings that are as relevant today as they were when they were first conceived.




Alternative American Ceramics, 1870-1955


Book Description

A study of pottery not made for profit. Details recreational, therapeutic, governmental, philanthropic, academic, and other non-commercial programs in pottery.







Faces of Power


Book Description

During his reign and following his death, the physiognomy of Alexander the Great was one of the most famous in history, adorning numerous works of art. This study demonstrates how the various portraits transmit not so much a likeness of Alexander as a set of cliches that symbolized the ruler