intimate connections: art, artist and collector
by susan cohen
I love my days in the studio, and I hope that the pieces I create there will be enjoyed by others. Making pottery is my way of making connections with other people. But that raises an interesting question: do we connect with an artistic object — a handmade bowl, for instance — by touching and interacting with it? Or is it better to treat it as a work of art, and put it on a shelf to be admired at a distance?
My love of pottery started when I entered a ceramics program at the Corcoran School of Art. I studied primarily with a Japanese master potter, Teruo Hara. This was the 1960s, and it was an innovative and exciting time for painting, sculpture, and ceramics. Boundaries were being stretched in every direction in all the arts, certainly in both the US and Japan.
There were two different schools of thought among potters in Japan in the 1920’s. The Mingei, or folk-art tradition, was a return to styles from time-honored historic periods. Among the leaders of this movement were Shōji Hamada and Tatsuzo Shimaoka in Japan, and Bernard Leach in England. Hand-made work was revered, as opposed to the mass-production of the Industrial Revolution. The work was beautiful, utilitarian and accessible by everyone.
In contrast, in 1925 a group of potters from Kyoto calling themselves Sodeisha, or “Crawling through Mud,” rejected the traditional view of making pottery, including the potters’ wheel and glazes, in favor of hand-building. Their aim was to create sculptural forms influenced by artists like Pablo Picasso and Isamu Noguchi.
In the US, potters like Peter Voulkos and John Mason were throwing huge pots, cutting them, reassembling them, and making abstract expressionistic sculpture, blurring the lines between the arts. Voulkos was consciously leaving what was called the “craft” of pottery for the “art” form of sculpture.
Peter Voulkos working in Los Angeles, 1956. Photo by Oppi Untracht for Craft Horizons, 1956.
This brings us back to our opening question: should handmade objects be considered “art” — or “craft”? And does the label matter?
In the December, 2005 issue of Studio Potter, the late Peter Schjeldahl, the art critic for The New Yorker magazine, explained his views of how people view the world around them. He called this his “zone theory of esthetic experience.”
Schjeldahl described three “zones” of “contemplative perception.” The first is background distance, the zone we view from far enough away to see all of the subject; it is the zone of landscape and architecture.
The second, middle zone is the favored zone of our culture. It extends from the end of our fingertips to the onset of the background. It is the zone where paintings are clear as a whole, and also are clear in their detail.
The third zone is the “near-at-hand” zone, which is the distance from one’s finger tips inward. This is the zone where sight yields to touch.
Art critic Peter Schjeldahl identified a “near-at-hand” perceptual zone, extending inward from one’s fingertips, where sight yields to touch.
Pottery is to be touched, and it is in the near-at-hand zone. But Schjeldahl noted that this zone is disfavored in our culture. The work is not on a pedestal or a wall. There is no “Do Not Touch” sign. Potters, weavers, wood-workers and other artisans have a mission to break down the cultural barriers between the zones of architecture and painting, which rely on the sense of sight, and other art forms that include both sight and touch.
We need to encourage people to surround themselves with beautiful things to touch, and to use, and to help people view these objects as art on an equal footing with painting and sculpture. Because you touch these objects, you develop an intimate relationship with them, and they become part of your life in their own unique way. Their art is brought closer to you. The culture of the US in 2005, when Schjeldahl wrote his article, looked down on the objects that we touch and develop a relationship with. The intimate connection was considered to be of less value than what was on a pedestal.
The idea that we should cherish a more hands-on relationship with art can be found on Naoshima, one of the three “art islands” in the Seto Inland Sea in Japan. There are two extraordinary museum complexes there: the Benesse House Museum, and the Chichu Museum, both designed by the architect Tadao Ando. The displays in the Benesse House Museum include works by David Hockney, Jackson Pollock, Bruce Nauman, and Frank Stella.
But what’s most unusual about the Benesse museum is that, while it closes to the public at 5 pm, guests may arrange to spend the night in one of the 16 bedrooms there, and wander through the display halls until 10 pm. There are security cameras but no guards, and you feel alone with the art. Each guest room also has an original art piece in it, made by one of the museum artists, bringing the art work closer to the lives of the guests.
Some of the artists represented in the museum also were commissioned to make site-specific work for the outdoor gardens, where the visitors can interact physically with the art and become familiar with it. One example is the smashed hull of a dinghy, partly buried in the sand, which echoes the scene in a landscape painting in the museum. (When we were there, someone was leaning against the boat, reading outdoors.)
Also among the outdoor sculptures are two large granite spheres by the artist Walter De Maria, discreetly hidden in a bunker on a bluff by the sea, which reference the artist’s work in the Chichu Museum — and are meant to be touched, leaned against and hidden behind. Nearby is a large pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama, which rests on a dock that is submerged at high tide, giving the appearance that the pumpkin is floating on water. A second Kusama pumpkin on land is a playground sculpture, with holes through the surface for children to climb through.
The accessibility of the art in the sculpture park encourages people to re-enter the museums, and to experience the pieces again. In short, the museums have added the intimacy of touch to works of art, just as pottery always has done. The art work becomes part of the lives of the people who visit.
Yayoi Kusama’s “Pumpkin” at Benesse.
Photo: Tadasu Yamamoto
This kind of direct, physical contact helps us feel a personal connection to the art — an idea which is sometimes overlooked. When beginners learn a new skill, they frequently are aiming for perfection. They are trying to throw a perfectly round bowl. But as one matures as an artist, and has mastered the basic skills, one dismisses the “perfect” bowl for the “personal” one. Artists want to be free to experiment, to solve problems, to express their own ideas, and to create their own paths. The Mingei potters in Japan became expert craftsmen; they became artists, with a personal style. Ken Matsuzaki apprenticed with Shimaoka in the Mingei tradition. Now, his work has many facets. Some of his forms seem to be pure sculpture, but they retain the vessel heritage; there are small openings in the forms, retaining their functional origins.
A contemporary tea bowl by Ken Matsuzaki.
As a potter, I believe functional work and artistic work are not separate things, much less mutually exclusive. My hope is that both are treated as art.
And there’s a simple exercise that shows how this can work. Recently, I asked a number of guests in our home to choose a teabowl that in some way they found appealing, and then to chose a partner. They then looked at their chosen teabowl closely, and turned their favorite part toward their partner. Then they placed their hands in indentations that I had made in the tea bowls, to make them easier to hold. And finally, they sipped some tea.
What was this about? Each person had looked at a piece of art carefully; they had turned their favorite portion of the teabowl toward their partner, sharing their thoughts; they had connected with the artist by where they placed their hands; and hopefully they had had a quiet moment.
Perhaps this is what “intimate connection” in art is all about.
— Susan Cohen
Susan Cohen is an accomplished Hollin Hills potter who exhibits at the Torpedo Factory Art Center, and whose work is in collections around the United States. She believes that pottery is “a way of sharing.” See more of her extraordinary work at susancohenpottery.com.