Centers and Edges: Modern Ceramic Design and Sculpture
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Centers and Edges: Modern Ceramic Design and Sculpture



CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.- Humble in origin, clay is one of the oldest and most enduring of all artistic mediums. Starting in the late nineteenth century, American and European artists – inspired by non-Western traditions and framed by the context of social reform – reimagined the potential of this simple material. Over the next 100 years studio potters, industrial designers, and fine-arts sculptors mirrored and advanced vanguard artistic theories and design philosophies.

"Centers and Edges: Modern Ceramic Design and Sculpture, 1880-1980," featuring select works from several influential movements in the history and development of twentieth-century ceramics and design, will be presented at the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago from June 2 to September 18, 2005. At the exhibition opening reception on Thursday, June 2, from 5 to 7 p.m., Smart Museum Senior Curator Richard A. Born and ceramic artist and collector Mary Seyfarth, chair of the ceramics department at Columbia College, will introduce the exhibition and lead an informal gallery talk. As the museum opens this exhibition, we will also be welcoming Anthony Hirschel, as he begins his tenure as the new Dana Feitler Director of the Smart Museum.

"Centers and Edges: Modern Ceramic Design and Sculpture, 1880-1980," organized mainly from the Smart Museum’s collection, focuses on five key moments of influence, invention, and impact that are marked by shifting geographical centers of creative energy: late-nineteenth-century British and American Arts and Crafts pottery; functionalist designs from 1920s and 30s Germany and Austria; the modernist figuration of Aristide Maillol, Henry Moore, and other European sculptors; a widespread embrace of studio and folk pottery traditions in America, Europe, and Japan after World War II; and an expressive reworking of vessel and sculptural forms from 1950s California to 1970s London, featuring pieces by such leaders in the field as the West Coast master Peter Voulkos and the émigré Chicago-based Ruth Duckworth. These groupings offer insight into the medium through the social, gender, political, and industrial histories that, over time, surrounded the production, marketing, and use of such diverse works in clay.

Whereas some traditions represented were decidedly specific and local, others are more international in focus and impact. These histories encompassed not only sometimes out-of-the-way places but also the rediscovery of forgotten or overlooked traditions of world ceramic history, such as 16th-century Korean wares or the traditional ware of folk potters in Japan and Okinawa. The exhibition highlights the fluidity of these histories and the active process of influence that has shaped ceramics.










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