The Poetics of Glaze Ceramic Surface and the Perception of Depth
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The Poetics of Glaze Ceramic Surface and the Perception of Depth EMMANUEL BOOS A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Royal College of Art for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2011 The Royal College of Art COPYRIGHT STATEMENT This text represents the submission for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Royal College of Art. This copy has been supplied for the purpose of research for private study, on the understanding that it is copyright material, and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. ii ABSTRACT This research by practice into the visual and aesthetic qualities of ceramic glaze investigates its ability to create an impression of depth. Because perspectival depth alone can not fully account for my artistic concerns, and the requirements of perspectival illusion are at odds with some of my major artistic preoccupations, such as an interest in accidents and imprecision in material rendering, I raised the hypothesis of a poetic dimension of depth, posing the research question for this project: “What is poetic depth in a ceramic glaze?” Traditionally, research into glazes focuses on aspects of material science, craftsmanship, archaeology or art history, and optical depth has been the subject of investigations into the microstructure of glaze. By seeking to address the aesthetic dimension of glaze I am moving away from such concerns. While the aesthetics of ceramic glaze is a new field of research, with little existing material, I am seeking to find parallels with practice, theories and research from the field of literary poetry, even though by ‘poetic’ I am referring to a quality that is not only mediated by language and goes beyond the field of literature. Further, I am also referring to Gaston Bachelard’s approach to material imagination through his poetics of the natural elements and to the concept of transitional space developed by psychoanalysts of the British Independent Group, Donald Winnicott and Marion Milner. My thesis consists of a threefold dialogue between my artistic practice of glaze, theories and practices of literary poetry and the concept of the transitional phenomenon. My findings are at the intersection of those three elements, and they are the results of my investigations through both making and writing: • ‘Poetic tension’ is a paradoxical and conflicting process between authority – the ability to control – and subjectivity on the one hand and factors of dissent, questioning the very possibility of authorship, on the other: among these are the unconscious and the materiality of the glaze. • The concern for interiority is a central element of poetry, the transitional phenomenon and my works. • My practice of glaze is an attempt to re-enact and objectify the fusion between the self and the world, addressing the issues of the illusion of all-encompassing subjectivity and the disillusion of objectivity, both key elements of the transitional phenomenon. • Play has been a natural development of my practice of glaze and I further established parallels with the literary poetic in a shared aspiration for subversion, dissent and laughter. • The concept of the formless permeates Bachelard’s material imagination and my practice of glaze. Moreover it is often a prerequisite for Winnicott’s and Milner’s approach to creativity and play. • Failure is the essence of a certain form of poetry, which Georges Bataille summed up as the ‘Impossible’. It is also a key aspect of my practice of glaze: an essence of flux or a further element of play whose irresolution or unlikely balance can create yet another dimension of the poetic. • Flux is a necessary element of glazes but it also summarizes the dynamics and dialectics of the transitional phenomenon and of the Bataillean ‘Impossible’ and the playful poetic. All three strands: my practice of glaze, the literary poetic and the transitional phenomenon intertwine, cross-fertilize and develop in parallel. Together, they have helped articulate the concepts and the artistic vocabulary through which the poetic and the transitional phenomenon have become operative categories of aesthetics, artistic practice, and of research processes. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 The Poetic Glaze 4 Perspectival depth – Fish-scale glaze and Illusory Objects – Poetic depth: a new hypothesis – The poet possessed – The craft of poetry – The poetic tension – Glaze and the poetic tension – The unconscious – The making subject – Automatic Objects – The beholding subject – The gaze – The discovery of The Emperor’s Terrapin – Material – Bachelard’s formal indistinctness – Giordano’s Bruno – Formless – Envelopes – First Enclosed Objects Classifications of Glaze 29 Context – Cobblestones – Objectives – Review of classifications – Technical classifications – Temperature – Composition – Chemical classification – Kolding Classification – Other characteristics – Other classifications – Glaze effects – Fluidity and viscosity – Drops – The dream of admixture – Water’s imagination – Body-glaze layer –Ambivalence –Transitional space – Fusion and the ‘aesthetic moment’ – Glaze types – Flambés – Monochromes’ paradox – Material, emotion and poetry – Monet’s Water Lilies Glazes at Play 66 Does anything go? – The domestic objects: Edge – From transitional space to play – A theory of play with ceramic glazes – Enclosed Objects – Cobblestones – Edge – Transitional – Surprising – Non-seductive – Exciting – Precariousness – Aesthetics of precariousness – Poetics of Play – Surrealist ludic – Dissent and ‘undecidability’ – ‘Jouissance’ – Love and desire iv Failure 108 Introduction – Mythology – Blacksmithing vs. pottery – Gender – Jealousy – Conservatism and secrecy – Cooking fire and potter’s kiln – Unself- consciousness – Accidents – Process – Slits – Transitional space and failure – Separation – The most distant glaze – Risks and paradox – Flux and ambiguity – Planes series 6 ‘Re-assembled’– Poetics of failure – Rimbaud’s silence, Pichette’s apoems, Parra’s anti-poems – Bataille’s Hatred of Poetry/The Impossible – The void – The vessel – Dialectic of internality and externality – Vessels, Illusory Objects, Enclosed Objects, Edge, Planes Conclusion 156 Bibliography 162 Wordcount [introduction-conclusion], excluding abstract, definitions, bibliography and appendices 37,095 words v LIST OF ACCOMPANYING MATERIAL CD-ROM – Thesis & Pictures of works (in plastic sleeve in front cover of this volume) Abstract (loose insert in back cover of this volume) Appendix 0 – PhD Timeline (loose insert in back cover of this volume) Appendix I – Pictures of works Appendix II – Cobblestones, technical notes and recipes vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The English psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, whose concept of transitional space has been a key concept for my research, developed in parallel the theory of the ‘good-enough mother’, who contributes to the successful development of the child as much by her devotion as by her holding back and her ‘failures’. Winnicott later broadened the concept into that of the ‘good-enough’ supportive environment. I believe I have greatly benefited from such a ‘good-enough’ supportive environment for my research. My first thanks go to my mother, Odile, and to my father, Jean-Yves. My PhD parents are Emmanuel Cooper, the main supervisor of this thesis, and Claire Pajaczkowska, the second supervisor from its PhD stage onwards. I am very grateful to both of them for their stimulating input and unyielding support. I am also grateful to Alison Britton who eventually replaced Emmanuel Cooper in the last months of the research. My parents in ceramics are James Owen (Gould Academy, USA), Abraham Weiss (Waldorfschule Mannheim, Germany), Diana Berrier and Héléna Klug (Ecole du Cheval à l’Envers, Paris) and Jean Girel (Burgundy, France). The latter opened my eyes to the subtleties of glaze during my apprenticeship with him, and provided me with a method of investigating glazes. It is also with him that I discovered the glazes of Jean Carriès. The Royal College of Art, the Entente Cordiale Scholarship Scheme 2006-07, the Arts and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Award 2008-10, the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller (Paris) 2010-2011 and the Jerwood Foundation 2011 have supported this research financially. At the RCA, I would especially like to thank Martin Smith and Jeremy Aynsley, David Watkins, Sandra Kemp, Alan Cummings and Jennifer Brown for their support with funding issues at various stages throughout the project. vii Alison Britton, Martin Smith and Felicity Aylieff at the Royal College of Art have reviewed the work on several occasions during the research and have given me precious feedback and support. I would also like to thank David Rayson from the Painting Department at the RCA for his insights. Keith Fraser, Anthony Harris, Stefan Stefanou and Kerry Jameson (technicians, Department of Ceramics and Glass, RCA), and Matthew Raw have greatly helped with resolving practical issues of making through astuteness – and with such mastery! Sandra Reynard showed me the ropes. Colleagues and researchers at the RCA: Bonnie Kemske, Steve Brown, Heike Brachlow, Min Jeong Song and Shelley James, were supportive and valuable sparring partners. Ceramic artists Linda Swanson (USA) and Bente Skjøttgaard (Denmark) have shown me through their own practices possible contemporary uses of ceramic glaze. Takeshi Yasuda, Sam Bakewell, Takato Sasaki and Signe Schjøth have generously given me amazing glaze recipes. Michael Jackson introduced me to Kolding