Vasemania: Neoclassical Form and Ornament
VOLUME: 4 WINTER, 2004 Vasemania: Neoclassical Form and Ornament: Selections from The Metropolitan Museum of Art at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture Review by Nancy H. Ramage 1) is a copy of a vase that belonged to Ithaca College Hamilton, painted in Wedgwood’s “encaustic” technique that imitated red-figure with red, An unusual and worthwhile exhibit on the orange, and white painted on top of the “black passion for vases in the 18th century has been basalt” body, as he called it. But here, assembled at the Bard Graduate Center in Wedgwood’s artist has taken all the figures New York City. The show, entitled that encircle the entire vessel on the original, Vasemania: Neoclassical Form and and put them on the front of the pot, just as Ornament: Selections from The Metropolitan they appear in a plate in Hamilton’s first vol- Museum of Art, was curated by a group of ume in the publication of his first collection, graduate students, together with Stefanie sold to the British Museum in 1772. On the Walker at Bard and William Rieder at the Met. original Greek pot, the last two figures on the It aims to set out the different kinds of taste — left and right goût grec, goût étrusque, goût empire — that sides were Fig. 1 Wedgwood Hydria, developed over a period of decades across painted on the Etruria Works, Staffordshire, Britain, France, Italy, Spain, and Germany. back of the ves- ca. 1780. Black basalt with “encaustic” painting. The at the Bard Graduate Center.
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