The Material Esthetics: Physicality and Process

Paul Mathieu, The Art of the Future: 14 essays on ceramics Chapter Seven The Material Esthetics: Physicality and Process Clay has been used in a wide variety of ways throughout its history, in various cultures, at various times and for various reasons as well. Yet, when clay is made into something and fired to become ceramics, interestingly enough, the same forms appear more or less unchanged all over the world, at times so closely related as to be confused with each other, since they were created for the same purposes, with the same practical or even esthetic intents and, obviously, with the same material as well, clay. This formal universality is part of what I call the classical esthetics. Technological discoveries or specific materials (porcelain in China, for example) will create local esthetic variations not found elsewhere until that technology travels to new places where it will find local expression, due to the particular needs and sensibilities of these new makers and users. In our global world of instantaneous communication and universal information, we now can have complete knowledge of what is being made anywhere at anytime, not only now but in the past as well. This wealth of accessibility to historical precedents and contemporary developments provides us with a range of possibilities and new material, technical, esthetic and conceptual possibilities that were not available before to the maker of ceramic objects who could only trade locally and work for a limited market, geographically. Yet as soon as exchange and commerce became possible, ceramics traveled far and wide and stylistic exchange between distant places became current and commonplace. All the esthetics so far examined, the classical esthetics with its emphasis 1 on form, the flux esthetics and glazes, the narrative esthetics with representation and story-telling and with pictorial spaces specific to ceramics, the decorative esthetics with a focus on surface and ornamentation, often within abstraction, the simulation esthetics and the industrial esthetics, all of them can be found basically all over the world throughout history and soon after a local discovery (say, glazing) could be exported to a new market and taken up by new makers. This is true of all of them, except for the last one under discussion here, the material esthetics, and this particularity is in itself interesting. The material esthetics is the newer, the most recent esthetics in the ceramic arts. It is also the most prevalent, very popular right now and most handmade contemporary ceramics made by individuals today is of that type. One may expect that the newer esthetics in ceramics would be the industrial esthetics and, if we understand that esthetics as a product of industrialization and modernism then that may be true but as we have seen previously, the industrial esthetics, while giving rise to modernism in may ways, has a much longer and older history. Ceramic objects informed esthetically by industrial processes and methods (mold-making and slip casting, for example) have been made for a long time too. All other esthetics in ceramics have very long, ancient histories, sometimes to the very origins of the art form 30,000 years ago. Yet the material esthetics is quite recent a phenomenon in ceramics, considering the ancient age of the art form itself. Historical context: (you may skip to The Material Form) The material esthetics also was for the longest time and until quite recently, specific to one place, Japan, and in a much more understated and subtle way, so indicative of the particular refinement of that culture, Korea, as well. In fact, the role of Korean potters and of a specifically Korean sensibility to materials, forms and processes is central to the development of the material esthetics in Japan. The material esthetics as a specific ceramic concept is not found in China, historically, at all. In Japan, it was the stylistic expression of a specific historical time in Japanese history, the Momoyama period (1573-1615), a time that saw the emergence of the material esthetics around the development and codification of the Tea Ceremony. The Momoyama period in Japan was a period of intense warfare, political strife and social reorganization that greatly altered the cultural landscape, since the aristocratic class was replaced by the warrior class (the shogun and the samurai) in the power structure of society. The aristocrats had favored luxury and ostentation and their 2 art was highly refined, elegant, conspicuous, ornate and elaborate, with much use of gold surfaces. The samurais on the other hand, in reaction to the aristocracy and in reaction to their ostentatious lifestyle, favored natural materials in a direct connection with nature and a very different form of sophistication in an emphasis on simplicity, directness, even crudeness in their art, in which ceramics play a very important role as provider of utensils for the recently codified Tea Ceremony. The Japanese Tea Ceremony takes place among a few intimates (rarely more than four, in addition to the tea master conducting the event, preparing tea and serving the guests) in a small unimposing building, a garden hut really, the tea house, built with simple, natural materials, undecorated, with the only visual element being provided by an example of calligraphy or a painted landscape of monochrome black ink on paper, shown in an alcove, along with a single flower arrangement, often consisting of a single flower, in a pottery or bamboo vase, as well as the tea utensils themselves and various serving dishes for the simple meal of fresh, seasonal food that accompanies the serving of tea. This ritual is highly codified and becomes quite rigid from its inception. The pottery utensils were at first ordinary objects coming from folk potteries, yet individually and carefully chosen by the tea master, of a type that may have been made for a long time by peasants for their own basic needs (the mountain pottery village of Shigaraki, near Tokyo, is a good example, another being Bizen). Historically, the Tea masters will also make regular trips to Korea, often with invading armies, to visit farming communities, pottery villages and peasant homes there, in order to search among thousands of examples for the simple, ordinary bowl, at times worn down by use, even chipped or cracked, that somehow embodies nonetheless a particular feeling of completeness, of transcendent anonymity and humility. These cheap, ordinary and common yet singled-out bowls are brought back to Japan to be highly praised and prized, some eventually becoming important, priceless cultural treasures, with an assigned name defining them as unique. The invading Japanese army will also bring back, forcibly at times, Korean potters who will then start in Japan important potteries under the patronage of the samurais and the tea masters and greatly influence the esthetic development of Japanese ceramics, so often characterized by an emphasis on the physical properties of materials and their transformation through natural (as much as possible) and cultural process. Under these conditions, special wares are made, often under the supervision and to the specifications of important tea masters. The first tea master, who was responsible for codifying the basic rules and rituals of the tea ceremony, was Sen No Rikyu (1522-1591). I 3 recommend the excellent 1989 movie “Rikyu” by Hiroshi Teshigahara, which fictionalizes his life and philosophy. One of his first students and followers was Furuta Oribe (1544- 1615). Oribe gives his name to a very distinctive type of pottery, a type of earthenware, characterized by a freely applied transparent green glaze to a limited area of the ware, while the remaining surface receives a spontaneous, freely brushed decorative pattern, usually abstract, and painted in brown with iron oxide over a clear glaze. It looks like the work of a somewhat messy, demented child, and this “naïve” sophistication is part of its great charm. Oribe wares and other tea wares, despite their codified artificiality, nonetheless succeed in retaining the simplicity, directness, earthiness of the original models made unselfconsciously by simple folks in direct contact with nature, making the most of the materials and conditions of transformation with no pretension to artistic expression whatsoever. The main religion of Japan, Shintoism, with its cult of ancestors in relation to the natural world, as well as influences coming from Zen Buddhism imported from India and China, constitute other important sources for the making of these wares. Numerous pottery centers will each produce distinctive wares for the tea ceremony and this production is still continuing today, at the same places, with the same materials and processes, and often by direct descendants of the original founders, but not under the same conditions, since tea ware is today highly prized and accordingly expensive and the maker of tea wares in Japan are not peasants anymore but very wealthy, successful business people, some of them considered national treasures. The main types of tea wares are Oribe, with its distinctive green glaze, as well as Raku, made by a family based in Kyoto, founded by the man known as the 1st Raku and considered as one of the most important Japanes artist of all time, Sojiro Sasaki (dies in 1590). Raku is a type of pottery, mostly tea bowls made with a heavy, rugged, textured clay and fired very quickly in a small kiln from which it is removed while glowing hot to cool very quickly, an extreme, excessive process that gives it its characteristic visual and tactile aspects and imbues the ware with a mystical aura that reaffirms its spiritual connection to nature and to human experiences, through natural processes of transformation. Raku ware is still made today in Kyoto by descendants of the same family that invented the type.

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