The Repulsive Flower -A material based research about art history, gender and decorative porcelain Caroline Harrius Konstfack Craft! Ceramics Master 2 Spring 2020 Tutors: Matt Smith, Andrea Peach and Birgitta Burling Word count: 6301 Abstract In this project I am investigating my relationship with western traditional porcelain produced between 1700 and 1900 from a gender perspective. While looking at what has been feminine coded within the late history of ceramics I made the horrible realization that I do not value this kind of ceramics. The 21th century Scandinavia with stripped down, clean surfaces, filled with cool people dressed in black leaves little room for romantic, billowy vases decorated with flowers. I have produced a series of 30 porcelain vases, all decorated in the same way with a botanical pattern. They are installed in an old wooden shelf, packed tightly together. With this installation I want to discuss what part art history has made it to the museums and what parts has been stored away and labelled as tasteless knick knack. How has gender affected this? For some reason all my artistic role models has been male painters and not female ceramicists. Keywords: Ceramics, History, Hierarchies, Gender, Differences, Decoration, Women, Taste, Production, Knick-knack, Domestic space Index Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 1 Background and previous works ................................................................................................ 3 Theory, context, method and discussion .................................................................................... 8 Women working with ceramics and art ................................................................................ 10 Domestic decoration .............................................................................................................. 13 Process ................................................................................................................................... 16 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 19 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 22 Additional sources .................................................................................................................... 23 Image references ...................................................................................................................... 24 Not quite an appendix .............................................................................................................. 26 Introduction I am trying to accept the fact that I don’t look up to any historical female ceramists. Trust me, I have worked hard on trying to like their work, and I worked even harder on finding them. When I started this project I knew that I wanted to discuss gender differences in ceramics history, I thought I was going to do so by critically discussing the way women have been portrayed throughout art history. I felt that the only women we met in the art museums were the nude females painted by men. The Guerrillas Girls’ quote from 1989 “Do women have to be naked to get in to the met museum? Less than 5% of the artist in the Modern Art Section are women but 85% of the nudes are female1” brings this issue up and has constantly been in my mind through these two years. But I was only looking at figurative portraits. It took me a while to understand that by looking at ceramics produced by women, instead of paintings made by men, I could get a deeper understanding of the hierarchies within the ceramics history and also draw more meaningful parallels with my studio practice as a ceramics artist. As a start I began to investigate what terms have strongly been associated with women’s way of working with ceramics in Europe in the 18th and 19th century. When reading, I tried to circle what parts of ceramics has been mostly associated with women, both technically and visually. My idea was that these terms I found would be the fundament of my artistic work. So what terms are considered feminine in the artistic practice of ceramics? In all the texts I have studied, there is one part that always is mentioned, and that is decoration of domestic ceramic vessels, often done in a non creative2 way, where women worked from men’s designs. I got a very unpleasant surprise when I did my first vase working from these terms; I do not think that this kind of ceramics is cool and I want to hide my work from others to see. I have never before felt embarrassed over my work and only want it to be visible when I can explain that there is a reason why I have made this very unsexy, decorative vase with cute pink flowers. As a young female ceramist who wants to work with feminism, it very frustrating to find out that I don’t like and value porcelain associated with female traditions. In this project I will force myself to dig deeper in to the ceramics as I in the beginning of this text think is uncool, and try to find out why I think so, I think it is sad and problematic that I know so much about male painters, but can barely name any female ceramicist born before 1900. Can I find the underlying reasons to why I don’t value the traditionally female coded decorative porcelain? In this text I will look at the social and economical structures of the 18th century and forward and see if I can find the explanation there why only men have been doing what I consider great art. I will go through some of my earlier projects and see how they relate to this issue. From there I will continue to look at women’s roll in the ceramics production 1 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/guerrilla-girls-do-women-have-to-be-naked-to-get-into-the- met-museum-p78793 2 Vincentelli, Women and Ceramics Gendered Vessels, 88, 90, 96. 1 during the 18th and 19th century and see what possibilities they have had to become ceramics artists. Since I seem to have such issues with colourful flower patterns, I will also see if I can find any connections with gender and value in decoration. I will produce series of porcelain vases that will be decorated in a colourful botanic pattern and exhibited at Konstfack’s Spring Show, hopefully. My aim is that through my artistic work question the hierarchies and challenge the norms within the art field that says that modernist sculptures and paintings of nude women are great art, but decorative and functional mass produced ware is knick-knack and should stay out of museums and galleries. Image 1. Caroline Harrius, The Repulsive Flower, 2020 My main source is Moira Vincentelli (c 1940-), she is an art historian, curator of ceramics and also the author of the book Women and Ceramics- Gendered Vessels. She is the only one I found so far who has written a book about the gender differences in ceramics history. I am under the impression that there seems to be a lack of material on this subject; when I have been searching through feminist art theory, ceramics is not mentioned very often. Therefore my other sources are a mix between ceramics history books and feminist theory that speaks about taste, textile and female traditions, which I will apply on my work. This includes texts as Zandra Ahl’s (1975-), previous professor of Konstfack’s ceramics department, and journalist Emma Olsson’s (1973-) book Svensk Smak- myter om den moderna formen (Swedish Taste- Myths about the modern form) and Linda Nochlin’s (1931-2017) essay Why have there been no great women artists? 2 Background and previous works My grandmother was a stay home wife in a privileged household; her greatest hobby was going to auctions and brining home fantastic pieces of ceramics which she decorated the house with. She spent her whole life collecting porcelain and was probably the only one who smiled when I explained to my family that I was going to be a ceramicist. I never realised that eating strawberry kissel from her bowls printed with the Willow Pattern3 when I was 5 years old would affect my artistic style in the future, but my grandmother is probably to blame for my huge interest in traditional blue and white porcelain. I always used to sigh when I entered her house and I saw that my latest piece of work was just a modern twist of an 18th century vase in one of her vitrines. Working from traditional porcelain is nothing new to me- I did my bachelor degree in ceramics, my exam work was a huge blue and white figurine, a less charming self portrait where I wanted to talk about what sides of our lives are socially accepted to put on display and show in a world where we are expected to share our lives from the most perfect angle on social media. Instead of perfect porcelain skin and a clean home, my portrait is sitting on the dirty floor with greasy hair taking a selfie. I thought that using the figurine, commonly known as a conversation piece, would be an interesting way address the questions I wanted to discuss. Image 2 and 3. Longing for Rejection, exam work for my bachelor 2018 3 https://nationalmuseumpublications.co.za/the-willow-pattern/ 3 I continued to work on this track during my first semester at Konstfack- I was focusing on finding a method where I could work with ceramics and include women in a new context or way where they are not only a subject to the male gaze, but independent characters with their own story. My