Jenni Sorkin
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226303116
- eISBN:
- 9780226303253
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226303253.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
A thematic and gendered history of post-war American ceramics, this book focuses on three American women ceramists, Marguerite Wildenhain (1896-1985), a Bauhaus-trained potter who taught form as ...
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A thematic and gendered history of post-war American ceramics, this book focuses on three American women ceramists, Marguerite Wildenhain (1896-1985), a Bauhaus-trained potter who taught form as process without product at her summer craft school Pond Farm; Mary Caroline (M.C.) Richards (1916-1999), who renounced formalism at Black Mountain College in favor of a therapeutic model she pursued outside academia; and Susan Peterson (1925-2009), who popularized ceramics through live throwing demonstrations on public television in 1964-65. These artists utilized ceramics as a conduit for social contact through teaching, writing, and the performance of their medium. At mid-century, functional pottery was more than just an art form, it was a lifestyle, offering mid-century women extraordinary autonomy, both economically and socially, through experimental artistic communities that were collective in nature. Ceramics offers a compelling site for examining the sexism and media hierarchies embedded in modernist art histories. It became a viable alternative to the mainstream, urban art worlds of New York City and Los Angeles, a space in which women could innovate, teach, and create lasting pedagogical structures. This unorthodox, largely rural livelihood was beholden to the formal requirements of the craft: the making, storage, and firing of ceramic wares. The medium itself was ill-suited to an urban setting: strict fire codes made kilns illegal in most cities. Pottery’s emphasis on self-sufficient rural living offered proto-feminist women the opportunity to live and teach in cooperative, experimental, and self-initiated communities.Less
A thematic and gendered history of post-war American ceramics, this book focuses on three American women ceramists, Marguerite Wildenhain (1896-1985), a Bauhaus-trained potter who taught form as process without product at her summer craft school Pond Farm; Mary Caroline (M.C.) Richards (1916-1999), who renounced formalism at Black Mountain College in favor of a therapeutic model she pursued outside academia; and Susan Peterson (1925-2009), who popularized ceramics through live throwing demonstrations on public television in 1964-65. These artists utilized ceramics as a conduit for social contact through teaching, writing, and the performance of their medium. At mid-century, functional pottery was more than just an art form, it was a lifestyle, offering mid-century women extraordinary autonomy, both economically and socially, through experimental artistic communities that were collective in nature. Ceramics offers a compelling site for examining the sexism and media hierarchies embedded in modernist art histories. It became a viable alternative to the mainstream, urban art worlds of New York City and Los Angeles, a space in which women could innovate, teach, and create lasting pedagogical structures. This unorthodox, largely rural livelihood was beholden to the formal requirements of the craft: the making, storage, and firing of ceramic wares. The medium itself was ill-suited to an urban setting: strict fire codes made kilns illegal in most cities. Pottery’s emphasis on self-sufficient rural living offered proto-feminist women the opportunity to live and teach in cooperative, experimental, and self-initiated communities.
