If the art world was a High School and the students in it were the mediums in which an artist could work, video, sculpture in general, and installation would currently be vying for the title of coolest kid. Each medium fashionably dressed with a hint of outsider rebellion even though they are firmly aware they fit right in. Screen-printing is the highly amusing social butterfly who fits in with everyone. Painting might be like a head cheerleader or have some position on the football team, drawing/works on paper might be her slightly mousier best friend (adjust metaphor if she is a he) who sometimes looks longingly across the cafeteria at “the cool kids.”  Specific mediums such as glass, ceramics, comic books, and dance would all be various forms of “nerd” groups, soundly immersed in their individual dungeons and dragons type hobbies. Each of these groups have their own little economies and at times may be thoroughly unaware of the fact that the rest of the school has such a high opinion of themselves.

To understand why I think Dirt on Delight is so cool it is imperative that you continue thinking of the art world as a High School in which clay as a medium is an unloved and misunderstood outsider. If you do not keep this in mind you will still find an awesome and educational exhibition. (Libby, on this very blog, has taken great lengths to showcase some of the exhibition’s highlights, here.) You must understand that in my Art World High School, institutions like the ICA hang out with the cool kids and don’t usually walk over to the clay side of the cafeteria. Dirt on Delight is equivalent to Veronica Sawyer (Heathers) deciding to hang out with her old pal Betty Finn.

Following my metaphor, we find that our lives are often enriched by hanging out with “the nerds.”  Betty Finn was a much better friend then any of the Heathers; Lindsay Lohan became a monster when she hung out among the in-crowd in Mean Girls, Napoleon Dynamite. . . etc. Of course there are people who will applaud the ICA’s “generosity” in using it’s popular status to bring clay into the fold and then there are those who will claim that they only did it for a bet (She’s all That), and though they have come to love clay now, they have not loved clay as some have loved clay–in fact they even gave clay a make-over to fit their personal contemporary image of her, they could not love pots or cups. They could not love clay as a “nerd.”

In the words of Levar Burton, don’t take my word for it, some amazing reviews have been written on the subject:

Clay’s Big Day
The Art World Is in a Place That’s Very Familiar Ground in the Realm of Ceramics
By Blake Gopnik
Washington Post Staff Writer

Those diminished expectations seem to have infected potters, too. Judging by this show, the discipline that gave us ancient Greek amphorae, Renaissance majolica, the tea bowls of Japan and the constructivist coffee sets of Kasimir Malevich now seems content to treat clay as fun stuff to fiddle with. In art schools, the “serious” art students call their pot-throwing colleagues “mud bunnies.” “Dirt on Delight” shows its artists living up to the insult: Their work is mostly about dug-up mud, and what a craftsman’s hands can do to make it weird, wacky and, of course, dirtily delightful. Those notions have ruled ceramic art for such a time, they’ve become its most entrenched cliches — and like all cliches, they’ve lost whatever impact they once had.

Crucible of Creativity, Stoking Earth Into Art
By Roberta Smith
The New York Times

The show’s determination to integrate ceramics into the art mainstream is nothing new. But its refusal to do so simply by slipping some universally agreed-upon ceramic exceptions into a show of painting, sculpture and so forth is close to groundbreaking.

In short, I like Dirt on Delight. The exhibition has expanded the dialogue along the lines of fine art and craft and though we still have a long journey ahead of us it has paved the way for understanding between the various mediums of art. Someday our High School will be a better place. Go see it before it’s gone.

Jane Irish’s vase with the poem of Vietnam Veteran Against the War activist W. D. Ehrhart’s on its side.

Somehow I missed that Irish, organizer of the Massive Operation Raw art project a few years back, had visited Vietnam last summer and that the images on some of the pots reflected the plein air paintings she had made during her month-long journey.

The pots are achingly lovely. Their complications make them all the more compelling. Pretty and angry; accusatory and celebratory, they are not simple eye candy. And the poems — especially those by the Veterans, are the most poignant and visceral, their imagery like a punch in the gut. My favorite is W. D. Ehrhart‘s Souvenirs which captures the the Vietnam experience completely, the beauty and wonder of the culture and people and the horror and brutality of the war.

Scene from Vietnam on this pot, based on plein air paintings by Irish done in Vietnam last summer.

W.D. Ehrhart
Souvenirs

“Bring me back a souvenir,” the captain called.
“Sure thing,” I shouted back above the amtrac’s roar.

Later that day,
the column halted,
we found a Buddhist temple by the trail.
Combing through a nearby wood,
we found a heavy log as well.

It must have taken more than half an hour,
but at last we battered in
the concrete walls so badly
that the roof collapsed.

Before it did,
I took two painted vases
Buddhists use for burning incense.

One vase I kept,
and one I offered proudly to the captain.

Not everything in the exhibit is explicitly about body and bodily functions. Numerous pieces revel in clay’s historic use as a decorative medium.

Jeffry Mitchell, Pickle Jar, 2005, glazed ceramic, 15.5 x 13 x 13 inches, collection Ben and Aileen Krohn

In close proximity to Viola Frey’s encrusted Man in the Moon sphere from 1976, Jeffry Mitchell takes the piling on even further with baroque 3-D landscapes—Some Aspects of Landscape, decorated in traditional blue and white, and Zum Goldenen Walde (To the Golden Forest)! in a bronze-like finish. Mitchell’s Pickle Jar, also glazed to a bronze finish, teems with figures and animals. Why pickle jar? “It’s a joke,” said the artist. He paused. “It’s pretty flat-footed.” Well, it is the Versailles of pickle jars.

Jane Irish, Vase, Vito Acconci, 1995, low-fire whiteware, glaze luster and china paint, 12 x 11 x 11 inches, collection Elizabeth E. Yohlin

And the Versailles of political engagement is on display in Sevres-inspired vases from Jane Irish, made of humble, low-fire whiteware, some of them hand built, some of the molded. The vases deliberately list and droop and shout their handmade origins as a form of protest. In Vase, Poverty, the lustre decorations and hand-painted cartouches seduce, even as they depict more serious themes than the traditional gavotting dukes and duchesses and reeling peasants.

Ann Agee, Agee Manufacturing Co. (Winter Catalogue) detail

Like Irish, many of the artists subvert their sources—the clay vessel and the figurine–at the same time as they salute them. Ann Agee’s Agee Manufacturing Co. (Winter Catalogue), is a shop display of figurines. The figures, which recall Meissen figure tableaus, are in fact handmade, their subjects unsentimental, including a girl dropping a baby from under her skirts as she climbs a tree—a bawdy, Kara Walker-like subject.

Arlene Schechet, Good Ghost, 2007, glazed ceramic, steel and cast concrete, 66 x 24 x 22 inches, collection Dennis Freedman

Amidst all the sumptuous glazes and hats doffed to the decorative traditions in clay, several bodies of work shout out the humble qualities of the material. Arlene Schechet makes lumpy shapes that suggest animals and intestines and dirt. The cement-y matte gray of her Good Ghost absorbs the light, creating a sort of gray hole in the gallery.

Paul Swenbeck, Mandragora detail, 2008, Egyptian paste, glazed terra clay, paint and resin, 3 pieces, 12 x 12 x 14 inches each. Courtesy the artist and Fleisher/Ollman Gallery

Paul Swenbeck’s ultra-contemporary DIY-aesthetic mandrake roots are made of Egyptian paste, and evoke a child’s clay snakes. Traditionally, the mandrake root is a homunculus with magic powers—animated to life, just like clay in the creation myth.

Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Convivium, 2008, detail papier-mache and glazed ceramic, Saatchi Gallery

Also in the show are spectacular and varied works by Lucio Fontana, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Sterling Ruby, Adrian Saxe, Bevery Semmes, Eugene von Bruenchenhein, Beatrice Wood and Betty Woodman.

Rudolf Staffel, one of his Light Gatherer series,translucent porcelain

The ICA chose for this show contemporary artists who are stretching clay’s territory and proving just how infinitely malleable a medium it is. But, not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, it has included vessels–ones that hold volumes of meaning—like Rudolf Staffel’s transcendent Light Gatherer bowls–and capture what clay is best at, a discussion of bodies, souls and life.

The bitter cold didn’t deter the more than 600 people who attended the opening of a major clay exhibit at the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art. The exhibit, “Dirt on Delight: Impulses that Form Clay” is worth braving the elements–a chance to view a stunning variety of contemporary clay sculptures and some earlier clay sculpture that influenced the more recent works.

Peter Voulkos, Red River, 1959, stoneware with slip, glaze and epoxy paint, gas fired, 37 x 12-1/2 x 14-1/2 in. Photo: © schoppleinstudio.com. Courtesy of the Voulkos & Co. Catalogue Project, www.voulkos.com

Using historical and groundbreaking clay artists like George Ohr, Viola Frey and Peter Voulkos as a baseline, the show of 22 artists presents an art-historical context for contemporary American clay art. At the same time, the exhibit highlights how the material qualities of clay–its dirt qualities and its delight qualities–are engines for expressing complex ideas and concerns, especially ones about what it means to be human.

At this moment when contemporary art often equals un-beautiful, the ICA is declaring that the art world is ready for a hot embrace of clay’s glorious earthiness, as well as its malleable surfaces that range from seductive and glamorous to gross and comic—that dichotomy is summed up in the exhibit’s title, Dirt on Delight. This show has it all, from Pop to Poop to Popeye.

Ken Price, Zyko, 2008, painted clay and wood pedestal, par 1: 7 x 25.5 x 12 inches, part 2: 8.25 x 25.5 x 15 inches, pedestall 34 inches high, courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery

Ken Price’s Zyko is all three, pop, poop and Popeye too. The super-sized pair of twisty, sausages look like a comic book version of a dog pile. Here Price turns clay’s fundamental goopiness into his subject. At the same time he turns his gross matter into a breathtakingly beautiful object. The smooth perfection of the surface delights with its intricate network of glowing colors, the result of Price sanding down the pebbly clay to reveal the multi-colored layers of paint with which he coats his pieces. Zyko embraces the Pop art strategies of bigger, more graphic, slicker and brighter, while implicitly comparing two methods of production–excretion and making art.

Ron Nagle, Thataway, 1999, earthenware and overglaze, 3.5 inches high, collection Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio

In contrast, Ron Nagle’s Thataway is realistically scaled–two delicately colored fingers of dog droppings pointing in opposite directions. Only the formalism and the color separate it visually from its inspiration. Thataway, like Zyko, is comical, but in a different way. The joke is on the doting owner of the beloved dog, a worshipped creature who lowly bodily functions are enshrined here.

Sterling Ruby, Blue Angel, 2007, glazed ceramic and Formica pedestal, sculpture 17 x 15 x 21 inches, courtesy the artist and Marc Foxx

“Why clay?” asked ICA Senior Curator Ingrid Schaffner at the opening, (The show has three curators, Schaffner, Glenn Adamson of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, and ICA Assistant Curator Jenelle Porter). “It’s primal,” Schaffner said. “It asks you to touch it.” Prior to firing, it has both scatological and mud-pie making associations. Then Porter chimed in with some commentary on the clean side of clay–its delights: “Even when it’s fired and hard, you still want to touch it,” she said. Other delights include its ornamental glazes, paints, lustres, gilding, piling-on-ness, and playfulness.

Kathy Butterly, Like Butter, 1997, porcelain, earthenware and glaze, 4.75 x 3.25 x 3 3/8 inches, Love the Saturday Night Live reference! courtesy artist and Tibor de Nagy Gallery.

Kathy Butterly, one of 10 female artists in the exhibit, uses clay’s playful qualities to confront serious issues. Like Butter is four pink, chubby baby legs forming a vessel shape, with tiny tiny red genitals. “It was about falling in love and having a baby,” said Butterly. Her forlorn comicbook figure Fall Into Spring, she said, is about being overwhelmed by too much information following the 9/11 attacks.

Kathy Butterly, Cenote, 2004, porcelain, earthenware and glaze, 4.75 x 4 1/8 x 4 inches,
private collection courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery

Butterly consistently exploits one of the marvels of clay–its ability to express bodily concerns. Cenote is a small landscape of a pot, with droopy pink folds and a tiny pearl necklace just below its mossy green throat. How wonderful that it’s placed near George Ohr’s Small Bowl (c. 1895 to 1900). Small Bowl is demure and old-fashioned, its pink glaze embellished with a pattern. But the softly folded top is shockingly suggestive, as if Ohr had turned his lady upside down to look underneath the patterned skirt! This is the 21st century, so there’s no shock in Butterly’s cup. Rather, the lady is in charge. The pink body here is naked and seductive, the pearls a bold come-hither statement.

Nicole Cherubini, G-Pot with Rocks, 2006, earthenware, glaze, fake gold and silver jewelry, chain, feathers, luster, white ice, marble, wood, foam and acrylic medium, approx. 28 x 28 x 63 inches; there is also a pom-pom of feathers inside the throat of the vase–not to mention a hole in the bottom (ahem). collection of Barbara Goldfarb

Sex is big in this show, from Nicole Cherubini’s bottomless and punning G-Pot with Rocks, gussied up with golden chains, and with feathers that recollect Meret Oppenheim’s fur-lined teacup; …

Robert Arneson, Gold Lustred Rose, 1966, glazed ceramic, 29 x 24 x 11 inches, George Adams Gallery and Brian Gross Fine Art

…to Robert Arneson’s Freudian, monumental pieces, Gold Lustred Rose…

Robert Arneson, John Figure, 1965, glazed stoneware, 35 x 60.5 x 28 inches

…and John Figure—the latter a life-sized toilet bowl with a female torso for a tank, one breast the flusher handle. (Arneson learned his ceramics skills from Ceramics Monthly’s “how to” column, according to the biographical notes provided by the ICA)!

[Part 2 of this post coming soon.]