"Lucio Fontana's Ceramic Art" 45-68.
In this essay Garth Clark writes about Lucio Fontana and just how under-explored and misunderstood he is in the Fine Art and Ceramics Community and how important the progression of his artworks were. An important thing to realize about Fontana is that he did not start out in ceramics; he didn't make his first ceramic sculpture until he was 27 years old, rather he was a sculptor and denied being a ceramicist until much later in his life. Fontana chose to work with clay because it was a much more sensual process than working with plaster or concrete, yet he worked with it in a way that hadn't been done before as he combined processes of painting, sculpture and ceramics into one.
He also speaks of how Fontana was not a true minimalist as many historians say, but rather he combined abstraction with formality. Clark wrote that although Fontana wasn't just a ceramist he is arguably one of the most important and influential artists to work with clay during this last century. Fontana was manipulating the clay to appear "earthquaked but motionless", he was interested in the how he could release the energy in the surface. Fontana experimented with many different methods of how he could show energy or emotion in the surface by playing with light, lusters, and by piercing/slashing.
I was really intrigued by this reading about Fontana and his methods of working. In the essay Clark writes of the found of the Futurist ceramic movement, Tulie D'Abisola, observing that Fontana could make up to 300 works in one month and as many as 100 in just a single day. Throughout his career as an artist Fontana explored many different approaches to the treatments of surfaces, proving to be an important artist not only in ceramics, but also in sculpture and painting as well. Clark ends his essay by saying the under-explored quality of Fontana's ceramics is a blessing of sorts. He says both groups (Fines Arts and Ceramics) are more accepting of one another and understanding the place at which Fontana's works go from ceramics into other disciplines, which they can appreciate and see the value in - more noticebly in this past decade.
It's interesting how artists feel more free to move between materials without defining themselves especially before they are really discovered as artists. While the quality of Fontana's work is "under-explored", he remains undefined by any mass audience. I just did a quick search on Fontana's work and he came up as a painter, sculptor, and ceramicist - he is well-rounded and it's very impressive how successful he is across the board. All artists should experiment with other art forms to gain higher perspectives in their work from different aspects.
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