In his essay “Intervention,
Interaction, and the Will to Preserve,” Glen Brown points out the virtue of clay
material and ceramic vessels and suggests a way contemporary arts could explore
beyond revisionist interventions.
As he writes, it seems
paradoxical to remove its functionality of utilitarian ceramic vessels and preserve
them in a neutral space of museum. However, when vessels are brought into
relationship with a certain subject in a gallery, a new context could be created
for seeing, interpreting, and experiencing ceramic vessels separated from their
roots in usefulness.
Especially, Clare
Twomey's Forever is an impressive
example for this new context. 1,345 “Forever” cups that were displayed and
later dispersed to museum visitors “who signed deeds committing themselves to retain and care for the cups forever,”
are defined by the meaning of cup, not specified by its function even though it is
still functional. In that sense, preserving of contemporary ceramics
implies interaction “as a means of generating new and engaging ceramic art” rather
than intervention which focused on revealing biases in practices of collecting and display in museum.
Jin, thanks for bringing this work by Clare Twomey to my attention, and relating it so well to these concepts of "intervention" and "interaction" that Brown discusses in this article. I thought you summed up the differences between the two very well with the last two sentences you wrote. I found at first when I tried to make sense of Browns dense wording and ideas that I couldn't really find a great example of work to help me.
ReplyDeleteGin, I like how you talk about the effect that a different context has on the way that a ceramic piece of art is perceived by the viewers. Obviously this is the case, as we have discussed it in class and even had our entire last project devoted to the idea of "site-specific" work, but it's funny to think about making a utilitarian vessel un-useful by putting it in a gallery space. Clare Twomey speaks to this by putting cups in her gallery and allowing them to leave the space with a new owner, who will then maintain the idea of immortality by signing a contract to keep the cup forever. By doing this, she is making the same cup a piece of gallery art as well as a cup used in a home for daily purposes.
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