Reading 2

Philip Rawson. and Wayne Higby. Ceramics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984. pp. 188-206

It is interesting to know how art historians or critics evaluate the concept of the space in 3 dimensional art and especially the way Rawson contrasts the space between Chinese Art and European ceramic sculpture in 18-19th century within the unlimited or enclosed space dichotomy. He also suggests that this space- dichotomy derives from the distinction between “the metaphor in the formal meanings of pots communicated as allusion” and the conceit (imagination) to “imitate a single natural object to the extent.” For Rawson, the true sculpture would “contains a multitude of many valued metaphorical suggestions in the inflection of its forms” even in a naturalistic sculpture. It seems too art history-oriented and a rigid academic view to explain contemporary postmodern diversity.

However, his concept of Potter’s Space bestowed an “extraordinary, maybe even timeless” value on pots. A pot-the act of containing creates a special kind of cell in space and defines its own space. Even when a pot ceases to be a container of its own and contains a spiritual substance, the Potter’s Space based upon formed inner volume plays a sculptural role like the Peruvian Mochica head vessels.

Rawson thinks this inner volume in Chinese ceramic sculpture is continuous in the environment of unlimited space. This Chinese idea of space as a fluid medium is also recognized in Chinese painting in which the white void is not absence but an actual space. On the other hand, European ceramic sculptures, for example, 18th century Meissen’s works, are made as a part of complete table setting and isolated into enclosed space defined by Rococo interior. Instead, they define its space by gestures, all the implied movement, variety of surface modelling, brilliance of enamel colors and nervous exhilaration, etc. He adds Clay bozzetti (small scale studies) as a special European mode of ceramic space that starts to exploit the possible qualities and textures of clay material and searches the way to true sculpture.