Reading 2

After reading this article there were obviously two key points, metaphor and conceit.  Metaphor trying to portray an idea and conceit trying to be an idea¬  I thought it was in interesting idea that the ‘Potters Space’ comes from the step of giving a pot its decoration and by doing so giving the pot a presence of its own.  I thought the examples in the article were fitting and looked up more on my own on the Internet.  I liked that Picasso was included as a contemporary example of funerary jars and Betty Woodman came to mind when reading the part on Ceramics and Total Environment, “…when an extravagance of metaphor overwhelms an entire artistic style”.  Betty Woodman I think has an ability to transform a room with her contemporary wall hangings, which pull from the Baroque style.   The playing that Betty woodman is able to do in the playing between her wall hangings that are decoration but still make the mind scream out that they are pots is really interesting.  Thinking of metaphor and conceit and trying to figure out the point where a pot stops being a metaphor and becomes a conceit it gets very confusing.  I think there is a definite decision that is made when making a conceit, what I understood or gathered is that there would be no more reliance on being a pot but a dependence on the material essence of the object that is trying to be “copied”.  There is an obvious cultural difference between the ceramics mentioned in this article and how I feel a lot of the time I may write off decoration on a vessel as being pretty or interesting but when cultural context is added it brings upon analogies that you wouldn’t have known until told (like how in the Chinese culture a dragon on a jar represent Yin and Yang).