Reading 6

In this reading, author Tanya Harrod describes the ways in which artists experimented with ceramics and other media at the end of the 19th, and into the 20th century. Harrod raises important questions regarding how an why certain artists, including Picasso and Matisse, chose to experiment with ceramics in response to the growing dissatisfaction with the art academies. For European painters, Harrod says, "one way of questioning the skills taught by the academies of art through the systematic study of casts and copies was through self-taught experimentation in other media" (Pg. 260)

At the time, ceramics had become a new type of expressive art, and not just an elevated area of industrial design. Experimentation by artists in this, and in other media was also sparked by, as Harrod states,  "...that familiar anti-modern nostalgia for earlier cultures and non-European cultures", and anti-industrial desires. This is an important point, as it seems only fair to say that the appropriate response to industrialized products would be hand-made objects, and ceramic made objects as the perfect vehicle

For these artists, the "ideal site of learning became the woodshop and the studio, not the academy" where "processes of self-introduction were favored." (Pg. 261). This raises questions regarding the "studio" potter, and the occasional ceramicist. Harrod questions "How much of the vigor of what we more commonly see as "studio" pottery...derives from a self-taught, experimental approach?" (Pg. 263) In other words, how did studio potters view the role of ceramics in the academies, and how does this help them relate to, or differ from, other artists working in this media.