Clay's tectonic shift, 1956-1968 : John Mason, Ken Price, Peter Voulkos / Mary Davis MacNaughton, editor ; with contributions by Michael Duncan [and others].

Contributor(s):

Material type: Text

TextPublication details: [Los Angeles] : J. Paul Getty Museum ; Claremont, Calif. : Scripps College, Ruth Chandler Williams Gallery, ©2012.Description: 231 pages : illustrations (some color), portraits ; 29 cmISBN:

9781606061053
1606061054

Subject(s):

DDC classification:

738 CHA

Contents:

Preface : Culture, clay, and credibility / Peter Plagens -- Introduction : Clay's sculptural turn / Mary Davis MacNaughton -- Vanguard ceramics : John Mason, Ken Price, and Peter Voulkos / Frank Lloyd -- Confluence : people, ideas, and art : southern California, 1945-1970 / Karen Tsujimoto -- How clay got cool : setting the stage for Peter Voulkos's radical shift / Michael Duncan -- Unexpected connections : clay sculpture in LA and the avant-garde / Mary Davis MacNaughton -- A burgeoning art scene with room for ceramics / Suzanne Muchnic -- Annotated bibliography : critical response to early work by Mason, Price, and Voulkos.

Summary: Clay's Tectonic Shift focuses on artists John Mason (b. 1927), Kenneth Price (1935-2012), and Peter Voulkos (1924-2002) and their radical early work in postwar Los Angeles where they formed the vanguard of a new California ceramics movement. The three artists broke from the craft tradition that emphasized the function of a piece. Experimenting with scale, surface, color, and volume, their work was instrumental in elevating ceramics from a craft to a fine art. Earlier exhibitions and publications stated that key innovations in this new ceramics movement were made at the Otis Art institute and that its direction was defined by a group of students surrounding the charismatic leader Voulkos. The truth is that the new trend in ceramics was driven by the works that Price, Mason, and Voulkos made in a subsequent, independent phase when they were working as professional artists in Los Angeles, and the goal of Clay's Tectonic Shift is to correct that misperception. These three artists followed individual paths as they willfully propelled a new use of the medium into the mainstream professional arena, where it was widely recognized and documented. An exhibition of the same name will be on view at the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps College from January 21 through April 8, 2012, as part of Pacific Standard Time, a collaboration of more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California to tell the story of the birth of the Los Angeles art scene.--Books.google.

Holdings
Item type	Current library	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode
Standard Loan	LSAD Library Main Collection	738 CHA (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Available		39002100626622

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Earlier exhibitions and publications stated that key innovations in this new ceramics movement were made at the Otis Art institute and that its direction was defined by a group of students surrounding the charismatic leader Voulkos. The truth is that the new trend in ceramics was driven by the works that Price, Mason, and Voulkos made in a subsequent, independent phase when they were working as professional artists in Los Angeles, and the goal of Clay's Tectonic Shift is to correct that misperception. These three artists followed individual paths as they willfully propelled a new use of the medium into the mainstream professional arena, where it was widely recognized and documented. An exhibition of the same name will be on view at the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps College from January 21 through April 8, 2012, as part of Pacific Standard Time, a collaboration of more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California to tell the story of the birth of the Los Angeles art scene.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-219) and index.

Clay's Tectonic Shift focuses on artists John Mason (b. 1927), Kenneth Price (1935-2012), and Peter Voulkos (1924-2002) and their radical early work in postwar Los Angeles where they formed the vanguard of a new California ceramics movement. The three artists broke from the craft tradition that emphasized the function of a piece. Experimenting with scale, surface, color, and volume, their work was instrumental in elevating ceramics from a craft to a fine art. Earlier exhibitions and publications stated that key innovations in this new ceramics movement were made at the Otis Art institute and that its direction was defined by a group of students surrounding the charismatic leader Voulkos. The truth is that the new trend in ceramics was driven by the works that Price, Mason, and Voulkos made in a subsequent, independent phase when they were working as professional artists in Los Angeles, and the goal of Clay's Tectonic Shift is to correct that misperception. These three artists followed individual paths as they willfully propelled a new use of the medium into the mainstream professional arena, where it was widely recognized and documented. An exhibition of the same name will be on view at the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps College from January 21 through April 8, 2012, as part of Pacific Standard Time, a collaboration of more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California to tell the story of the birth of the Los Angeles art scene.--Books.google.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Mary Davis MacNaughton, director of the Williamson Gallery and associate professor of art history at Scripps College, has contributed to books on ceramics, including Revolution in Clay: The Marer Collection of Contemporary Ceramics (University of Washington Press, 1994) and retrospectives on Paul Soldner and David Furman.