The University City studio of pottery is seriously some of the most gorgeous American made pottery of the Art Nouveau movement. There are a fair number of examples tucked away, including tilework, vases and the like. This is one of my favorites: there is nothing simple about the composition, nothing easy about the matte finish in the glaze, the spacing in between the lines… it is an exercise in precision and execution. Its seeming simplicity belies just how extremely difficult it is to pull off with perfection.
Tag: American art
Tuesday
This is gorgeous tribal American art from the northwestern coast of the United States. It’s symbolic, it’s stylized, it’s complex, it is exquisite. The symbolism of the people’s faces trapped within the bodies of the animals is not lost on me, nor should it be on anyone who knows the history of this continent.
Monday
This, to me, is like disembodied, atonal notes from a warm-up. I love it, but it’s not really harmonious or full of reason. It’s very much an improvisational, casual style and feel.
Sunday
You can ask anyone: I am not a math wizard. However, I do enjoy a good pattern, and this is a good progression. It makes me feel happy, and it has ever since I first laid eyes on it. 🙂
Friday
Fun fact: my favorite color when I was a child was yellow. Secondary fun fact: when I was a child, I wanted to learn how to blow glass, until I learned just how hot glass was (and considering I couldn’t get a casserole dish out of the oven without burning myself, introducing wee me to the fiery depths of a hellish glass furnace would not have gone well).
Glassware is one of my favorite forms of artwork; in this case, the stark harsh lines are broken up by softer, flowing edges and gentler waves, giving the illusion of motion within the larger framework. The light dances between the angles and planes, refracting and reflecting, creating a gentle dance that is both masculine and feminine, which definitely designates the design as American and probably closer to 1858-1860, as earlier periods were slightly more ornate and bending more toward the effeminate, as toward the European styles.
Thursday
This is one of those pieces that I find challenging in that I have such a love-hate relationship with it as to be almost laughable. Intellectually, it trots out the ‘noble savage’ trope and throws it in your face in such a way that it smacks of historical revision, whilst at the same time being such an object of beauty and style that it makes your heart ache with longing to reach out and touch the texture of the sculpture and purr when you feel the tiny imperfections in the lines.
I love to hate it and hate to love it.
This is why art exists: to challenge us, to challenge the world around us. To make us hurt and feel things that we don’t want to feel.
Inaugural post!
This beautiful grille is just outside the gift shop and the cafe on the first floor of the museum, just chillin’. It gets natural light from an overhead window and really has pride of place where it is. The design itself is very simple, skewing toward Bauhaus-inspired modernism before there was such a thing, and well-worn, as you can clearly see from the bits that have come off over the years.
The designs of the 1890’s were often about form over function, but in this case, they were pretty evenly matched. The artistic balances well with the functionality and practicality in a way that is attractive and informal rather than stilted and classist.