Left:
The Blue Dangler
,
2008, ceramic,
6'/8X4X4in.
Opposite:
Clonaplhata
,
2008, ceramic,
4% x 6 x 43/<
in.
Just as a few containers on a table were the painter Giorgio Mo-
randi’s lifelong source of inspiration, the cup has been Ron Nagle’s.
It is extraordinary, therefore, that in the last three years he has
begun to move away from it. The very features that have identified
the ur-cup nature of his pieces—an opening in the top, a handle on
one side, the volumetric representation of a capacity to contain
liquid—are no longer always present, or have evolved into even
stranger, more improbable forms than in the past. Consider, for
example, the features of these two works from 2008: the bumpy,
thumb-ish flap on the front of
Clonapihata,
or the flaccid drip that
hangs almost the full length of
The Blue Dangler's
tall, narrow form.
Other works, dubbed W eeoramas, suggest tiny stages or environ-
ments—sometimes empty, sometimes occupied by blobs or piles
of cubes. And in a show this past May, sculptures Nagle describes
as Bookends predominated: two back-to-back, wafer-thin sheets
of clay bent into the shape of an L “between which you could sand-
wich a couple of slim volumes of poetry,” as
New Tiirk Times
critic
Ken Johnson put it. These pieces refer to containment in only the
most abstract way.
Nagle notes that the reception of this new work has reflected
how the viewer thinks (or feels, to be more precise) about the pres-
ence—or absence—of references to the vessel. The art world has
welcomed the changes. The craft world, he surmises, has not. There
is something ironic about the possibility that, as art turns toward
Beauty (and away from theory), craft may be going in the opposite
direction—though this, like any other generalization about these
two worlds, is far too black and white to represent all the shadings
and nuances of their complicated relationship. And it doesn’t speak
for those who, like Nagle, operate in the sphere where the two
overlap—or collide. It can be a difficult position to occupy.
Still, the passage of time has a way of validating creative indi-
viduals who choose to be independent of the big, splashy movements
of their generation. I’m talking about the kind of makers who seem
to have their own
g p s —
one that follows directions only from a
mysterious place within, rather than from the compass points pro-
vided by isms. Fifty years into a legendarily iconoclastic career,
having sidestepped clay’s version of Abstract Expressionism, the
goofiness of California Funk and various historicist revivals, Nagle
is ascending, slowly but surely, into his rightful position as an influ-
ential and highly regarded ceramic artist.
Ceramic artist?
I can imagine Nagle’s pained expression (as well
as that of some of his admirers, including Dave Hickey) at the use
of this politically incorrect description. In theory, no maker needs
to be identified by medium anymore. The postmodern era’s much-
vaunted egalitarian attitude toward materials used to make art
(nr
craft) supposedly renders such a double-barreled term superfluous.
It’s wrong even to hint at privileging one material or approach over>
042 american craft dec/jan io
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