Peter Voulkos
The exhibition of recent stoneware vessels
by Peter Voulkos at Frank Lloyd
Gallery featured the sort of work on
which the artist established reputation in
the 1950s. The work was greeted
with stunned amazement. However now it is too,
but it's amazement of a
different order -- the kind that comes from being in the
presence of
effortless artistic mastery. These astonishing vessels are truly
amazing.
Every ceramic artist knows that what goes into a kiln looks very
different from
what comes out, and although what comes out can be controlled
to varying
degrees, it's never certain. Uncertainty feels actively courted in
Voulkos'
vessels, and this embrace of chance gives them a surprisingly
contradictory
sense of ease. Critical to the emergence of a significant art
scene in Los
Angeles in the second half of the 1950s, the 75-year-old
artist has lived in
Northern California since 1959 and this was his only
second solo show in an L.A
gallery in 30 years. "These days, L.A. is
recognized as a center for the
production of contemporary art. But in the
1950s, the scene was slim -- few
galleries and fewer museums. Despite the
obscurity, a handful of solitary and
determined artists broke ground here,
stretching the inflexible definitions of
what constitutes painting, sculpture
and other media. Among these avant-gardists
was Peter Voulkos." In 1954,
Voulkos was hired as chairman of the fledgling
ceramics department at the
L.A. County Art Institute, now Otis College of Art
and Design, and during the
five years that followed, he led what came to be
known as the "Clay
Revolution." Students like John Mason, Paul Soldner,
Ken Price and Billy
Al Bengston, all of whom went on to become respected
artists, were among his
foot soldiers in the battle to free clay from its
handicraft associations. By
the late 1950s, Voulkos had established an
international reputation for his
muscular fired-clay sculptures, which melded
Zen attitudes toward chance
with the emotional fervor of Abstract Expressionist
painting. Some 20 works
-- including five "Stacks" (4-foot-tall
sculptures) as well as giant
slashed-and-gouged plates and works on paper --
recently went on view at the
Frank Lloyd Gallery. This non single show is his
first at a Los Angeles
gallery in 13 years, although a survey of his work was
seen at the Newport
Harbor Art Museum (presently carries a different name) in
1995. Voulkos,
75, has lived in Oakland since 1959, "having left after a
fallout with the
then-director of the Art Institute, Millard Sheets, who is best
known for
mosaic murals on local bank facades." Although Voulkos has been
absent from
L.A. for 40 years, he remains something of an icon for artists
here.
Price, known for his candy-colored ovoid clay sculptures, puts it
simply:
"In one way or another, he influenced everyone who makes art out of
clay,
since he was the main force in liberating the material. He broke down
all the
rules -- form follows function, truth in materials -- because he
wanted to make
art that had something to do with his own time and place. He
had virtuoso
technique, so he was able to do it fairly directly, and he
worked in a really
forceful way. In the opinion of many artists he is the
most important person in
clay of the 20th century, not for what he did
himself, but for the ground that
he broke." In his interview with US art
critics Voulkos said: "I never
intended on being revolutionary, there was a
certain energy around L.A. at that
time, and I liked the whole milieu."
"Wielding clay is magic," he says.
"The minute you touch it, it moves, so
you've got to move with it. It's like a
ritual. I always work standing up, so
I can move my body around. I don't sit and
make dainty little things." As a
child, Voulkos did not imagine a future as an
internationally influential
artist. The third of five children born to Greek
immigrant parents in
Bozeman, Mont., he could not afford a college education and
anticipated a
career constructing floor molds for engine castings at a foundry
in Portland,
Ore., where he went to work in 1942, after high school. But in
1943, he
was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Corps and was stationed in the
central
Pacific as an airplane armorer and gunner. After the war, the G.I.
Bill
offered him a college education, so he studied painting at Montana
State
College, now Montana State University, and took ceramics courses
during his
junior year, graduating in 1951. Voulkos had a natural aptitude
for clay and
soon was winning awards, including top honors at the 1950
National Ceramic
Exhibition at the Syracuse Museum of FineArts, in New
York. Encouraged, he
chose ceramics as a course of study in graduate school
at the California College
of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, from which he
graduated with a master's degree in
1952. Around the same time, he
married Margaret Cone and had a daughter, Pier.
His work also was gaining
attention, and he was invited to teach at the
experimental Black Mountain
College in Asheville, N.C., in 1953. Once again,
timing was in his favor, as
other artists on hand included John Cage, Merce
Cunningham and David
Tudor, with whom he later stayed in New York, where he met
Abstract
Expressionist painters Franz Kline, Jack Tworkov, Philip Guston
and
Robert Rauschenberg. That fall, he returned to Helena, and was
resigned to
selling his ceramics to make a living until the fateful call came
from Sheets.
"I was just a hick from Montana, so coming to L.A was a big
thing for
me," Voulkos remembers. "When I got that job, it was my big break.
I
didn't have to do dinner plates anymore. I got paid for teaching and didn't
have
to worry about selling. Being able to teach helped expand my vocabulary.
I
learned from my students. Ceramics in those days was quite boring,"
he
says. "Scandinavian design. I fell for them for a while, but it
was
short-lived. It didn't move fast enough for me." But soon Voulkos gained
a
supporter, sculptor David Smith, known for his balanced cubes of steel .
Voulkos
shared a studio on Glendale Boulevard with his former student John
Mason (his
neighbor was architect Richard Neutra), and in the evenings, he
and his
students, who were also his friends, would listen to jazz at the
Tiffany Club.
"L.A. Conceptual artist John Baldessari recalls that
Voulkos, who at that time
was painting in an Abstract Expressionist style as
well as building massive
abstract clay sculptures, seemed the very embodiment
of the advanced New York
art world. Baldessari, who was studying painting,
remembers, "I soon
discovered that he was more of an inspiration and a goad
than any of my painting
instructors, who were relatively academic. He
psychically gave me permission,
because the teachers I had always seemed
delimiting." " Just before
Christmas 1958, Voulkos opened a solo show at
the Pasadena Art Museum (now the
Norton Simon Museum). Soon after, he was
fired from L.A. County Art Institute
and hired by UC Berkeley, where his
students included Ron Nagle, James Melchert
and Ann Adair, who later became
his second wife and by whom he has a son, Aris.
Voulkos' career continued
to escalate with a 1960 show at the Museum of Modern
Art in New York,
favorably reviewed by Dore Ashton in the New York Times.
Yearning to work
on a larger scale than is possible in clay, he began producing
monumental
bronze sculptures for corporate clients, such as an 18-foot-tall
sculpture in
the lobby of the San Francisco office of Tishman Realty. Despite
this
two-decade foray into bronze, Voulkos remained committed to pushing
the
boundaries of possibility in ceramics. From 1979 to 1984, he concentrated
on
firing plates and then the vessel-shaped "stacks" in an anagama,
a
Japanese wood-burning kiln. Inspired by the Haniwa figures and Momoyama
period
ceramics of Japan, Voulkos let the ash and soot from the firing
process in the
kiln decorate the irregular surface of the clay. "There was a
certain kind
of casualness about some of the Japanese ceramics that I liked.
There can be a
big crack in the pot caused by the kiln, and the piece becomes
a national
treasure," he says. The 1980s brought about a serious personal
challenge,
however. By mid-decade, he was forced to confront his addiction to
cocaine and
enter a rehabilitation facility. In 1989, he returned to his
ceramic sculpture
with a sense of renewed purpose and a more incisive and
controlled sense of
composition. During the '90s, he has regained the
confidence in the process.
Although retired from UC Berkeley, Voulkos
still thrives as a teacher, spending
about four months of each year on the
road doing seminars.
Bibliography
Levin, Elaine, "Peter Voulkos: A
Ceramics Monthly Portfolio," Ceramics
Monthly, June, 1978, pp. 60-68,
ill.Albright, Thomas, Art in the San Francisco
Bay Area, 1945-1980,
University of California Press, Berkeley, 1985, ill.Baker,
Kenneth,
"Strong New Work by Voulkos," San Francisco Chronicle, March 2,
1991, p.
C5, ill.Baker, Kenneth, "Voulkos Elevates Ceramics to Art," San
Francisco
Examiner Chronicle, Datebook, July 30, 1995, pp. 35, 39,
ill.Kuspit,
Donald, "The Trouble With The Body: Peter Voulkos’s
‘Stacks’,"
American Ceramics, 12/2, 1996, pp. 14-21, ill., cover ill.