Ceramics: Fritsch, Cooper, Foakes, Perry & Sada

Recently I've been getting into ceramics. My interest was initially sparked when I saw Elizabeth Fritsch's stuff at the Wales National Museum in Cardiff - pieces that are heavily influenced by art, architecture and (apparently) music.

At Cardiff they also have a significant permanent collection, including some more popular stuff, such as work by Susie Cooper.

A year or so later I was really impressed by the clever re-invention of ‘canoptic’ pots in acrylic and ceramic by Lucy Jane Foakes at the Devon Guild of Craftsmen at Bovey Tracey.

I wasn't too familiar with Grayson Perry's work until last year, when I went to his curated exhibition at the British Museum (meant to blog about it at the time but after visiting 7 London exhibitions in 3 days it all proved too much ...).

Anyway, the exhibition was excellent and, apart from Perry's work, included ceramics and artefacts from many other cultures. I would particularly recommend the reasonably-priced catalogue that accompanied the exhibition (compare the price of this with that of Hockney and other catalogues).

More recently, I visited the Bernard Leach pottery in St Ives. I'd previously avoided this because Leach ceramics appeared a bit too traditional for my taste. However, I'm glad to say that the visit was definitely worth it and it opened my eyes to the whole 'making' process involved in the manufacture of ceramics (I have a set of photos that I also intend to post sometime).

In the Leach shop they had some fantastic modern pieces by Elke Sada.

So now I'm hooked and I'm always on the lookout for stuff I can add to my small collection. Acquisitions have included a pot by Louis Hudson (£10) and this small East German pot by Strehla VEB (sold to me by an antiques dealer as Danish) for £9.

My most recent purchase was this Jessie Tait designed Midwinter Sienna pattern partial tea set (bought for £4 from a charity shop).

I'll be adding occasional postings about future finds from now on. Here finally, to be going on with, is a great Taj Mahal jampot which I picked up for £5 at an antiques fair (obviously it didn't appeal to anyone else as it was still sat on the stall at the end of the day - the earliest I usually manage to get along to these things).

If you have an interest in modern ceramics you may want to take a look at my Pinterest board.

A Top 5 of Living Female Artists?

We're almost at the end of the Phoenix 'isms' classes (previous posts here, here and here). In this second batch of five sessions Nicci has done a great job of presenting 20th and 21st century art by themes - gender, identity, the gaze, vanitas, momento mori, and so on - rather than by art movements ('isms'). We also focused on some favourite individual artists including Frida Kahlo, Nan Goldin, Yoko Ono, Lucian Freud, Andy Warhol, Rachel Whiteread, Paula Rego and Peter Blake.

Cindy Sherman at MOMA until June 2012 (with make-up)

In week 4 we also looked at Cindy Sherman and debated the claim that she is the greatest living female artist. I'm a sceptic and started to think about the competition. As a result I've come up with the following Top 5 female living artists as follows (in no particular order and using the usual criteria of - influence on others, subjective judgement, personal prejudice, etc):

1 - Yoko Ono - Hugely influential artist working in a number of media. Her involvement with John Lennon led many people to become aware of and investigate modern art (me included).

Jenny Savile

2 - Jenny Saville - Real painter of women in the tradition of Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud (and Picasso and Rubens?) with a distinctive and visceral style.

Paula Rego - Betrothal from Hogarth tryptich

3 - Paula Rego - An artist who tells stories using a variety of different, but recognisable, styles, normally in pastels. Her images are often animalistic - a feminist artist who produces unsettling work. (See this facebook page for further Rego images - thanks Ernesto).

Tracey Emin - Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made

4 - Tracey Emin - A member of the YBAs, she has transcended this and shown herself capable of producing a range of impressive work including installations, paintings, neon, and use of fabrics (and more) which is largely autobiographical.

Bridget Riley

Finally, at joint No.5 (cheating here) - Bridget Riley - the queen of Op Art, who has consistently taken the form in new directions from the 1960s to the present time; and Elizabeth Fritsch - a studio potter whose work is perfection (and is often influenced by music, painting, and architecture).

Pots by Elizabeth Fritsch

Runners-up: Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, Rachel Whiteread, Nan Goldin, Marina Abramović ... ?

In the final week of the 'isms' course we're getting an early look at The Perfect Nude exhibition, which runs from 29 March to 12 May at the Phoenix. A hundred artists have been invited to make paintings on the theme of The Perfect Nude. The aim is to "create a rich network of images that will establish a context for representation of the body in contemporary painting". Should be interesting.

The picture above is not from the exhibition, of course - it's an output from the life class I attended last year - far from Perfect, but I like to think that the subject would hit it off with the guy in the flyer above ...

Modern Art - Is this how it happened?

Finally, if you're looking for an online Modern Art History course, why not take a look at this one which does an excellent job of covering the development of art from the late 1800s to the 1960s, with plenty of examples and lecture slides. You can also read further in the book chapters referred to throughout (History of Modern Art by Arnason - a big and expensive book, but more reasonably priced secondhand copies of older editions are plentiful).