Overview

Ceramics had a far-reaching impact in the second half of the twentieth century, as its artists worked through the same ideas regarding abstraction and form as those for other creative mediums. Live Form shines new light on the relation of ceramics to the artistic avant-garde by looking at the central role of women in the field: potters who popularized ceramics as they worked with or taught male counterparts like John Cage, Peter Voulkos, and Ken Price. Sorkin focuses on three Americans who promoted ceramics as an advanced artistic medium: Marguerite Wildenhain, a Bauhaus-trained potter and writer; Mary Caroline (M. C.) Richards, who renounced formalism at Black Mountain College to pursue new performative methods; and Susan Peterson, best known for her live throwing demonstrations on public television. Together, these women pioneered a hands-on teaching style and led educational and therapeutic activities for war veterans, students, the elderly, and many others. Far from being an isolated field, ceramics offered a sense of community and social engagement, which, Sorkin argues, crucially set the stage for later participatory forms of art and feminist collectivism.

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In Live Form, Sorkin does so much, transforming our view of contemporary art s experiential turn by viewing its history through the perspective of its others women, ceramists, rural communities. But perhaps most important is her account of pedagogy, which emphasizes process over product, and which proposes a provocative model for rethinking the value of art. --David Joselit, CUNY Graduate Center

Live Form fills a void in the current scholarship on postwar art. Looking closely at the development of pottery, Sorkin is able to redress the dominant narratives that privilege both painting as the dominant medium and men as its primary practitioners. Instead, she offers us the essential roles played by crafts and women in creating the interdisciplinary and performance-based fabric of our current moment. --Helen Molesworth, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Live Form fills a void in the current scholarship on postwar art. Looking closely at the development of pottery, Sorkin is able to redress the dominant narratives that privilege both painting as the dominant medium and men as its primary practitioners. Instead, she offers us the essential roles played by crafts and women in creating the interdisciplinary and performance-based fabric of our current moment. --Helen Molesworth, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Author Information

Jenni Sorkin is assistant professor in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

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