Ceramic Statements : The exhibit ‘Clay 1925-1975: Potters to Artists’ traces pottery’s journey from utilitarian objects to works of art

In the 1950s, some adventuresome potters decided that clay could make more than functional pots, pitchers, bowls and other vessels. Breaking from centuries-old traditions, they began the evolution of studio ceramics from purely utilitarian or decorative objects to sculptural forms that conveyed content.

Abstract Expressionist theory, originally associated with painting, was applied to clay.

Several ceramists in Los Angeles at the time--Peter Voulkos, Paul Soldner, Jerry Rothman and others--played a major role in that development. Their work and that of potters who preceded them in Southern California--such as Laura Andreson, Gertrud and Otto Natzler, Glen Lukens, Harrison McIntosh and Beatrice Wood--is now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s 20th-Century ceramics collection. It numbers 450 pieces, about half of them donated by Howard and Gwen Laurie Smits since 1987.

“Clay 1925-1975: Potters to Artists,” an exhibit of more than 50 clay works from LACMA’s collection, traces ceramics from “when they go from just being utilitarian pottery to beginning to be more art with a capital A,” said Martha Lynn. An assistant curator of decorative arts at LACMA, she is in charge of the 20th-Century ceramics, glass, furniture and metal collection.

The exhibit is on view at the Pacific Design Center, the second in a series of shows there of LACMA’s 20th-Century ceramics collection. “Clay Today: Contemporary Ceramists and Their Work” was presented at the beginning of this year.

At LACMA, “we were reconfiguring some of our galleries, and my gallery, which had been at the museum for almost two years, was a temporary situation,” Lynn said. “It was shifted to something else, and I didn’t have any place to put my pots. We wanted to keep them out on display. It seemed like a match made in heaven that we would put some of our pieces here.”

“I think the collaboration has benefited both of us,” said Faith Rothblatt, the Pacific Design Center’s manager of programs and exhibitions. “People who are patrons of the museum are also people who are interested in our product.”

The contemporary ceramics show was “simply a smattering of the most contemporary material that we have, and it was meant to be eye-catching,” Lynn said. “This one is much more subdued.”

For this show, Lynn was able to display several pieces in the collection that have never been seen. These include gifts to the museum of ceramic works by Andreson, Soldner, Rudy Autio and Ruth Duckworth. Two pieces--the circa-1928 “Star-Shaped Vase” by Henry Varnum Poor, and a circa-1947 vase by Maija Grotell--were acquired with funds from the Smits Ceramics Purchase Fund.

“Some people know that we have the Smits endowment. . . . At least this gives them a chance to see what I’ve been trying to do,” Lynn said. “I’ve been focusing on the early work because it’s historical.”

Lynn also “did throw a curve ball in” this show, she said, by including production: machine-made ceramics produced in large numbers of uniform shapes, such as a 1950s earthenware bowl by the Heath Corp., whose factory has been in Sausalito since 1947. Additionally, there are 1940s production ceramic dishes by Russel Wright (1904-1976), and 1950s production ceramic dishes by Sasha Brastoff (1918-).

Brastoff’s work is “not my taste,” Lynn said. “But my taste is not the issue here. My point is to lay out the stuff that was here. Sasha Brastoff was made in Los Angeles. It was very popular. Everybody had one in their house. And everybody had a Russel Wright, too. Heathware was ubiquitous in California.

“Those pieces are isolated on two tables, and the rest of the things are one-off”--works made from conception to completion by a single ceramist.

Among the earlier works are several bowls, most of them earthenware, by Andreson (1902-). She taught ceramics at UCLA from 1936 until 1970. After retirement, she continued to make ceramics in her home studio, which is still there.

When she began teaching at UCLA, she did not know how to throw pots. Her earliest works were made by pressing the clay into a mold.

“She learned to throw from Gertrud Natzler,” said Bernard Kester, LACMA exhibit designer who was a student of Andreson and later became an assistant professor in her department.

Pointing at a crackle glazed bowl, he said, “It’s kind of thick and flubby compared to her later work. She moved into porcelain, and I think her most important statements were made in porcelain because they’re quite fragile and elegant.”

Austrians Gertrud Natzler (1908-1971) and her husband, Otto (1908-), came to Los Angeles in 1939, bringing with them a studio potter’s wheel. It was the first one in the area.

She threw the pots; he did the glazing. One of his signature coverings was a crater-like glaze, such as the glaze on the 1956 earthenware “Pilgrim Bottle.”

Lukens (1887-1967), who preferred the press-mold process to the potter’s wheel, is represented here by a 1940s earthenware “Grey Bowl.” In 1936, he became professor of ceramics at USC, initiating the ceramics program within the university’s art and architecture school. Among his students was Beatrice Wood (1894-).

“Dear, darling Beatrice. She gets a wonderful costume on and comes to the wheel, with rings on all her fingers and a hat, braids,” Kester said. “She also does ceramic sculpture which is very whimsical and very interesting.”

The 1950s “Tea Bowl” and the 1955 “Coffee Pot” by Peter Voulkos (1924-) represent his traditional work. They were made before he transformed the functional brown pot into the sculptural pot.

“He became a very important figure of rebellion because he began to be much more expressive with clay, and his followers then became part of his new school,” Kester said.

Voulkos came to Los Angeles in 1954 at the invitation of Millard Sheets, director of Otis Art Institute, to start a ceramics department there. Among his students were Soldner--the head of the ceramics department at Scripps College in Claremont from 1968 to 1991--Billy Al Bengston, Jerry Rothman and Kenneth Price.

In 1958, Voulkos made “Standing Jar” (displayed in Lynn’s first show at the Pacific Design Center), which she calls “one of the big turning points” in clay’s metamorphosis from being useful to being meaningful.

“Peter Voulkos is not the only person who began making clay expressive. There were other people, but he’s the hook that people think of, in large part because he was soon accepted by the larger art world,” Lynn said.

“I also think it has to do with his personality. He was a larger-than-life character. He played the art game well. If you have a Marguerite Wildenhain (1896-1985), who we have in the show, making little vessels and retiring to Pond Farm near Guerneville in Northern California, that’s not an art personality. And the Natzlers weren’t art personalities.

“There’s this whole sort of granola, Birkenstocks side to the mid-century potters, that they were better because they were living with handmade objects. And then Voulkos comes along and treats this stuff like it could be something more than that. And people bought it.”

Ceramists beyond California were intrigued and influenced by what Lynn called the “wild-hair group that broke away” from tradition. Canadian Marilyn Levine (1935-) moved beyond strict functionalism in the late 1960s, after a trip to California to see the work of Voulkos, Rothman and others. In 1971, she established a studio in Oakland.

Her 1974 stoneware “Two-Tone Bag” uses clay to form what looks like a worn leather coach bag. It’s all clay, even what appears to be metal fittings and a zipper.

“It’s meant as a very sophisticated parlor trick. When I first saw it, it was sitting under a desk, and I thought it was Gwen Laurie Smits’ purse,” Lynn said.

For Lynn, her shepherding of LACMA’s 20th-Century ceramics collection stems from her passion to tell the continuing story of clay.

“The clay collections at the museum are significant,” Lynn said. “There are holdings in arts and crafts ceramics, and that dovetails onto English and continental ceramics. And that goes back into Renaissance and medieval ceramics. There’s pre-Columbian, Indian, Japanese and so on. They put my collection in context. My collection expands theirs.

“My job is to proselytize, and to natter on about it to people--to let them know this work is going on, how it’s going on, why it’s going on, and what it means,” she said. “Having it here in this different venue is very helpful for that.”

“Clay 1925-1975: Potters to Artists” is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays through Feb. 26 at the Pacific Design Center, Green Building Rotunda, 8687 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. Call (310) 657-0800.