‘Tantalizing Teapots’ a Feel-Good Brew

Why are teapots so lovable? They look to me like the heads of baby elephants. Sometimes I put peanuts in teapot spouts. Anybody who likes to ponder such cosmic conundrums should shag right over to the Craft and Folk Art Museum for “Tantalizing Teapots: The Felicitous Union of Form and Content.” If you’re too busy, just say “teapot” and you’ll feel better.

Teapots are almost certainly substitute nannies. Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” provides support for this hypothesis. Simultaneously, something about them is inherently nutty. Everybody knows this from Alice’s tea party with the March Hare. The exhibition makes it perfectly clear. The museum’s deputy director, Martha Drexler Lynn, selected about 100 examples from a 3,200-piece collection amassed by Gloria and Sonny Kamm of Encino. You get the feeling they must be nice.

Works are about evenly divided between whimsical versions by contemporary artists and commercial production ware that gives kitsch a good name. Among the latter are such treasures as a vintage 1930s plastic Shirley Temple set that informally commemorates the era when the moppet saved 20th Century Fox from bankruptcy.

A 19th century Sheffield silver set looks perfectly conventional, except it’s big enough to make a grown man feel three feet tall. Proof positive that Claes Oldenburg didn’t invent over-scaling for aesthetic effect.

That thought’s too serious. This exhibition doesn’t allow serious.

Curator Lynn simplified matters by arranging pots in thematic clusters. The commercial stuff leans to figurative character types. Not unexpectedly one case is devoted to caricatures of stereotypical Brits like bobbies and tavern keepers. Another vitrine is full of witches and Jack O’Lanterns. I didn’t know people celebrated Halloween with trick-or-tea. Anyway this anonymous work is remarkably well-sculpted. People who like celebrities can see Ronald Reagan and the lamented Princess Diana as pots.

The artist’s section includes one iconoclastic work challenging the perception that teapots are feminine. A red devil by Anthony Bennett asserts that a teapot’s spout is Satan’s penis. Michael and Magdalena Frimkess counter that its lid is a motherly breast. These days you just can’t escape controversy.

Steven Montgomery insists a teapot is a hot-rod engine. Eric Van Eimerin says, no, it’s an oil can. Kieko Fukasawa insists that a teapot is a simple spigot. David Gilhooly tries to be reasonable by declaring that teapots are just teapots. His just happens to be full of frogs and Oreo cookies.

Distracted by the din of this Wonderland argument, one might miss what’s really going on. An enormous amount of technical ingenuity, virtuoso talent and witty intelligence is being lavished on a simple household object that makes us feel good even in its humblest incarnation. What’s really being satirized is the human impulse to make art at all. Nature has given us a surpassingly beautiful world to live in but we can’t just let it be. We insist on gilding the lily.

That’s probably why the more elaborate these pots are, the funnier they feel. They dramatize the futility of the whole enterprise. Some people can’t even tell the difference between art and souvenirs. Hap Sakwa and Lynn Mattson clearly have this problem in mind in respective works on Las Vegas and Mt. Rushmore.

Others take the high road. Ralph Bacerra’s ornate entry would make a sultan feel shabby. Adrian Saxe’s untitled spangled gold ewer looks like a Faberge bauble to amuse the czar. Some artists make pots that don’t work so we’ll know they’re art. A wire mesh job by Brian Kurt Peshek wouldn’t hold porridge. Looks like mice chewed it.

In the end, however, there’s nothing disconsolate about this work. It winds up being a humble and endearing admission that some people just can’t resist the urge to try to contribute something personal to the miracle of life. If it makes us smile, so much the better.

* Craft and Folk Art Museum, 5814 Wilshire Blvd., to Feb. 2. Closed Mondays. (213) 937-5544.