A Lively Trip Through Ceramic History

“Color and Fire: Defining Moments in Studio Ceramics, 1950-2000” is a sprawl of a show with something for everyone--and still more left over. Including about 175 pots, bottles, plates, vases, teacups, still lifes, figurative sculptures and odd, category-straddling objects by 122 artists, it is the first comprehensive survey to focus on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s impressive collection of contemporary ceramics.

Organized by Jo Lauria, assistant curator of decorative arts, the physically resplendent exhibition makes up in exuberance what it lacks in definition.

The defining moments promised by the title get lost in the installation, which makes sense visually but not chronologically. Rather than highlighting half a dozen flash points--when a handful of creative geniuses broke free of history’s influence to do their own thing with clay, glazes and kilns--the beautifully installed show emphasizes the continuous sensuality of ceramics, tracing two paths through the last 50 years of works made by individuals in their studios.

Just inside the exhibition’s entrance is John Mason’s “Red X” (1966), a nearly 5-foot-square, 1 1/2-foot-thick chunk of color into which the artist has cut four V-shaped notches to form a monolithic “X.” Combining the X-marks-the-spot finality of treasure maps with the stubborn solidity of fire hydrants, this snub-nosed sculpture boldly declares: “This is it! Ceramics is an art form on par with any other.”

Made during Minimalism’s heyday, Mason’s authoritative piece naturally uses that style’s language for its own purposes. Unlike any self-respecting Minimalist, however, he has carved cracks into its surface and added dark, weathered streaks to its edges, playfully suggesting that the art of ceramics has been left out in the cold. Exposed to the elements but no worse for the wear, “Red X” serves as a terrific emblem for the exhibition, which also blends bravado, humility, humor and illusionism.

Once this work gets your attention, its stout symmetry and cool anonymity immediately yield to the asymmetry and organic coloration of the five other works in the foyer. Mason’s foreboding “Spear Form” (1963), Jerry Rothman’s stoneware “Skypot” (1961) and Paul Soldner’s earthenware vessels from the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s all resemble ancient if not prehistoric artifacts, their uneven edges, lumpy contours and willfully marred surfaces sometimes evoking folksy associations and at other times tapping into a sense of mythical vigor.

The contrast set up in the foyer is fleshed out in the main gallery, where nearly half of the works are displayed. A free-standing wall zigzags diagonally through the large square space, dividing it in two and presenting visitors with a choice: You can go right or you can go left. (You can’t go wrong because you’ll want to circle back to see what you missed the first time through.)

On the right, “Color and Fire” traces an amazingly consistent arch from rawness to refinement.

This passage begins with Peter Voulkos’ groundbreaking works, through whose organic contours rumbles primordial forcefulness. The irregularly stacked forms of “5000 Feet” (1958) take you deep undersea, where the water pressure seems to have compressed loads of energy into the 4 1/2-foot-tall sculpture. The size-belying explosiveness that is Voulkos’ trademark is unleashed in “Large Plate” (1979) and “Big Missoula” (1995), whose punctured, patched and scarred surfaces recall armored vehicles that have traveled to hell and back, as well as volcanoes that occasionally belch smoke and molten lava from the Earth’s fiery core.

At the opposite end of this section are exquisite, nearly paper-thin pieces in porcelain by Elsa Rady, Piet Stockmans and Bodil Manz. All delicacy and grace, these white and blue decorative vessels (dating from 1989 to 1998) appear to be the offspring of clouds and precious jewels. Their perfectly smooth, sometimes translucent surfaces are more fragile than eggshells and more beautiful than a butterfly’s wing.

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Although they are worlds away from Voulkos’ muscular sculptures, a carefully arranged progression of intervening pieces takes you from one to the other--one logical step at a time. Three works by Gertrud and Otto Natzler, who emigrated from Austria to Los Angeles in 1938, use saturated colors and pockmarked crater-glazes to bring the earthy intensity of Voulkos’ work down to tabletop dimensions. Under the striking, sometimes corrosive glazes of the Natzlers’ influential works from the 1950s is always an oddly elegant form that appears to be both ancient and futuristic.

From there, a sequence of vases, bowls and decorative objects by Warren Mackenzie, Karen Karnes, Lucie Rie, Laura Anderson and Alev Ebuzziya Siesbye steadily displaces the sturdiness of utilitarian things with the stylized simplicity of increasingly abstract ornamentation. Walls get thinner in works by Jennifer Lee, Christine Jones, Richard DeVore and John Ward that nevertheless trigger naturalistic associations in their resemblance to seashells. Geert Lap’s monochrome vessels and Roseline Delisle’s striped urns complete the incremental transition by embracing geometric perfectionism, whose sharp angularity and focused control take over for the charming clunkiness and palpable warmth of casually handled clay.

On the left, the exhibition traces an equally consistent trajectory, from the kitschy individualism of Beatrice Wood’s homespun works to the goofy cartoon animation of Kenneth Price’s masterpiece, “Echo” (1997). The surprising link between this seemingly unrelated pair is a slew of Mingei-inspired works, whose glossy glazes give conventional utilitarianism a racy edge.

Wood’s four-piece place setting, double-necked bottle and “Suspicious Wife Plate” (1952) are talismans of domestic tranquillity, quirky souvenirs that tell anecdotal tales and endow simple domestic activities with the glow of the good life. (Installed in a stage-like vitrine directly across from Wood’s endearing works is an early jar by Voulkos, reminding viewers that these two radically different artists once made pieces that still look like they’ve been cut from the same cloth.)

Wood, however, never abandoned the idea that ceramic objects were meant to be used in the home. This is what connects her work to the lovely bottles Shoji Hamada and Bernard Leach made in the 1950s and ‘60s, often decorating their rectangular and curved bodies with loose, calligraphic gestures.

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In 1952-53, the two artists toured England and the United States with poet and critic Soetsu Yanagi, lecturing on Mingei, a modern Japanese folk-art movement that valorized common craftsmanship, everyday convenience, lasting durability and simple elegance. Their influence can be seen in related pieces by Jerome Ackerman, Brother Thomas Bezanson, Albert Green and David Leach, who often pumped up the glossiness of their glazes and polished the rough edges off Mingei’s humble traditionalism to create pieces with sleeker silhouettes, more stark contrasts and increasingly streamlined contours.

Hans Coper’s “Spade-Shaped Vase” (1969) begins to leave functionalism in the dust, without burying it completely. With a surface that recalls sun-bleached bone fragments, this wonderfully strange object casts a profile as odd as that of a hammerhead shark, though hardly as menacing. Similarly, Susan Harnly Peterson’s “Low Bowl (Homage to Opals)” (1998) looks like a hubcap that has spun off a car’s wheel, revealing a shallow interior bathed in a rainbow of shimmering purples, blues and greens.

Edmund De Waal’s slender, 2-foot-tall lidded jars recall towering shoots of bamboo swaying in the wind. Even more animated is Karen Karnes’ eccentric “Vessel” (1994), a hot-blue and aqua object that resembles a domed hut sporting a hot rod’s paint job, its aerodynamic contours suggesting swift movement in any direction.

At the end of this increasingly fantasy-tinged segment, utility all but disappears. Michael Sherrill’s nine bottles shaped like spiky leaves are designed not to pour liquids efficiently, but to strut their autumnal colors in the manner of a peacock. Ralph Bacerra’s “Untitled Animal” (1976) is all swoops, curves and reaching limbs--abstract poetry in motion.

The star of this section is Price’s loopy “Echo,” which looks like an inside-out sculpture. Price made this dazzling pink piece (painted with many coats of auto enamel) by inserting his fist and forearm into a hollow lump of clay and pushing out on its insides, prodding the pliable glob into form. Like a 3-D cartoon that’s taken on a life of its own, this stunning sculpture stops you in your tracks and sets your mind to racing with the freewheeling associations it generates.

A pair of doors leads to four smaller galleries, whose works, from the 1980s and ‘90s, round out the show. The best ones combine the cartoon accessibility of Price’s abstract sculpture with the exquisite refinement of Rady’s, Stockmans’ and Manz’s works, whose vestigial functionalism gives them an aristocratic aura. Standouts include Adrian Saxe’s extraordinary vessels cast from gourds and festooned with jewels; Ron Nagle’s 2-foot-tall teacup ablaze with a gorgeous paint job; Joan Takayama-Ogawa’s triple-decker teapot; Keisuke Mizuno’s teapot that does double duty as a glisteningly realistic still life of slugs eating a juicy pomegranate; and Peter Shire’s postmodern pots, which treat geometric forms as if they were a kid’s set of Legos.

Less successful are the figurative pieces in a gallery dedicated to Funk, a Northern California movement from the late 1960s that has not aged very well. Their creaky surrealism and fidelity to the real world look hokey today, as do many of the smaller pieces whose surfaces are adorned with dryly illustrative imagery.

But these missteps take too little away from the show as a whole to detract from its satisfactions. With the fairly young art of studio ceramics, recent pieces continue to redefine the roles and achievements of earlier ones, and both go a long way in changing the way we see the world.

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“COLOR AND FIRE,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd. Dates: Through Sept. 17. Closed Wednesdays. Admission: Adults, $7; seniors and students, $5; children, $1. Phone: (323) 857-6000.