Collection. -- The folded gesture. Elizabeth Essner -- Off balance, on form / Glenn Adamson -- Shapes from out of nowhere / Robert A. Ellison Jr. -- Artist biographies / Elizabeth Essner -- Collection. -- Taking shape -- Budding variations -- Tangles, limbs -- Architectural moves -- Reaching up -- Fluidity, impulse -- Primal clay -- Refined, ruinous -- Function / non-function -- The folded gesture.
Summary:
An overview of 20th-century non-representational ceramics from the earliest years of the modernist revolution to the postwar period through to the present, Shapes From Outta Nowhere features over 150 works from New York City-based collector Robert Ellison. It explores the featured artists' rejection of symmetrical, utilitarian forms in clay in favor of the sculptural and abstract, and challenges the boundaries between function, non-function, design, drawing, painting, sculpture and architecture. Built over a period of 40 years, this collection reflects the personal and discerning eye of a collector focused on the exploration of shape and form. Ellison's introduction to abstraction in clay was the work of George E. Ohr, whose late 19th-century creations represent the first shift in a challenge to form itself. Ohr was the catalyst for this new direction in clay, and his vision foreshadows 20th-century postwar experimentation in fine art. The book showcases the sculptures by Ohr along with artists from the second half of the 20th century to the present, including works by Axel Salto, Ken Price, and Peter Voulkos, the progenitor of the American studio movement.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.