Pablo Picasso, Fish on a Sheet of Newspaper (Poisson sur feuille de journal), 1957; 12 9/16 x 15 3/8 in. (32 x 39 cm), White earthenware, with clay attached, impressed with newspaper type, painted with oxides, glazed; incised, glazed; Private Collection
A brief history of twentieth-century sculpture, focusing only on materials and techniques, might go something like this: bronze casting, direct carving, assemblage, welded-steel construction, fabrication, earthworks, and installation art. One would be hard-pressed to find a place for clay on the list, except as a preliminary stage in bronze sculpture. Other than in rare cases such as Ken Price, Peter Voulkos, Robert Arneson, and Mary Frank, clay did not figure in mainstream sculptural practice in the last century.
Except that, briefly, it did. “Return to Earth: Ceramic Sculpture of Fontana, Melotti, Miró, Noguchi, and Picasso, 1943–1963,” which opened at the Nasher Sculpture Center in September, explores the two decades in the aftermath of World War II when clay became the medium of choice for a handful of modernist sculptors. It is an absorbing show and a groundbreaking one, managing to find something new to say in the well-documented area of twentieth-century art. Regrettably, it isn’t traveling.
Organized by the Nasher’s Chief Curator Jed Morse, the show consists of some seventy works in clay by the five artists, sculptures ranging from the hand-scaled to the monumental. A truly superb catalog accompanies the show, with essays by several scholars, all of them—curators and graduate students take note—written
