Author Description

"Responding to a variety of personal impulses and historical circumstances, Lucio Fontana, Fausto Melotti, Joan Miró, Isamu Noguchi, and Pablo Picasso produced significant bodies of work in fired clay that engaged the material in novel, inventive, even radical ways, and often challenged the boundaries between sculpture and ceramics. The Nasher’s exhibition and accompanying catalogue offers an in-depth look at some 70 ceramic works, ranging in scale from the intimate to the monumental. In most cases, these objects have received scant attention in comparison to these artists’ work in other media, particularly in the United States. The catalogue is richly illustrated, with essays presenting new scholarship by current and former Nasher Sculpture Center staff. Marin Sullivan, Henry Moore Foundation Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Leeds and a former Nasher Sculpture Center Curatorial Fellow who assisted with the exhibition in its incipient stages, provides an insightful essay on the ceramic work of Fontana and Melotti within the context of Italy’s transition from dictatorship to modern democracy. Catherine Craft, the Nasher’s Adjunct Assistant Curator for Research and Exhibitions, examines Noguchi’s ceramic works within the complex personal and historical circumstances surrounding the Japanese-American artist’s engagement with Japan after the war. Picasso’s ceramics and their role in the artist’s pursuit of a more seamless integration of art and life receive fresh consideration from Dakin Hart, the former Assistant Director at the Nasher who is now Senior Curator at The Noguchi Museum in New York. Finally, Jed Morse, curator of Return to Earth and Chief Curator at the Nasher Sculpture Center, focuses on Miró’s collaboration with the ceramist family the Artigases as intimately linked to his work in sculpture." -- Publisher's description