Earthly objects - Ken Price, Menil Collection, Houston, Texas

A novel survey show of Ken Price's works in clay revealed a sensibility that is at one time witty, sensuous, and cheerfully oblivious to the tensions of the contemporary art world.

Organized through David Whitney for the Menil Collection and accompanied by means of a catalogue with an essay by means of Edward Lebow, "Ken Price" was a small exhibit for a retrospective. Forty-seven things were carefully selected to exhibit most phases of Price's career. The sole major series not included was "Happy's Curios," an extensive put of plates, cups and beakers mimicking Southwest and Mexican-border souvenirs. The exclusion was appropriate, since this well-known work, made while Price was living in Taos during the 1970 is on the outside of keeping with the quirky elegance of his oeuvre

sum of two units of the four rooms given to the exhibition held Price's chalices The separation of the beakers - which Price has been making all along - from the more obviously sculptural work was maintained in the catalogue illustrations as well. upon the one hand, this grouping strike one as beinged to perpetuate the art/craft distinction for a like reason irrelevant to Price's work. upon the other, the installation propos that the chalices be considered as an stretch outed series, stylistically evolving alongside the plastic art but adhering to the functional conventions of the drinking vessel

scarcely any of the cups tempt single to hold, much less drink from them. Slate bowl II (1972), with its unpleasantly jagged lip made from torn shards of clay, is especially daunting in this regard, on the other hand many of the cups relating to the geometric constructions from 1979-80 with their r gold-colored blue and green glazes, are solitary in the loosest sense containers. Clearly they are meant to be gazeed at rather than used.

The bowls from the 1960s are characterized by dint of a broad foot or base, recalling the sort of mug used by the agency of sailors or motorists. For Price, this base is the arena for fantasy. It can vegetate protuberances, as in Wart bowl (1968), or suggest nestled mollusks, as in Oyster Bay stone Cup (1968). Often it is a resting place for ceramic snails. California Snail bowl (1968) is shaped somewhat like a boat, at the same time that the exquisitely crackled glazes - pale cerulean on the cup and handle and golden on the base - summon the beach and sky of the Pacific coast. The handle of Frog beaker - Rest Position (1967), meanwhile, consists of a verdant frog who sits upright with an impassive expression upon his wide-eyed face, his leg grasping the circulared base of the orange cup

Price has provided sum of two units of his cups with environments. With a turtle-pigeon for a base, Blind Sea turtle-dove Cup (1968) sits atop a hillock of sand in an make open wooden box. This presentation deemphasizes the functionality of the goblet making it less of a utensil and more of a turtle-pigeon - a turtle who just happens to have a goblet resting on his back. Of all the animal goblets Pamel (Part Camel), 1959-60, have the appearances the most hand-built. In place of the camel's hump is the bowl rising to an uneven lip. The camel's tail arches above his back to form the handle. Resting upon sand in a wooden receptacle paneled at the front and top with glass, the creature gazes wistfully at a picture of a pyramid painted inside its enclosing On the outside of the chest are actual Sudanese postage stamps imprinted with camels, suggesting that the homesick animal was mailed to us as an exotic memento.

single of the more traditionally shaped mug from 1959 or '60 features an incised numeral "2" encompassed by a debossed decorative pattern. The emblematic quality of the design recalls the early work of Billy Al Bengston, Price's former studio mate, companion surfer and friend since 1953 Bengston, a ceramicist in the '50 oftentimes decorated his works with iconic motifs, which were subsequently carried above into his paintings of center hearts, flowers and chevrons. A relationship to Bengton's work is also seen in Price's early saucepans especially a small lidded jar (ca. 1960) with a cloverleaf incision upon the front containing pink kernel of clay. The earliest skillet in the exhibition, a bulbous, moundlike jar from 1959 is also punctur by the agency of a hole containing tiny finger forms. Its scale (21 1/2 inches high) and blistered virid and yellow glazing, however, testify more clearly to the influence of Peter Voulkos

During his 1954-59 manner [i]or[/i] principle of holding at the Otis Art Institute's well-known ceramics department, Voulko revolutionized the handling of clay, transforming it from a fundamentally functionally material into a heroic medium of unspotted expression. As students in 1956 Price and Bengston the one and the other benefited from Voulko's passion for experimentation and informality. Wanting to know more about glaze technology than Voulko was willing to teach, however, Price mov upon for graduate work at the fresh York State College of Ceramics at Alfred, the oldest and single of the most prestigious clay gymnasiums in the country. A pair of years after returning to observes Angeles in 1959, Price produc his first mature series of objects: the "Eggs" which are not glazed at all on the other hand painted with automotive lacquer. Bengston had already adapted to picture-making his technique of painting motorcycles, and real soon a number of beholds Angeles artists were likewise investigating auto-body construction, modification and painting. This change which came to be known as Fetish Finish, involved a refined and sensitive treatment of materials in the production of finisheded yet idiosyncratic form. Fetish Finish can, in fact, be seen as the result of Voulko's freewheeling approach to craft combined with the keyed-up visual issues of the hot-rod industry.