Peter Voulkos
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Peter Voulkos
The exhibition of recent stoneware vessels by Peter Voulkos at Frank Lloyd
Gallery featured the sort of work on which the artist established reputation in
the 1950s. The work was greeted with stunned amazement. However now it is too,
but it's amazement of a different order -- the kind that comes from being in the
presence of effortless artistic mastery. These astonishing vessels are truly amazing.
Every ceramic artist knows that what goes into a kiln looks very different from
what comes out, and although what comes out can be controlled to varying
degrees, it's never certain. Uncertainty feels actively courted in Voulkos'
vessels, and this embrace of chance gives them a surprisingly contradictory
sense of ease. Critical to the emergence of a significant art scene in Los
Angeles in the second half of the 1950s, the 75-year-old artist has lived in
Northern California since 1959 and this was his only second solo show in an L.A
gallery in 30 years. ”These days, L.A. is recognized as a center for the
production of contemporary art. But in the 1950s, the scene was slim -- few
galleries and fewer museums. Despite the obscurity, a handful of solitary and
determined artists broke ground here, stretching the inflexible definitions of
what constitutes painting, sculpture and other media. Among these avant-gardists
was Peter Voulkos.” In 1954, Voulkos was hired as chairman of the fledgling
ceramics department at the L.A. County Art Institute, now Otis College of Art
and Design, and during the five years that followed, he led what came to be
known as the "Clay Revolution." Students like John Mason, Paul Soldner,
Ken Price and Billy Al Bengston, all of whom went on to become respected
artists, were among his foot soldiers in the battle to free clay from its
handicraft associations. By the late 1950s, Voulkos had established an
international reputation for his muscular fired-clay sculptures, which melded
Zen attitudes toward chance with the emotional fervor of Abstract Expressionist
painting. Some 20 works -- including five "Stacks" (4-foot-tall
sculptures) as well as giant slashed-and-gouged plates and works on paper --
recently went on view at the Frank Lloyd Gallery. This non single show is his
first at a Los Angeles gallery in 13 years, although a survey of his work was
seen at the Newport Harbor Art Museum (presently carries a different name) in
1995. Voulkos, 75, has lived in Oakland since 1959, “having left after a
fallout with the then-director of...
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