American Art Pottery the Robert a Ellison Jr Collection
Robert A. Ellison Jr. started collecting ceramics in the 1960s and, in the decades since, helped transform the ways that ceramics are regarded and the histories that inform different traditions throughout the ages. Now 88 years one-time, Ellison has given momentous gifts to the Metropolitan Museum of Fine art, which since 2009 has caused more than 600 works from his drove spanning several centuries. His latest donation of 125 works of modern and contemporary ceramic art figures in "Shapes from Out of Nowhere: Ceramics from the Robert A. Ellison Jr. Drove," an exhibition and accompanying publication devoted to abstract and non-representational ceramics from the early on 20th century to the present. On the telephone with ARTnews, Ellison talked about the transition of his early on interest from painting to ceramics, how he trained his eye, and how it feels to give his many decades' worth of holdings away.
Where are you staying right now?
I'thousand in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, in a converted loft building. Nosotros got this place in 1990, and so thirty-some-odd years agone. My first loft was at Grand and Allen Streets. It was overnice because it had two skylights, but it was a five-flight walkup, which I'm glad I don't have to deal with now. I lived there for 25 years, but nosotros were only renting that. My married woman and I bought this identify, and I call up they'll accept to carry met out of here feet-starting time.
How would you describe your experience of the past year of lockdown?
Well, daily life has been turned upside-downward, on its head. I think of myself as hiding under a rock. I'1000 not getting out very much. I'm 88. I'k not the oldest guy on World, only I'grand not the youngest one either.
What do yous think virtually distinguishes pottery from painting?
I recollect of ceramics as kind of in between painting and sculpture. It can employ some of both, with more than flexible three-dimensional forms. People ask me, "Why ceramics?" And I say, "I don't know." But when I came to New York from Texas in 1962, I came here to be a painter. I painted pictures for 25 years, and I couldn't get traction in the art earth. Only I was always taking breaks from the studio to get out and look in shops for ceramics. I started out non knowing annihilation, then everything I've learned has been cocky-discovered. When I beginning started doing this, in the '60s, there were not many books on gimmicky ceramics, and so I just used my optics to look and attempt to figure out who was interesting in what had been washed. That pretty much guided me forever after. I accept people I talk to, but mainly I don't accept directorate or a curator or an assistant or anything like that. I'g simply one guy doing it all myself, the all-time I can.
How did yous come to learn what yous did? Fifty-fifty though there weren't many books or materials, yous became a ranking good on a lot of the artists whose piece of work you collect.
Well, fortunately, in 1972, there was a landmark exhibition at Princeton on American fine art pottery. Then, 2 years later, at that place was Paul Evans's volume Fine art Pottery of the United States. Those alerted me to what I'd been seeing and collecting, and then the true cat was out of the bag. I'd been collecting American art pottery non knowing what it was. I had been trying to figure out for myself what was interesting and what was non interesting, and information technology took a while. Finally I got rid of the idea of quantity to get into quality.
When you started out, did you know whatever fellow painters at the fourth dimension who shared your interest?
I influenced some people I knew to collect ceramics. I was a very good friend of Milton Resnick's and his wife Pat Passloff for about ii decades, and I introduced Milton to George Ohr'south work when I discovered it. I'd been collecting and thinking I knew everything almost ceramics, but in 1974, I saw my first slice by Ohr in a friend's antique shop and I was just bowled over. It was 1 of his piddling pitchers created from one piece that he pinched for a spout and pinched for a flange and cut a hole for a handle. I was really intrigued by that and started delving into his work. This this whole thing was instigated by my view of Ohr and his work.
What about Ohr's work was and then formative for you?
He's become known, but he was pretty much ignored during his lifetime. I tried to solve the riddles: What was his motivation? How could he have washed what he did down in Biloxi, Mississippi, when he did, at the turn of the century? I tried to discover the origins of his inspiration, but I never could. I looked into ceramics history and fine art history, and the closest matter I constitute was maybe the Russian Constructivist piece of work from the belatedly 1910s. Only that was ii decades subsequently than Ohr.
Do you lot remember what you paid for your first George Ohr work?
I take information technology written downward somewhere, but I think information technology was probably $100 dollars or less.
What would a similar Ohr work be worth now nowadays?
It tin can get upward to $100,000, merely it depends a lot on the whim of a collector. Because his work doesn't follow any detail pattern, it'southward not been codified what a skillful piece of Ohr looks like. So everybody has their ain view on what to pay.
As you afterwards chronicled in your own writings on Ohr, he seemed to have at least a little notoriety in his fourth dimension…
He was notorious, just nobody recognized that he was breaking basis in the history of ceramics. And if you don't take any followers or people who are really involved with your work, what you've washed doesn't go anywhere. But a few years later on he died, Ohr'south work was forgotten. And information technology wasn't until Peter Voulkos's work came out to be similarly and so non-representational, but he did that in the 1950s.
What to you was nigh distinctive about Voulkos when you came to learn near him?
A lot of information technology has to do with the timeline. Voulkos made his breakthrough as an extremely practiced potter on the wheel, throwing pots and mashing them together and making sculpture of it. That's where the idea of form starts to alter, with Voulkos taken as a focus later Ohr wasn't. Past so, Ohr had been expressionless for about 40 years.
How has your approach to collecting evolved over the years?
I'm a serial collector. I find one surface area of ceramics and collect it, sympathize information technology, and put it in context. When I learn all about that, then I move on to another area. In 2009, I gave 300 pieces of American art pottery to the Met. And then I'thou thinking of this electric current evidence and volume as focused on what came after that.
How much or lilliputian do y'all live with works in your drove? Are in that location many around your home?
They accrue on countertops until the countertops can't hold anymore. I don't plan ahead or figure out what to do with them, but fortunately I have connections at the Met who believe in my vision and take been eager to receive gifts of works. And fortunately I tin can afford to do that.
The Met is not a bad place to store your collection.
[Laughs] It's cracking—it's a satisfying ending.
Source: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/robert-ellison-ceramics-collection-1234587248/
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