Peter Voulkos (born Panagiotis Harry Voulkos; 29 January 1924 – 16 February 2002) was an American artist of Greek descent. He is known for his
abstract expressionist
Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...
ceramic sculptures, which crossed the traditional divide between ceramic
crafts
A craft or trade is a pastime or an occupation that requires particular skills and knowledge of skilled work. In a historical sense, particularly the Middle Ages and earlier, the term is usually applied to people occupied in small scale prod ...
and
fine art
In European academic traditions, fine art is developed primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from decorative art or applied art, which also has to serve some practical function, such as pottery or most metalwork ...
. He established the ceramics department at the Los Angeles County Art Institute and at UC Berkeley.
Roberta Smith
Roberta Smith (born 1948) is co-chief art critic of ''The New York Times'' and a lecturer on contemporary art. She is the first woman to hold that position.
Early life
Born in 1948 in New York City and raised in Lawrence, Kansas. Smith studied a ...
(February 21, 2002).
Peter Voulkos, 78, A Master of Expressive Ceramics, Dies
. ''New York Times''. Retrieved 2017-01-02.
Biography
Early life
Peter Voulkos was born the third of five children to
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
immigrant parents, Aristovoulos I. Voulkopoulos, anglicized and shortened to Harry (Aris) John Voulkos and Effrosyni (Efrosine) Peter Voulalas.
After high school, he worked as a molder's apprentice at a ship's foundry in Portland. In 1943, Peter Voulkos was drafted into the United States Army during the Second World War, serving as an airplane gunner in the Pacific.
[John Wildermuth]
Peter Voulkos, Oakland sculptor / 'He was the best -- he was the king,' and a revolutionary, too
''Sfgate.com'', 19 February 2002
Ceramics' specialization
Voulkos studied painting and printmaking at Montana State College, in Bozeman (now
Montana State University
Montana State University (MSU) is a Public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Bozeman, Montana. It is the state's largest university. MSU offers baccalaureate degrees in 60 fields, master's degrees in 6 ...
), where he was introduced to ceramics
(
Frances Senska
Frances Maude Senska (March 9, 1914 – December 25, 2009) was an art professor and artist specializing in ceramics who taught at Montana State University – Bozeman from 1946 to 1973. She was known as the "grandmother of ceramics in Montana". Du ...
, who established the ceramics arts program, was his teacher).
Ceramics quickly became a passion. His 25 pounds of clay allowed by semester by the school was not enough, so he managed to spot a source of quality clay from the tires of the trucks that would stop by the restaurant where he worked part-time.
He earned his
MFA in ceramics from
California College of the Arts and Crafts, in Oakland. Afterwards, he returned to Bozeman, and began his career in a pottery business with classmate
Rudy Autio
Rudy or Rudi is a masculine given name, sometimes short for Rudolf, Rudolph, Rawad, Rudra, Ruairidh, or variations thereof, a nickname and a surname which may refer to:
People Given name or nickname
*Rudolf Rudy Andeweg (born 1952), Dutch polit ...
, producing functional dinnerware.
In 1951 Voulkos and Autio became the first resident artists at the
Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts
The Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts (also known as "The Bray") is a public, nonprofit, educational institution located 3 miles from downtown Helena, Montana, United States.
It was founded on the site of the former Western Clay Manufa ...
, in
Helena, Montana
Helena (; ) is the capital city of Montana, United States, and the county seat of Lewis and Clark County.
Helena was founded as a gold camp during the Montana gold rush, and established on October 30, 1864. Due to the gold rush, Helena would ...
. It is from his time as Resident Director (1951-1954) that the lineage of his mature work, later in full bloom during his tenure at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, California, can be traced.
[Hartman, Robert; Kasten, Karl; Melchert, James; Wall, Brian (2002).]
In Memoriam: Peter Voulkos
. University of California, Berkeley.
In 1953, Voulkos was invited to teach a summer session ceramics course at
Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College was a private liberal arts college in Black Mountain, North Carolina. It was founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, and several others. The college was ideologically organized around John Dewey's educational ...
in
Asheville, North Carolina
Asheville ( ) is a city in, and the county seat of, Buncombe County, North Carolina. Located at the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, it is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and the state's 11th-most populous cit ...
.
After the summer at Black Mountain, he changed his approach to creating ceramics. The artist eschewed his traditional training and instead of creating smooth, well-thrown glazed vessels he started to work gesturally with raw clay, frequently marring his work with gashes and punctures.
In 1954, after founding the art ceramics department at the
Otis College of Art and Design
Otis College of Art and Design is a private art and design school in Los Angeles, California. Established in 1918, it was the city's first independent professional school of art. The main campus is located in the former IBM Aerospace headquarte ...
, called the Los Angeles County Art Institute, his work rapidly became abstract and sculptural.
In 1959, he presented for the first time his heavy ceramics during the exhibition at the Landau Gallery in Los Angeles. This created a seismic reaction in the ceramics world, both for the grotesquerie of the sculptures' shapes and the genius marriage of arts and craft, and accelerated his transfer to UC Berkeley.
UC Berkeley's ceramics department
He moved to the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, in 1959, where he also founded the ceramics program, which grew into the Department of Design.
[ Savitt, Scott (February 27, 2002).]
Peter Voulkos, Ceramics artist
. The ''Berkeleyan'' online. Office of Public Affairs, University of California, Berkeley. In the early 1960s, he set up a bronze foundry off-campus, anticipating the metal cast
Wurster Hall, and started exhibiting his work at NY's
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
.
He became a full professor there in 1967,
and continued to teach until 1985.
[Hartman, Robert; Kasten, Karl; Melchert, James; Wall, Brian (2002).]
In Memoriam: Peter Voulkos
. University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 2017-10-02. Among his students were many ceramic artists who became well known in their own right.
At a New York auction in 2001, a 1986 sculpture by Peter Voulkos was sold $72,625 to a European museum.
He died of a heart attack on February 16, 2002,
after conducting a college ceramics workshop at
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green State University (BGSU) is a public research university in Bowling Green, Ohio. The main academic and residential campus is south of Toledo, Ohio. The university has nationally recognized programs and research facilities in the ...
,
Ohio
Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...
, demonstrating his skill to a live audience.
Work
Description
While his early work was fired in electric and gas kilns, later in his career he primarily fired in the
anagama
The ''anagama'' kiln (Japanese Kanji: 穴窯/ Hiragana: あながま) is an ancient type of pottery kiln brought to Japan from China via Korea in the 5th century. It is a version of the climbing dragon kiln of south China, whose further devel ...
kiln of Peter Callas, who had helped to introduce Japanese wood-firing aesthetics in the United States. Peter Voulkos is also among those who raised ceramics to the non-utilitarian, aesthetic sphere. While setting up the ceramics department at UC Berkeley, his students were authorized to make a teapot, "only if it didn't work". Voulkos started this new trend while in Los Angeles in the 1950s, saying, "there was a certain energy around L.A. at the time". He is most commonly identified as an Abstract Expressionist ceramist.
Voulkos's sculptures are known for their visual weight, their freely-formed construction, and their aggressive and energetic decoration. During shaping, he would vigorously tear, pound, and gouge their surfaces. At some points in his career, he cast sculptures in bronze; and in early periods his ceramic works were glazed or painted and/or finished with painted brushstrokes.
Peter Voulkos is also memorable for the live ceramics-sculpting sessions he would lead in front of his students, demonstrating his intense and even unforgiving manner of working with the material, while simultaneously showcasing his refined mastery of the nuances of the craft.
His creativity quest sometimes led to the use of commercial dough-mixing machines to mix the clay, and the development of a prototype for an electric potter's wheel.
In 1979 he was introduced to the use of wood firing in
anagama kiln
The ''anagama'' kiln (Japanese Kanji: 穴窯/ Hiragana: あながま) is an ancient type of pottery kiln brought to Japan from China via Korea in the 5th century. It is a version of the climbing dragon kiln of south China, whose further dev ...
s by Peter Callas, who became a close collaborator of his for the next 23 years. Most of Voulkos's late work was wood-fired in Callas's ''anagama'', which was located at first in
Piermont, New York
Piermont is a village incorporated in 1847 in Rockland County, New York, United States. Piermont is in the town of Orangetown, located north of the hamlet of Palisades, east of Sparkill, and south of Grand View-on-Hudson, on the west bank of th ...
, and later, in
Belvidere, New Jersey
Belvidere is a town in Warren County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2010 U.S. census, the town's population was 2,681,[Norton Simon Museum
The Norton Simon Museum is an art museum located in Pasadena, California, United States. It was previously known as the Pasadena Art Institute and the Pasadena Art Museum and displays numerous sculptures on its grounds.
Overview
The Norton Sim ...]
*''Hall of justice'', 1971, bronze
*''Mr. Ishi'', 1970, bronze
*''Untitled (Stack)'', 1980, stoneware, exhibited at the
Oakland Museum of California
The Oakland Museum of California or OMCA (formerly the Oakland Museum) is an interdisciplinary museum dedicated to the art, history, and natural science of California, located adjacent to Oak Street, 10th Street, and 11th Street in Oakland, Cal ...
Public collections
Awards
*1959: Rodin Museum Prize
*
1984: Guggenheim Fellowship
*1997: Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement from the
College Art Association
The College Art Association of America (CAA) is the principal organization in the United States for professionals in the visual arts, from students to art historians to emeritus faculty. Founded in 1911, it "promotes these arts and their underst ...
Personal life
Voulkos is survived by his first wife, Margaret Cone, and their daughter, Pier, a polymer clay artist;
[Pier Voulkos]
". Museum of Arts and Design
The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), based in Manhattan, New York City, collects, displays, and interprets objects that document contemporary and historic innovation in craft, art, and design. In its exhibitions and educational programs, the mus ...
. Retrieved 2017-01-02. his wife, Ann, and their son, Aris; and his brother and two sisters.
In the early 1980s, Peter Voulkos went to rehab to deal with alcohol and cocaine addiction.
See also
*
American craft
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
*
Ceramics (art)
Ceramic art is art made from ceramic materials, including clay. It may take forms including artistic pottery, including tableware, tiles, figurines and other sculpture. As one of the plastic arts, ceramic art is one of the visual arts. Whi ...
*
Studio pottery
Studio pottery is pottery made by professional and amateur artists or artisans working alone or in small groups, making unique items or short runs. Typically, all stages of manufacture are carried out by the artists themselves.Emmanuel Cooper, ...
*
Paul Soldner
Paul may refer to:
*Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name)
*Paul (surname), a list of people
People
Christianity
* Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Chri ...
References
Further reading
* Rhodes, Daniel (1959). ''Stoneware and Porcelain: The Art of High-Fired Pottery''. Philadelphia: Chilton Book Company, Pennsylvania, 1959.
* Coplans, John (1966). ''Abstract Expressionist Ceramics'' (exhibition catalogue). The University of California, Irvine, 1966.
* Read, Herbert (1964). ''A Concise History of Modern Sculpture''. New York: Oxford University Press, New York.
* Beard, Geoffrey (1969). ''Modern Ceramics'' London: Studio Vista, United Kingdom, 1969.
* Fischer, Hal (November 1978). "The Art of Peter Voulkos", ''Artforum'', pp. 41–47.
* Slivka, Rose (1978). ''Peter Voulkos: A Dialogue with Clay''. New York: New York Graphic Society in association with American Crafts Council.
*San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1978). ''Peter Voulkos: A Retrospective 1948-1978''. San Francisco, California.
* Preaud, Tamara and Serge Gauthier (1982). ''Ceramics of the 20th Century''. New York: Rizzoli International.
* MacNaughton, Mary et al. (1994). ''Revolution in Clay: The Marer Collection of Contemporary Ceramics''. Scripps College, Claremont, California, in association with The University of Washington, Seattle.
* Slivka, Rose and Karen Tsujimoto (1995). ''The Art of Peter Voulkos''. Kodansha International in collaboration with the Oakland Museum, Oakland, California.
* Danto, Arthur Coleman and Janet Koplos (1999). ''Choice from America: Modern American Ceramics''. 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands: Het Kruithuis, Museum of Contemporary Art. pp. 9–12, 16-9, 104-7, 133.
* ''The American Art Book'' (1999). London: Phaidon Press Limited. p. 467.
* Cooper, Emmanuel (2000). ''Ten Thousand Years of Pottery''. 4th ed. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
* Faberman, Hilarie, et al. (2004).''Picasso to Thiebaud: Modern and Contemporary Art from the Collections of Stanford University Alumni and Friends''. Palo Alto, California: Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University.
*
External links
Voulkos & Co. web siteArtist's page at Frank Lloyd GalleryChronology on Artnet.com*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Voulkos, Peter
1924 births
2002 deaths
20th-century ceramists
21st-century ceramists
20th-century American sculptors
20th-century American male artists
21st-century American sculptors
21st-century American male artists
American potters
American ceramists
Sculptors from California
Modern sculptors
American people of Greek descent
People from Bozeman, Montana
California College of the Arts alumni
Artists from the San Francisco Bay Area
Otis College of Art and Design faculty
Artists from Montana
Montana State University alumni
American male sculptors
Black Mountain College faculty
United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II
United States Army Air Forces soldiers