Art and Life, viewed from the Perspective of Clay:

Works of Fine Art by seven Korean Ceramists, bestriding Fine Art and Craft.

by Kai Hong
[Copyright by Kai Hong, 2012]

[1]Introductory Preamble:

PRISM at Kimhaes Clayarch Museum is a major exhibition by any standard, an

ambitious undertaking with a weighty and, I might say, timely theme of Art, Man and Life.
It is well planned and faultlessly executed, occupying the entire three floors of this beautiful
museum in the city of Kimhae, a city perhaps not well known, dwarfed by the huge city of
Busan next door, but is itself economically prosperous and culturally vibrant. Park Sehyeon,
the Curator in charge of this exhibition states the purpose of this exhibition in the following
way: This exhibition showcases art by seven leading masters in Korean Ceramic world, each
of whom has been asked to come up with his or her own artistic interpretation of art and
human value, using clay. One might wonder if Ceramicists are better suited to dwell on
this theme than artists working in other media, and if so, why. But, then, she does provide a
ready answer. As Ceramists, they view people and values from their distinctive perspectives
through clay, symbolic of nature.

So, then, PRISM is an exhibition about the singularly interesting and improbable
phenomenon of Human Life, evolved in and emerged from Nature, establishing its own
unique (human) way of interfacing with Nature and also of doing art as an essential aspect
of his or her being human, having also to do, at the same time, with some intrinsic spiritual
value of being human. Clay which is symbolic of nature is THEN the key word in any
exegetical efforts at coming to some sort of understanding with the kinds of Ceramic Art
Works shown in this exhibition. Why this emphasis on the materiality of Clay? Perhaps,
there is an unspoken but implicitly assumed more fundamental premise under which this
entire show has been planned and organized? Something like: alienation of human life from
nature? And also perhaps that alienation had the effects of warping the very intrinsic human-
worth (value) as such, latent in the very Human Nature as such? Art, in its most genuine
sense of the term, in this line of thinking, has something very important to do with that
human-worth (value). Yet, Contemporary Arts, being done all over the world today
(whether in the names of avant-garde, modernist, post-modernist, conceptual,
technological, and/or media- art), dont seem to have much to do with those human values.
HENCE, this ambitious show, inviting only Ceramic Artists, because their material is CLAY,
symbolic of nature, to rediscover some LOST connections with MANS INTRINSIC WORTH
(VALUE) in his LIFE in Nature along with other entities (or beings) in Nature, creating a
Life-World in which meaningful encounters with other beings (whether inanimate or
animate) occur and discover values in everyday life-processes in a variety of cultural
configurations.

The Great Russian Poet, Boris Pasternak had this to say about LIFE: Life itself, the gift
of life, the phenomenon of life is so breathtakingly serious . . . . Indeed, yes indeed, life,
any life is a deadly serious business, a SACRED matter, in fact, nothing less. At this very
minute, how many people, perhaps in millions in all over the world, are desperately clinging
to life in hospital bed suffering from excruciating pain? So painful that it might be better to
stop clinging to life, as only death will free him from pain. But it is actually simple truth . . .
that a man is born to live. Yes, the very possibility of death always is with a man as soon as he
is born; still, it is mans instinct, in his nature, to resist death and crave for life with
unquenchable passion. No one dies willingly, even the ones who commit suicides. Yes, he
[the one who committed suicide] did will his own death, but he didnt embrace death with
pleasure; one dies, even in a suicide, one dies with resignation. In this most moving
passion for life, exhibited by all life-forms, be it a human or an animal or a plant or a lowly
worm; we see something that is awesomely profound and sacred it is a silently latent
potential force inscribed in human nature and it has no other name than that of human
spirit.

In one of his last books, not long before his actual death, the Great Philosopher,
Immanuel Kant had written thus about Art, Human Life (Value) and Human Spirituality:

Art is an expression of the very basic human aspiration towards a perfect community and it
[this aspiration] is the ground for the possibility of human spirituality. (#1)

How to interpret this unexpected musing by a very old man? This utterance is unexpected,
coming from the author of the Critiques of Pure Reason, Practical Reason and of Judgment,
penned at his intellectual peak. Lucien Goldmann gave it a left-Hegelian interpretation in his
marvelous philosophical biography of Kant. I, for one, believe that it can be given an entirely
different interpretation by referencing some philosophical insights from the Ancient
tradition of East Asian Thinking. Indeed, an entire intellectual architectonics, --no less
comprehensive than Kants owncan be built, if one knows how to come up with the most
compelling story-telling from within an alternative discursive praxis. The notion of a
perfect community in above quotation can refer to something greater than a single
individual man; it may be his extended family, a society of which he is a member, a nation of
which he is a citizen, or the entire biosphere in which all living beings have come to share the
same historical destiny, thus forming a community, willy-nilly. Or, it could be Nature,
including all that exist in it, including inanimate objects like stones, rocks, and so forth. (In
fact, the left Hegelian-Marxists like Lukacs and Goldmann calls it [perfect community]
simply as TOTALITY.)

A being is a spiritual being when it has a longing [born, hard-wired with this
propensity as a part of his biological make-up, as his spiritual make-up] for a connection
with something larger, greater; it is the very necessity for a man to belong to something
larger i.e., a group, perhaps, or a society, or some such other things. No man simply is
sufficient onto himself. The sense of connectedness to some other, whether it is another
human being, an organization of some sort, an animal, a botanical plant or just some
inanimate object like a singularly-shaped Rocky-formation (as some people from a primitive
culture might consider SACRED and hence as an object of worship). Doing-Art is a Social
Act as any Linguistic Act is a species of Social Act. (In fact, Oxford Ordinary Language
Philosophy, championed by John Austin at Oxford, is all about the conventionality of
language, taking to heart the famous philosophical thesis of Ludwig Wittgenstein at
Cambridge namely, the Impossibility of Private Language. They developed Speech Act
Theories under the fundamental premise that act of speech in a language is a Social Act and
as such a speech, in order to be coherent and to be understood by his interlocutor, his (social)
act of speaking has to abide by a set of rules, implicitly agreed-upon by that language
community.

However, Western (European) historical evolution roughly at the time of Mid-19th

Century arrived at the historically critical era of radical reconfiguring of their ways of life in
all the manifold and complex aspects, triggered by what is known as Industrial Revolution.
The fundamental modes of human existence went through radical change for one, the
peasantry was uprooted from land, their nature-bound existence and then joined the huge
ranks of migrants into bleak urban ghettos of workers dormitories and the ubiquitous row
houses, flimsily built cell-like structures. These armies of industrial
laborers and coal miners, together with their families, lost their REAL connectedness with
NATURE. As wage earners, they were completely dependent upon their employers for their
very livelihood, their very survival. As wage earners, they were completely dependent upon
their employers for their very livelihood, their very survival. As wage earners, they were
completely dependent upon their employers for their very livelihood, their very survival.
The massive number of industrial laborers in such a setting had to figure out new patterns
and social mores of mutual interaction amongst one another, as fellow laborers (and hence
also as competitors for the same jobs, and also as employed and employers. In short, the
traditional ways of interacting with one another, with the community, and with the natural
environment, all of them had to go through profound changes.

If doing-art is like speaking a language a social act, then it can be properly done only
with the assumption that they, the artist who is doing-art as well as the viewers, share the
same or at least a similar Social Convention of Doing-Art or Art-ing. The traditional Social
Conventions pertaining to the Political, Economic and Social Life had to undergo a much
more rapid, brutal and at times chaotic changes, since they were much more immediately
concerned with the new modes of human survival in an industrial/urban environment,
alienated from nature in toto. Creative artists, who are usually more sensitively attuned with
the wind of historical change began to feel, intuitively as it were, that somehow they couldnt
very well go on with the traditional ways of doing-art; the idioms from the traditional
convention of art no longer seemed to serve their expressive purposes in their Art-ing
(doing-art). As Stanley Cavell pointed out,
in one of his many masterly opuses, somewhere around the middle of the 19th Century, the
composers, painters and writers, all began to feel such creative impotence in the face of the
break-down of their inherited convention of doing-art in their respective media. This is the
crisis of modernity in the arts in modern times. The history of Western modern art,
subsequent to this crisis is nothing other than variously different clever attempts to respond
to this crisis of convention as the result of the predicament (or paradox) of modernity. This
predicament of (Western) modernity has not yet solved, and this is the reason why all the
fashionable talks of Post-Modernism is vacuous, bordering on intellectual fraudulence. (In
this connection, Cavells characterization of the avant-garde or post-modern or post-
structural discourses in the guise of new philosophy as on the same piece of cloth as the
posturing art-school types vapid avant-garde style in his more recent book, A PITCH OF
PHILOSOPHY.(#2)

[2]
Demand for a New Perspective through Clay
for the purpose of deconstructing the dominant contemporary art-
discourses:

Alright, then, now about this that Clay is symbolic of nature as stated by the organizers
of this particular exhibition of 7 Korean Ceramic Artists. We need to ask: why do we need
this particular perspective (through clay) now? And then another question: how did these
artists understand by that term, perspective of through clay and how do their individual
works exemplify their unique individual perspectives through clay in this exhibition?

So, let us go back to the very concept of a perspective through clay. As a stand-in for
Nature, Clay is indeed just the right thing, as it is one of the key elements in any soil
composition within which all kinds of life forms are sprouted and their nourishments are
found. In thinking about clay, were led to take note of the fact, in modern urban cities, for
example in a city like Seoul, it is not easy to discover dirt road, left unpaved. This fact alone
bears witness to the complete alienation of modern men and women from nature, all sorts of
technological edifices and gadgets intervening and preventing direct interfacing of man with
nature tout court or natural elements. (Well, think of another horrible possibility looming in
the near future, when even human to human direct interaction will also be prevented,
allowing only indirect contact always through a screen window on a handy smart phone or
some other such gadgets without which one cannot function as a social-human being.)
What is happening and what are still portended for the near future are this inexorable trend
towards a time when no kind of direct encounter between natural entities in nature (or in the
universe) without any intervening technological screenings. When such a future arrives,
then it will mark the final triumph of the Ideology of Technology. In that technologically
controlled world, every entity in the universe, whether it is animate or inanimate, animal life
or plant life, will merely be an arithmetical number in a mathematical statistic, as an object
(a raw material) in a standing-reserve for manipulation and exploitation for some huge
system of industrial production. No kind of encounter between two unique entities will
take place in such a world, as only such encounters as a event strictly within a predetermined
logical calculus provided by the Productionist Metaphysics, which is in fact nothing other
than a philosophical apologetics for Productionist [Capitalist] Ideology.

Martin Heidegger brooded over this possibility of Technology taking over the entire
universe, robbing each entity of its uniqueness and thus making each an abstract number or
a dot in a computer screen as objects (raw material) in standing-reserve for industrial-
productionist manipulation and then also for market-force manipulation (to whom
marketing web is thrown to hook within the controlled and limited choices. Heidegger saw
this domineering impulse to objectify every entity in universe, human species being
exception in the Western Ideology of Technology. Modern Civilization is powered and
organized by the systems of Technology enthralled in the Productionist Metaphysics in
Heideggers words.

However, things werent always this way even in the Western Hemisphere. Ancient
Greeks, according to Heidegger didnt relate to entities in nature as objects to his subjective
gaze and manipulation. Instead, the Ancient Greeks were able to LET ENTITIES BE,
patiently waiting for them to reveal themselves for what theyre as unique existence in
Nature. Mysterious? Not really. Let me explain:

Of all the zillions of pebble stones on a lovely beach, say on PEBBLE BEACH in
Monterray, California about two hours drive down south from the city of San Francisco,
there are no two pebble stones that are exactly the same. This is just the way of nature in this
universe. Only mass-produced industrial products can be THE SAME, copies of one another
so to speak, mainly because industrial products are stamped out on an Assembly Line in a
factory. If you think about it, it is a mind-boggling fact THAT there are no two same things in
Nature. One can appreciate this fact of Nature when we observe how an expert Chef at a
Japanese Sasahimi Restaurant works. With each fish of the same kind, whether it is Salmon
or a Trout, the Chef studies each fish very carefully for its very unique texture, grain of the
skin, hardness, regularity or irregularities of its bone structure and all the other variables
that go together to make up its very singularity as a unique existence. Only then can he
slice the fish along the grainy lines visible only to his trained eyes and recognizable to the
delicate poking touches of his super-sensitive fingers. The pieces of sliced Shashim then
becomes a work of art in the delicate hands of the Chef, only because he allowed his fish to
reveal itself and sliced and carved only what the fish was willing to yield to the sensitive
touches of his hands and delicate handling of his Sashimi knife, fully respecting the fish for
its being unique at all times.

Somewhat similar affair takes place between a sculptor and his stone. Theres a saying
that when the artist (sculptor) notices a stone among so many others, the stone in this
serendipitous encounter comes to him so to speak, unveiling its mode of existence, revealing
its uniquely latent potentialities secretly held, locked inside itself. This, then, is THE
DIFFERENCE between an artistically creative production AND technologically-processed
manufacturing production. For the former kind of creation, there had to be, prior to the
creative act, a genuine encounter between two unique entities, revealing one anothers mode
of existence, respecting one anothers very uniqueness. The stone sculptor has to first
recognize (notice) the hidden and invisible potentialities in that particular stone which called
his attention, and then too his sensitiveness, sensibility and skills have to match the task of
fully bringing out the latent potentialities locked inside this stone. It requires a happy
meeting between the two, this sculptor and that stone, on the basis of mutual respect for
each others unique being as being-themselves. This is exactly what happens when someone
notices something. Consider a sentence: A noticed that B. Now, try to passivize this sentence
and then you will get: A was struck by the fact that B. In other words, B voluntarily came to
A in his perceptual experience of noticing, in an act of self-revelation, as it were.

In conclusion, the artistic mode of perception presupposes an encounter between two

entities, whether between a Sashimi Chef and his Fish, or between a stone sculptor and his
Stone, in a mutually-non-objectifying relationship. For the Non-Objectifying nature of
encounter between entities in a genuine Artistic Perception and Creation, Heidegger looked
to (genuine) Artistic mode of perception and creation AS a possible antidote to addictive
power-mongering of Technological mode of interaction between and amongst entities in
nature. Art was for Heidegger the only potential salvation from the pervasive Nihilism
infecting the entire fabric of the so-called modern consumer culture, corrupting everything,
debasing everything, bringing down any trace of nobility staying with some entity down to
the status of homogenized nobody or everybody, dumbed-down with addictive fast food and
fast culture of standardized mass production and consumption.

Clayarch Museums call for the artists Perspectives through Clay, is this not the just
what Martin Heidegger wanted to see in artistic mode of interacting? Well, then, Just call the
perspectives through clay as the Artistic Mode of Perception and Creation or Production as
opposed to Technological Mode of Perception and Production. And, most importantly, what
is prior to all of them is to let each entity, including man himself, just be, --i.e, to let itself be
the singular being that it is. The moral of all this is that the fact of difference pervades the
universe (nature) before any sort of unity as a concept can be thought of.

[3]
Clayarch Ceramists Perspectives Through Clay in PRISM Exhibition

Ceramics or Pottery is usually thought of as species of Craft in contradistinction to Fine

Art (or Pure Art). In contemporary Korean Society, Crafts are not as highly valued as Pure
Arts, if the entrance requirement of much higher scores for Pure Arts Majors than Cafts
majors for Korean Art Colleges are any objective indications. Thus, Koreans call Crafts as
Applied Arts, basically utilitarian, devoid of much intellectual contents. Yet, in this particular
exhibition, it is the Ceramic Artists Considering such a warped social valuation preponderant
in contemporary Korean society in general and in art world in particular, it perhaps a radical,
if not quite revolutionary, efforts on the part of Clayarch Museum to ask Ceramic Artists only
to address such an intellectually weighty and artistically provocative theme as the one under
review in this paper. They, the seven Korean Ceramists were told: Get out of the Craftsmans
Frame of Thinking and Mode of Expression and create works of Ceramics As Pure Arts (and
not as a Craft) on the given theme about the relationship between Man, Art and Nature, all
the time thinking about it through the perspectives of clay. Surely, the most important
thing would be for each participating Ceramist to what this perspective through clay would
be for him or for her. How that perspective through clay would somehow help him or her to
have a very interesting new ways of thinking about Art, about Man, and about Nature in our
present time, in our present historical epoch. The works of Pure-Ceramic Art exhibited at
this show must tell by the very example of their works what the Ceramic Artists individual-
unique perspective through clay were underpinning premise of their mode of working.

Im afraid I could discern any new interesting perspectives through clay exemplified in
any of the works on display in this ambitiously planned major exhibition. Instead, what I
see is doing the same stuff which can be seen in any contemporary Art Fairs or
Contemporary Art Shows at any of the Galleries of Contemporary Art. To be more concrete,
many participating Ceramists were draw to what is most fashionable in Global Art Scenes
namely, installation art. Just as most of the show in the name of installation art, even by the
internationally renowned, are empty gestures of intellectually fraudulent conceptual content,
contrary to their claim of theirs being conceptual art. Yes, I do see what kind of careful
workmanship went into creating a space of well-crafted objects on a of huge square dais
circular formation and on a still higher dais in the center are 4 man-size meera-like ceramic
works lying perpendicular to one another head to head, creating a cross at the very center.
One can see that it could be a sacred burial ground for ceremonial purposes for an entire
nation or a society. The wall, in a rectangular matrix of rectangular-shaped panels in perfect
geometric arrangement seem, at first glance, so many video flat video screens, all designed to
heighten certain sense of sacred aura for the entire room. I do think it is beautifully arranged,
and frankly one of the best installations Ive been present at. One can only marvel at this
artists pain-staking workmanship, creating so many tiny pieces in clay and then baking
them in kilns, then still another set of so many larger pieces, and then more, and so forth.
One can only bow his head in this artists sheer dedication. Having said that, what is this
artists unique perspective through clay? I want to ask. Then, too, theres a further problem.

Alright, so, this would be an internationally recognizable installation-piece, let us

assume. It would then mean that this artist is a winning player in the game of doing-art in
the contemporary global art world. But, if what goes by the name of art in that global art
world and global art markets is nothing other than empty gestures or mere posturing of
passive nihilism?

Then, too, theres another problem with this kind of installation. A sacred space cannot
be created just for the duration of a show at a museum, an institution born within a capitalist
political-economic system by a newly wealthy bourgeois class to play the game of high
culture. A sacred space is site-specific, it cannot be a traveling show; people have to go to this
or that specific site as a pilgrim, so to speak, to get into the special mood and aura of the
sacred space. In fact, this is the sore point with Western Art Worlds Stars like Dan Flavin
and his cohorts who claim to create site-specific art shows. Museum Spaces are all the same;
they are just spaces for temporary displays of so-called art works for culturally-pretentious
social climbers to come en masse and gawk and be gone. In such exhibition spaces, no
genuine encounter between the works and the viewers can take place, mutually letting one
another be in the mode of mutual self-revelation we referred to above in Section 2.

Then, there are what can only be called abstract sculpture pieces except that they are not
stone or metal sculptures but ceramic pieces. Again, I see no thought had gone into the
artistic mode of mutual self-revelation, the only kind of mutual encounter among entities
that is not just another technological mode of being in the world, inviting only mutually
exploitative encounter, called for in Productionist encounters of modern civilization.

Yes, by the standard of fashionable global art scenes, new fashions constantly
emanating from the international centers such as Paris, New York and London; the seven
Ceramic Artists have done well. But, so what? Youve kind of seen them all somewhere else.
Now, this is no put down for these artists, for the Same thing can be said today in any of the
art exhibitions at the famous Galleries and Museum of Modern Art everywhere, whether in
Paris, in Tokyo, Gangnam (Seoul) or Hong Kong. It is no different from the well-known fact,
for example, that the Cheongdam-dong fashion street is no different from Rodeo Street in LA,
New Yorks Fifth Avenue, or in Hong Kong, in Shanghai, they feature the same Brand-name
Boutiques, filled with the same kind of Haute Couture dresses, shoes and bags. We today live
in such a world.

I believe that the Ceramic Artists were not able to approach the singularly important
question of HOW TO DEVELOP THEIR UNIQUE PERSPECTIVES THROUGH CLAY TO
LOOK AT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ART, LIFE AND NATURE with any sort of
intellectual depth and/or powerful artistic insight. I hope there can be another such a show
in which this time this question can be asked first in mutual discourses, not shying away
from intense debates and vehement controversies, before any artistic attempts at
interpretation.

END
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