Art Review: Japanese Ceramics at Dallas’s Crow Museum

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Dallas and saw the Dallas Museum of Art’s impressive new show on Van Gogh’s olive tree paintings. A short walk from the DMA, the Crow Museum of Asian Art is a jewel box with a good collection and a handful of exhibitions I enjoyed. I spent most of my visit bewitched by Born of Fire: Contemporary Japanese Women Ceramic Artists. It’s a selection from the finest private collection of Japanese ceramics outside of Japan. I hadn’t been to the Crow Museum before, so it was my chance to get to know the place.

Ceramic is an old Japanese genre, and that’s not what makes it distinctive. The earliest Native American and Greek and Roman art is made of clay, if for no other reason than practicality. Pots are handy. I think Japan, thousands of years ago, was the first place in the world to make ceramics an elegant, intricate art. So it can be today, though some of the objects in Born of Fire walk on the wild side. It’s a fun, provocative, and educational exhibition.

About the Author

Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Dallas and saw the Dallas Museum of Art’s impressive new show on Van Gogh’s olive tree paintings. A short walk from the DMA, the Crow Museum of Asian Art is a jewel box with a good collection and a handful of exhibitions I enjoyed. I spent most of my visit bewitched by Born of Fire: Contemporary Japanese Women Ceramic Artists. It’s a selection from the finest private collection of Japanese ceramics outside of Japan. I hadn’t been to the Crow Museum before, so it was my chance to get to know the place.

Ceramic is an old Japanese genre, and that’s not what makes it distinctive. The earliest Native American and Greek and Roman art is made of clay, if for no other reason than practicality. Pots are handy. I think Japan, thousands of years ago, was the first place in the world to make ceramics an elegant, intricate art. So it can be today, though some of the objects in Born of Fire walk on the wild side. It’s a fun, provocative, and educational exhibition.