Tokuda Yasokichi IV (b. 1961), Mizuho (Young Rice Shoot), 2014. Porcelain with saiyu yellow and green color glaze gradation. 9 1⁄2 x 9 3⁄4 in. (23.5 x 24.5 cm).
(Carol and Jeffrey Horvitz Collection. Courtesy of Onishi Gallery)
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.
Historically, Japan was insular, so its ceramics have always had a look unto themselves, mostly in glazes but also in shape. Born of Fire doesn’t consider the development of style since it’s about the here and now. The artists are all living. That they’re all women isn’t a phenomenon. Artists working in ceramics, as in textiles, are mostly women, over the centuries and now, here in America, in Asia, and in Europe. These were things of the home. In Japan, where ceramics have always had a formal, even ceremonial role and convey status, men have gotten in on the act over the centuries.
Today, though, the best ceramicists are usually women. Since the Japanese take ceramics so seriously, their ceramic art schools are some of the world’s best. Some of the artists in the show come from families who’ve made both timeless and edgy works of art for generations.
I believe only in quality and not in hierarchy, so I’ve always looked at the best ceramics as sculpture. And Born of Fire presents some of the best. I wish the show were bigger, a lot bigger. The objects are that good, and it has surprise after surprise.
Matsuda Yuriko (b. 1943), In Her Shoes, 3, 2008. Porcelain and polychrome enamel glazes and gold decoration. 6.5 x 10 x 3 in. (18 x 23 x 10.5 cm). (Carol and Jeffrey Horvitz Collection. Courtesy of Dai Ichi Arts, Ltd.))
For that wow factor, In Her Shoes is both a show opener and a showstopper. Made by Yuriko Matsuda (b. 1943), it tells us this isn’t a look at old teapots with subtle glazes. Matsuda indeed makes teapots and watering cans but uses the female torso as a model, in this case a flight-of-fancy shoe. The gold-brocade-style decoration isn’t new, either. It’s a Japanese tradition pushed to an extreme. The label places it in art history: a bit of American Pop Art, a little Dada, a dash of Matisse, a sprinkle of Man Ray. I wouldn’t graft that much on it. It’s best to look at this as technically brilliant and whimsical. That’s a daring combination. The shoe is propped up by an apple, which is not only adorable but a firing and glazing challenge.
Fukumoto Fuku (b. 1973), Tsukikage (Moonlight), 2012. Set of three blue and teal glazed porcelain bowls stacked unevenly and glazed fused. 5 x 11 3/8 x 11 3/8 in. (12.5 x 29 cm). (Carol and Jeffrey Horvitz Collection. Photo: Mike Lundgren; Courtesy of Phoenix Art Museum)
Having shocked and delighted us, Born of Fire gives us passages of tradition and subtle beauty. Moonlight, by Fukumoto Fuku (b. 1973), is a set of three blue and teal porcelain bowls stacked unevenly and fused. Having just come from the Van Gogh, I looked at Moonlight with a pliable frame of mind. Van Gogh liked Japanese art, but there’s no influence in Fukumoto’s work. Rather, seeing Van Gogh showed me how the two artists work on a parallel track. Van Gogh’s nocturnes tend to merge moon and moonlight using different passages of blue, from powder blue to teal to sapphire blue and azure, using white and yellow, too. It’s not tonal at all. Bands of moonlight have autonomy. By stacking, Fukumoto gives light weight and depth. Arranging them unevenly is a modern, expressionist touch. I think all of this springs from the artist’s own heritage.
Koike Shōko (b. 1943), Untitled, 2009. Stoneware with white iron oxide and blue glazes. 10 1⁄4 x 15 3⁄4 x 13 in. (Carol and Jeffrey Horvitz Collection. Photo: Richard Goodbody; Courtesy of Joan B. Mirviss LTD.)
There are standing swirls, a seraphim, and a funky gourd, but shape, sometimes only evocative, is really the point of departure. Koike Shoko (b. 1943) created a stoneware shell shape — Japan, remember, is an island — with pinched and ruffled edges and a glaze that’s an opaque off-white, a dark, rusty dark brown, and iridescent turquoise. The look and shape seem not only ancient but primeval, as if the object had lain in the sea, hidden for a long time, but still a survivor. Futamura Yoshimi’s big basin looks either geological or meteorological. It’s encrusted with crushed porcelain with cobalt and iron-oxide glasses in the interior.
Shoko’s shell and Young Rice Shoot, by Tokuda Yasokichi (b. 1961), is next to it and a smart contrast. The artist is part of a famous family of ceramicists famous for tonal glazes. I thought this was beautiful as much for its dazzling yellow contrasted with tonal blues.
Left: Fujikasa Satoko (b. 1980), Seraphim, 2016. Stoneware with white slip. 25 1⁄2 x 24 x 17 5/8in. (64.6 x 60.5 x 44.8 cm). Right: Fujikasa Satoko (b. 1980), Seraphim (Detail), 2016. Stoneware with white slip. 25 1⁄2 x 24 x 17 5/8 in. (64.6 x 60.5 x 44.8 cm). (Carol and Jeffrey Horvitz Collection. Photo: Richard Goodbody; Courtesy of Joan B. Mirviss LTD.)
The collection belongs to Carol and Jeffrey Horvitz, who live on the North Shore in Massachusetts. They’re brilliant collectors, Jeffrey focusing on French drawings and Carol on Japanese ceramics. They’re deeply informed and astute connoisseurs. Since I see so many exhibitions, I’ve become a partisan of single-collector shows. In my snootier, faculty-lounge youth, I tended — and I emphasize “tended” — to see these shows as monuments to ego.
It wasn’t contempt for wealth. Rich people with good taste can accomplish a lot. More power to the good rich. It’s that I privileged the curatorial eye, which I assumed was more dispassionate. Over time, I’ve learned that the curatorial eye isn’t always dispassionate and is sometimes sloppy, unimaginative, or driven by an agenda that has little to do with the art at hand. Fewer and fewer curators are actually objects people. Hard to believe, but true.
The collector, often both passionate and deeply educated, though not degreed in an art-history field, usually knows a lot, an enormous amount. A great collector brings love, and there’s nothing necessarily wrong with love, but it’s a gimlet-eyed love. They’re after quality, not accumulation, and they’re driven by the object and aesthetics. The best collectors are high-integrity people. That’s the Horvitzes. Collecting contemporary art is a great risk. A good collector spots what’s going to last and isn’t moved by the cachet of name brands. That’s the Horvitzes, too. Almost no one in America knows these artists. In that respect, the Horvitzes are also supporting them and their vision.
Left: Stupa, China, Qing dynasty (1644–1911), ca. 19th century. Jade (nephrite), turquoise, amethyst, glass, ivory, hardstone; enameled and gilt bronze base. H. 29 1/2 x Diam. 9 1/2 in. (74.9 x 24.1 cm) 1986.12 Right: Bi Disc, China, Qing dynasty (1644–1911), 18th century to 19th century. Jade (Nephrite) and huanghuali wood stand. H. 10.25 x W. 10.25 x L 2.5 in. 1987.12 (Courtesy Crow Museum of Asian Art)
The museum itself is nice. Trammell and Margaret Crow bought their first work of Asian art in the mid 1960s. The field, a massive one, became a passion, and today the museum is one of the few in America dedicated to Asian art. Of course, “Asian art” expresses hundreds of cultures, all different from ours, and I’m hardly an expert. The museum opened in 1998, so it has just observed its 20th anniversary. The museum is, as I said, steps away from the Dallas Museum of Art, but it’s in an office building owned, I think, by the Crow Foundation. It’s not easy to find walking from the DMA, but once I found it, I now know where it is. A shaded patio in front of the museum is pleasant.
It’s not big but intimate, with aesthetic teasers. There’s a lacquer show on view now and a show on Vishnu, the Hindu god. I spent a lot of time during my visit in the jade gallery. A few months ago, I wrote about Spencer Throckmorton, one of the great dealers in Chinese jade. I saw some exquisite things in his gallery, mostly ancient, small, and tonal green harmonies. The Crow Museum showed jade sculpture in mountain or cloud forms, craggy and billowy. The Crow’s jade is 17th- and 18th-century art, so it gave me another perspective on the material in art. For a small place, these miniature survey shows are good. I would have been as happy with a big show on Japanese ceramics filling most of the museum. Deep dives are good, too.
Left: Severan arch at Palmyra, from the West, 1989. Giclée print. Right: Palmyra Colonnade with bike rider and Tetrapylon, 1989. Giclée print. (Photos: Carolyn Brown)
I also loved a show of photographs of Palmyra created in the 1990s by Dallas-based photographer Carolyn Brown. Palmyra reached its economic and architectural peak in the third and fourth centuries a.d. as a Roman city but, on the Silk Road, it had a vibrant Byzantine era. Around 1400, it was sacked by Timurid warlords, part-Persian, part-Mongol, and I’m sure that wasn’t fun, and Palmyra survived for centuries as a village. Its rediscovery in the 19th and early 20th centuries was a revelation. ISIS sacked it during the Syrian civil war, crossing one of Obama’s notoriously ephemeral, if-it’s-Tuesday-it-must-be-here, so-pastel-it-fades-to-pink, red lines that no one feared.
The Crow Museum is in the Dallas Arts District, which makes sense since that’s where the art crowd concentrates, but it belongs to the University of Texas at Dallas, whose main campus is far from it. This is tricky. UT Dallas is the state university system’s MIT. It offers art and art-history classes, but I think students see these from a STEAM perspective.
STEM’s fine — that’s science, technology, engineering, and math — and STEAM, which closely integrates the sciences and art (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math), is even better. Thinking STEAM-wise, art is not a bonbon or a leavener but a stimulant for creative thinking overall. This isn’t a left side/right side issue, and I don’t believe in that dichotomy. Creativity comes in facets, not spheres. It’s not about diversification, either. The arts are a component of free thinking. Close looking is part of every serious intellectual project. Scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and computer geeks immersed in art are better at whatever STEM subject they embrace.
The museum’s not on campus, though, so I’m not sure how useful it is to students. The DMA isn’t a distraction, but it’s big, it’s got its own Asian collection, and it’s there. I have a high art threshold, but most people don’t. I don’t know how Crow is planning to address this long-term.
