Shapes From Out of Nowhere
Ceramics From the Robert A. Ellison, Jr. Collection
Essays by Glenn Adamson, Robert A. Ellison, Jr., Elizabeth Essner, Adrienne Spinozzi
For the past fifty years, Robert A. Ellison Jr. has quietly and intuitively built one of the most significant assemblages of nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century ceramics, all the while observing and investigating the creative possibilities and ambitions of the humblest of materials: clay. Shapes From Out of Nowhere, published on the occasion of an exhibition highlighting a recent transformative gift of 125 works to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, beautifully presents this deeply personal pursuit and is a fitting coda to his commitment to sharing these works with the public. This extraordinary donation, the accompanying exhibition, and this illuminating book document the vision and passion of this singular collector and his focus on the exploration of shape and form in clay throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Shapes from Out of Nowhere, and the exhibition of the same title, document Ellison’s journey of discovering and collecting. The stirrings of abstract expressions in clay only begins in the 1940s, decades after Ohr’s anomalous creations, with pivotal works by Danish artist Axel Salto. The following decade erupts with artists disrupting convention, including Katherine Choy and Peter Voulkos, both of whom responded to and embraced the freedom found in clay. Broad in scope, the collection reconsiders the established timeline of twentieth-century ceramics and provides a more accurate and fuller picture, one that situates a number of artists engaged in deconstructing the vessel form in the 1950s and 1960s, eschewing the precise symmetry of the wheel for the possibilities of hand building. This international story is told through ceramists well known for their breakthroughs, and it also introduces under-recognized and marginalized artists who transformed—and continue to expand—the possibilities of the medium. This ongoing progression is manifest through examples that span in date over the last half century and up through the present with work by Kathy Butterly, Elisa D’Arrigo, Anne Marie Laureys, and Aneta Regel, women who are actively pushing clay in new and uncharted directions.
With this most recent donation of modern and contemporary ceramics, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has acquired over six hundred works from Robert A. Ellison Jr., a remarkable legacy for this pioneering collector with an unparalleled vision. In scope, depth, and quality, his gifts have forever redefined the holdings of this institution while expanding our understanding of and appreciation for the ceramic arts. This recent landmark gift, and the accompanying exhibition and book, is no different in significance: only a collector with such innate knowledge of the medium could chart the path towards abstraction in clay.
—Adrienne Spinozzi, from the Introduction
Adventures in abstract ceramics, from George E. Ohr and Ken Price to Kathy Butterly
A comprehensive overview of 20th-century non-representational ceramics from the earliest years of the modernist revolution to the postwar period through to the present, Shapes From Out of Nowhere features an unparalleled gathering of over 150 works from New York City-based collector Robert Ellison. It explores the featured artists’ rejection of symmetrical, utilitarian forms in clay in favor of the sculptural and abstract, and challenges the boundaries between function, non-function, design, drawing, painting, sculpture and architecture. Built over a period of 40 years, this singular collection reflects the personal and discerning eye of a collector focused on the exploration of shape and form.
Ellison’s introduction to abstraction in clay was the work of George E. Ohr, whose late 19th-century creations represent the first seismic shift in a challenge to form itself. Ohr was the catalyst for this new direction in clay, and his vision foreshadows 20th-century postwar experimentation in fine art. The book showcases the sculptures by Ohr along with artists from the second half of the 20th century to the present, including seminal works by Axel Salto, Ken Price and Peter Voulkos, the progenitor of the American studio movement.
Shapes From Out of Nowhere tells this important story through the work of these key figures, but also introduces lesser known artists who transformed—and continue to push—the possibilities of the medium, including Kathy Butterly, Elisa D’Arrigo, Anne Marie Laureys and Aneta Regel.
This transformative collection is given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2021 in honor of the museum’s 150th anniversary, and this lavishly illustrated book will serve as both an exhibition catalog and as a document of the gift to the museum.
Artists include: Robert Arneson, Rudy Autio, F. Carlton Ball, Lynda Benglis, Kate Blacklock, Nina Borgia-Aberle, Alison Britton, Kathy Butterly, Peter Callas, Syd Carpenter, Christina Carver, Katherine Choy, Dieter Crumbiegel, Elisa D’Arrigo, Harris Deller, Richard DeVore, Kim Dickey, Gary DiPasquale, Ruth Duckworth, Raymon Elozua, Gary Erickson, Ken Ferguson, Amara Geffen, John Gill, Chris Gustin, Babs Haenen, Ewen Henderson, Wayne Higby, Margaret Israel, Howard Kottler, Anne Marie Laureys, Gareth Mason, John Mason, Leza McVey, Jim Melchert, Ursula Morley Price, Gertrud Natzler, Otto Natzler, Win Ng, William Parry, Ken Price, Aneta Regel, Mary Rogers, Stanley Rosen, Axel Salto, Paul Soldner, Rudofl Staffel, Chris Staley, Susanna Stephenson, Toshiko Takaezu, Kyoto Tonegawa, Robert Turner, Peter Voulkos, Frans Wildenhain, Marguerite Wildenhain, Betty Woodman, William Wyman and Arnold Zimmerman.
Price: US $69.95
ISBN: 978-1-947359-06-2
hardcover
10 x 12” (254 x 305 mm)
272 pages
250 color illustrations
Release date: February 2021