Art and Life, viewed from the Perspective of Clay:

Works by seven Korean Ceramic Artists in between Art and Craft

by Kai Hong, Professor, Philosophy of Language and of Art, HUFS, Seoul, Korea
Copyright2012 Kai Hong

[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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