ARTWEEK

September 15, 1979 / Volume 10, Number 29

San Francisco / Melinda Levine

A powerful piece by Dan Snyder

A portentous piece, Iggy by Jim Gale, reflects the contents of the ceramics survey at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: a large, lumpy monster with beautiful porcelain teeth emerges from a kiln fueled by strange substance and heart.

This uneven exhibit, filled with disappointment, commercialism and gadgetry, displays only a few works with soul. Northern California Clay Routes: Sculpture Now, sponsored by the museum’s Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art, is a pretentious title for a show which not only is incomplete and omits the mentors as well as many of the rank and file of northern California ceramic sculptors, but draws a distorted picture of a serious movement away from commercialism and the shackles of artistic convention.

Most of the twenty-three artists represented, selected by Linda Langston of the Palo Alto Cultural Center, work beyond tradition. A group of iconoclasts, they shape and shove clay into unusual forms. Trompe l’oeil techniques run rampant. Clay looks like wood, paint, paper, metal, plaster, fabric, rocks, concrete, snakeskin and bamboo. Representational works are juxtaposed against minimalist pieces. Despite disparity in quality, there is a spectrum of themes and a welcome diversity of form. Several majestic pieces are nearly buried under the consumerist rubble. Peter Vandenberge’s large head looms high above eye level. Sharing the fundamentals of bone structure with a Giacometti sculpture, its elongated face is stained with pastel slips, eyelids cast down and far away. Vandenberge’s other entry, an earthenware female with pinhole eyes, holds a house with a sewing machine (drill press?) mounted on top — a strange composition as haunting as the large head. Its grays are set off by small, contrasting, unglazed terra-cotta colored areas. Vandenberge’s works are more traditional, clearly related to earlier twentieth century sculptural roots than to 1960’s pop.

A powerful piece by Dan Snyder contrasts sharply with the prevalent laissez-faire, anything goes techniques of most of the selections. Ascending Man is a large standing figure with a shiny white raku surface, its arms stretched upward. Despite cracks in the surface and gaps in construction, the piece is endowed with grace, strangely reminiscent of a Degas dancer.

This piece was made in Rome, 1975, shipped back to the US, purchased by Dr. Jay Cooper (owner of Bob Arnesons' Mascone Center bust fame), having gifted the piece back to SFMOA in 2012.