A philosophical analysis of the anagama-noborigama ceramics of José Antonio Sarmiento
The task of a writer wishing to examine a subject in depth is to identify those significant aspects – or series of circumstances – which enable us to locate the object of interest within a general perspective. This can be done by placing ourselves within a context that will enable better understanding, which will give meaning to the subject and which will enhance its specific strengths. The following is a modest attempt to do just that.
To begin with, the best we can do is to ask ourselves the following question; what place can an artistic discipline like ceramics – artistic contemporary ceramics – hold at the beginning of the twenty-first century? We must remember here that the new century is not just another number in a long line of the eternal development of art history, the preceding one, the still influential twentieth century, being a time when many things changed in ways never before seen. To give ourselves an idea of the time scale we are dealing with, the consequence of the changes in art and the critical and public appreciation of it in the last hundred years, it is enough to note that Picasso’s ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’, the work that marked the beginnings of cubism, is dated 1907 (almost exactly a centenary). Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’, paradigmatic of the ready-made and recently recognised by a panel of critics as the most influential artwork in the 20th century, was made in 1917. And Andy Warhol’s ‘Brillo Box’ pieces are dated 1964. Let’s stay with the latter of these artists to note that 1964 was the exact date, according to the critic and philosopher Arthur C. Danto, when the death of art, as it had been known until then and throughout centuries of tradition, took place. (‘After The End of Art. Contemporary Art and the Pale of History’, Princeton University Press). The Brillo Box are not, strictly speaking, ‘objects of art’ in the sense of using a practical artistic skill based on specific techniques, be they in sculpture, painting, music or ceramics. They are rather the apagogic deconstruction (that is, a result of the interaction with the limits) implied by the demotion of the original material importance in favour of an art form that does not try to be self-contained or self-defining in its material being and which therefore is not the result of a techné in the Aristotelian sense.
That deconstructive process reflect the increasingly importance of the social examination to which the work is subjected, both sociological and media-orientated, and this is often driven blindly by the logic of surpassing that which is no longer novel, that which carries inscribed in its very structure the internal contradiction that the first vanguard artists experienced. In saying this we do not wish to make any value judgement about what should be most acclaimed, most aesthetically appreciated or even whether we ought to prefer one style of art over another. We are only trying here to distinguish and outline the division between object made art, that is the techné as itself and apagogic art. This is something that we can observe with clarity from the general and historical position in which we find ourselves. Perhaps we should think that art after 1964 and Warhol’s Brillo Box does, as Danto says, imply a complex and hybrid art for a complex and media-conscious society, trying to establish relationships between conceptual levels and meaning which could not be confronted in any other way. This would perhaps help us to understand the inseparable need for explanation and conceptualisation that always remain in these kind works.
In spite of all this, and diverging somewhat against the current of the main theme, what we are considering here –the art of material and fire– must be seen as an unequivocal form of modern art. Firstly, this art corresponds to the present day (although it remains connected with a tradition of practical techniques and formal styles). Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, this fact of being in the edge (although sharing the other extreme, too, as we all know that opposites can touch), should surely be seen as an unmistakable characteristic of the most advanced definition of contemporary?
But we still need to examine another classic topoi of aesthetic reflection in the 20th century, with the aim of clarifying what it is, exactly, which defines art – or art’s most socially visible aspect - in the present day. We have already said that the specific characteristic of apagogic art is its being placed in a context that rejects the idea of interaction with the material and that it is understood and appreciated via the sociological and media back up which supports it. Without this reinforcement it would lose all objective meaning. Let us look at the well known theory of Walter Benjamin, expounded in his work ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (1936). Benjamin’s idea is the following; with the appearance of a series of industrial techniques that allow a work of art to be reproduced independently of its original, converting the works to a series of mass-produced copies, the fundamental character of the piece, the aura of a work of art, is lost. This concept would be eminently suitable if applied to music where one’s experience of listening to a composition through phonographic reproduction or listening to it performed directly by musicians is not the same. In one case we are in the presence of the aura of live interpretation of the work and in the other this aura has disappeared completely. This would seem to apply most aptly to certain types of music in which public interaction plays a vital part but, strangely enough, Benjamin was thinking more of classical music that seeks, with its geometric-pythagorean structure, to separate the performance from the performers. Thus, although the creation of the ‘concept of aura’ in a work of art (or any other circumstance) has somewhat spiritual and mythological tones, it does not seem far wrong to employ this definition to separate ‘Auratic Art’ from ‘Post-Auratic Art’ as did José Luis Brea in ‘Las Auras Frias’ (Anagrama, 1991). Apagogic or Post-Auratic Art is that which has broken all connections with the ‘things of art’, the Aristotelian techné, that is, any interaction between the eye, the hand, the paper and the pencil in a drawing or between the movement of clay on a wheel and the hand of the artist which shapes it in ceramics. One must recognise that the practical and technical experience in ceramics are of great importance in the same way that the necessary context was important for the formulation of some ideas in Greek philosophy. (It should be noted that philosophical ideas are not eternal, as Saint Agustin believed, but rather they are born from a precise practice). This is the case of Gorgias who speaks of how one can ‘shape ones speech’ (from the verb plásso which shares its roots with the term ‘plastic’). In this way the fundamental philosophical construction of the ideas of ‘material’ and ‘form’ of Aristotle also come from the technical context found in the work of ceramists who give shape to the material.
Once these classifying co-ordinates are identified, helping us as individuals to find our place in a certain time and in regard to the artistic production of that time, we can return to our original question. The answer seems obvious after all that has been said. Contemporary ceramic art is to be found travelling in the opposite direction from Apagogic or Post-Auratic Art, it is its counterpart, establishing itself– as we shall see – as the authentic Auratic Art (or more exactly setting itself within the redefinition of this concept with which we will finish this examination).
Our attempts at theoretical comprehension do not gain force and strength by generalisation, by considering that, generically, all work coming under the enormous pluralistic heading of ‘contemporary ceramic art’ serves as an expression of the condition of true Auratic Art in the present day. On the contrary, the development of these ideas has matured through starting from the personal and working towards the general in spite of the fact that here we have examined them from the general to the personal. And so we can confirm with no more hesitation (but with apologies for taking so long to arrive at the subject of this text, hoping only that it has helped towards a greater aesthetic appreciation and understanding,) that the work of José Antonio Sarmiento which is presented here (as well as other work produced in anagama-noborigama kilns) are works of art which are especially representative of the most sublime Auratic Art. This is an honour shared, from the writer’s point of view, with the great Japanese masters of ceramics and with others who have instinctively understood, as has José Antonio Sarmiento, all that has been said here simply by way of their personal sensibility and artistic capability.
But why does it generally seem to us that anagama-noborigama wood fired ceramics, particularly the work of José Antonio Sarmiento, is more essentially Auratic Art than other works (at least when we talk of Spanish ceramic art)? To understand this, let us redefine the material concept of aura in a work of art (without losing the nucleus of the preceding significance) as the effect of wood fire on a raw clay surface. That is to say the aura is the mark left by the fire. In this way these types of work become unique making it impossible to submit them to any form of mass production, if we take Benjamin’s original definition of mass production as our standard. (Although here we must remember that not all ceramic pieces are of the same quality; some dreadful examples of industrial mass produced pottery may come to mind). There is a need for technical know-how or ‘knowing how to make art’ as Aristotle said, that is absolutely imperative in this context. From knowing ones materials in throwing, shaping and plastic properties to learning the rhythm of a seven-day firing process. And lastly, here the well-known comparison between the process of learning to manage an anagama-noborigama kiln and learning to manage a sailing boat seems particularly relevant to us and suggestive, in its transcendental technological and artistic meaning, of art as techné.
And so are we not justified in talking in this way, talking of the ceramics of the great fire of anagama-noborigama kilns as the truest form of ceramic Auratic Art in which the auras become red-hot?