Alexander Matisse | New Ceramics

E X H I B I T I O N CATA L O G

Alexander Matisse:New Ceramics

Memorial Art Galleryof the University of Rochester

April 6 – June 8, 2014

Organized by Memorial Art Galleryand sponsored by the

Mabel Fenner Lyon Fund and Charlotte & Raul Herrera.

One is to not tell anybody...the other is to be open about it, and that’s hard. I’m trying to reach a point in my life where I’m upfront and honest that my family background is just part of who I am.” Alex Matisse is a potter, the product of an arduous and rapidly disappearing apprenticeship tradition. For three years, under the tutelage of North Carolina master craftsmenMark Hewitt and Matt Jones, he produced the same forms again and again until he had mastered his throwing

The elephant in the room is the surname: yes, Alexander Matisse is one of those Matisses. An artistic heritage that includes the celebrated French painter/sculptor/printmaker Henri Matisse as a great-grandfather and Pierre Matisse, the distinguished dealer of modern art, as a grandfather might have been enough. But with parents who are artists too, it was almost inevitable that his path would be a creative one. “It is the great thing that consumes me to the point of destruction,” Alex says. “You have two options.

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A S A Y O U N G S T E R G R O W I N G UA L E X A N D E R M AT I S S E F E LT T H AT

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technique. Then, and only then, did he begin to experiment with his own ideas. “It’s no different from my great-grand father going to the École des Beaux-Arts and being forced to copy one Old Master after another, ” he says. “It’s about chops. Making pots can be a particularly difficult physical endeavor and the apprenticeship is the best way to learn how to throw.” During this time, the Massachusetts native fell in love with the mountainous northwest corner of North Carolina

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and its clay traditions; in 2010 he decided to establish East Fork Pottery there. Its crowning glory is a 35-foot long Anagama-style brick kiln, a type of single-chambered, tunnel-shaped kiln that has been used in Japan since the 5th century. He built it by hand to hold between 1,000 and 1,500 pots when fully loaded. About four times a year, the wood-burning kiln is stoked with scrap wood from a saw-mill down the road from the pottery. Each firing takes72 hours and must be monitored around the clock.

P I N A N “A R T - D R I V E N ” F A M I L Y , A R T - M A K I N G WA S N A R C I S S I S T I C . A S I N T R O D U C E D T O C L AY . . .

There is a cool-down period of about the same duration before that moment of truth when the kiln is opened and the artist is able to see how the clay and glazes have fared during their 2,350⁰F ordeal. Matisse sources his materials locally as much as possible. In addition to salvaging the scrap wood, he uses North Carolina clay and, for glazes, retrieves ash from the wood-fired ovens at a friend’s bakery down the street. But the work is inspired by far-flung historical precedents including English slip-ware, the work of Moravian potters, ancient Turkish ceramics, pots by Japanese master Shoji Hamada, typography, Arts & Crafts-period wallpaper, even graffiti. On the philosophy of East Fork Pottery, Matisse has written: “Striving to understand our place in the tapestry of American ceramics, we hold the past, present, and future on equal ground, for the three in concert make the most beautiful chord.” This is Alex Matisse’s first museum exhibition and we hope he will remember the experience with as much pleasure as we derived from working with him.

Marie ViaDirector of ExhibitionsMemorial Art Gallery

To learn more about Matisse ceramics,please visit eastforkpottery.com.

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Photo by Tim Robinson

Photo by Whitney Ott

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Alex Matisse does not make urinals. He makes mugs, plates, pitchers, jars and vases, and other functional pottery items. Like one particular urinal, Duchamp’s famous Fountain, Alex’s pots occasionally get placed on their sides or even upside down, not in a gallery, but in a dish rack or in a sink, or even the floor of a car – places that are also well-suited for art. In addition to the pure visual enjoyment of form, line, and color, you can, however, also hold one of Alex’s mugs, for instance, and drink from it.

Duchamp’s iconic Fountain (Fig. 1), regarded by some art historians and theorists of the avant-garde as a major land-mark in 20th-century art, is a ceramic object, as is Alex’s mug (Fig. 2): one made out of clay in a factory by a skilled industrial craftsman and appropriated by an artist as an intellectual construct, the other made by hand out of clay by a skilled

ALEXANDER MATISSE’S SOF T TOUCHby MARK HEWIT T

Fig. 1:Fountain, Marcel Duchamp,1917.

Fig. 2: Mug, AlexanderMatisse,2013.

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individual craftsman as an artistic expression and an intellectual construct. Both are utilitarian, one as a vehicle for a message, the other as a vehicle for coffee. I’ll take mine black.

Authenticity is sometimes used as adescriptor of craft work, suggesting a kind of genuineness (or at worst, quaintness) that is lacking in other kinds of artwork. In my opinion, however, authenticity is a characteristic of all human expression, whether intellectual, comic, or satirical, and it is every person’s privilege. No one

can claim to be more authentic than anyone else, regardless of class, status, or power. But while Duchamp’s urinal has become an iconic intellectual contortion that continues to fascinate the art establishment, pots are routinely relegated to a lower, but more authentic, place on the aesthetic spectrum. Which makes it all the more intriguing, therefore, that Alex Matisse has chosen to make pots, given that he is Marcel Duchamp’s step-grandson and, of course, Henri Matisse’s great-grandson.

His lineage in this context, however, is beside the point, for what matters are his pots, and his motivations for making them.

I have a small, warm pitcher, a creamer, which fits neatly into the palm of my hand. Stippled brown, tall and sleek, I use it as a model for other apprentices to work from.

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It has no decoration, but stands on its own, simultaneously specific and generic, one of many, but made at a particular moment by the particular Alex Matisse. It commands attention, particularly on a table, filled with maple syrup.

A pot is a pot is a pot. We potters are connoisseurs of pottery, we study pots in all their details (formal, physical, historical, economic, social), and make them to the full extent of our ability. Fate lends a hand to determine when, where, and with whom we learn how to make them. Then, after training, and once we have established our own studios and worked out some of the intricacies of our craft, we begin to make our own, and, if people like them, they buy them and take them home and use and enjoy them. Would that it were so simple.

We are highly-skilled craftsmen, glad of our relative indepen-dence, happy to grapple with the rigors of our dreams amidst the frenzy of contemporary life. We are athletes, scholars, entrepreneurs, aesthetes, builders, engineers, workers, fighters. We are romantic pragmatists and occasionally have our days in the sun.

This is one of Alex’s.

Asked about his earliest memory of pottery, Alex replied:

“The first pots I remember were not clay at all but woodenplates. My father made them for my mother on a lathe out of what I remember as walnut or some other dark, hard wood. In them were set small gold rods, which weresanded flush with the surface. They were different sizes

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and arranged in different constellations of the stars. We would eat from them only with chopsticks (metal would have marred the surface) when my mother cooked stir-fry and on special occasions. After my parents separated they were put away in a box or cupboard and forgotten, their associations and memories too strong and bitter-sweet. They seemed to soak up the love between my parents and even now, years after they have moved on and remarried, those plates hold that love, if only in the eyes of their son.”

Evelyn Waugh wrote, “Charm is the great blight of theEnglish.” Alex Matisse can claim no such affliction, though he can be quite charming. It is a charm born of existential imperative, hard won out of necessity, needed as defense, and rightly earned. But his charm causes no stifling impairment, no blanket on his faculties, given his affectionate and teeming impetuousness. It does not prevent him from action.

I also still have a few tiny, fat bud vases of Alex’s that we fired after his apprenticeship with me, each with delightful decora-tions sitting on their elegant shoulders, perfectly placed, and perfectly executed. $5 items (for a Matisse no less!), made with love — little sweethearts: tender, poised and gentle. What do you do with your moments, the throw-away seconds when you either strike at the heart of the matter, or drift aimlessly, indul-gently? What Alex did was to reach into the emptiness and pull out beauty — simple and uncomplicated. We potters fill our hours with the quest to make something good.

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Alex saw good things early:

“My mother had an old teapot. It was brown and simple with a cane handle. She bought it in Japan when I was young and used it every day until its spout was finally too chipped to pour well. That was the first pot we used every day that would hold in it the qualities I would learn to admire many years later. I’m sure my memory has altered it, but I remember it having the quickness and sureness of a skilled and confident maker. It was the first quiet pot that I knew.”

Alex was my apprentice, before that Matt Jones’. We are in the same school, part of a tight-knit group working in North Carolina, with our own distinguished lineage and pedigree, all doing excellent work: Mark Hewitt, Matt Jones, Daniel Johnston, Alex Matisse, and Joseph Sand — with John Vigland (Daniel’s recent ex-apprentice, now working alongside Alex) fast coming on board. Ours is a fertile collaboration. We have plumbed the bedrock, we have tapped the root, and, while part of the same genus, we continue to mutate. We steal each other’sideas, but with grace and honor, tending them diligently. We show each other the best we can do, but you can do only somuch on your own. This is the way great ceramic traditions are born, for rivalries and succession generate quality. We admire, compete, and improvise, catching ideas on the fly, giving them our own exquisite twists, and move on. We have style.

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Alex writes of the ensemble:

“This group of potters is very much a family for me and I have never felt a stronger collective identity to any other community. There is an unbreakable bond that comes from making pots in this particular and peculiar way.

There is a common language learned — of form and surface and quality — that cannot be transferred by words or imitation from afar. This language becomes an accent that the members of our group can’t shake, regardless of the vocabulary and narrative we choose to adopt. As a classical musician first learns scales before composing a song, so did we, as apprentices, learn the most fundamental anatomy of pots that came before us before venturing into new, uncharted waters. These men and I now play in a far-flung orchestra, each with ourown roles and the occasional solo, but always in harmonywith each other; together, in union, we create something more beautiful and stronger than ourselves.

Although our workshops and kilns are far apart, I know at any point in time what each of

us is doing. We are at our wheels, tending our kilns, with our lovers, making the only thing we know how to make, doing the only thing that quiets the gnawing crisis of our own existence. To make pots is to be, for a moment, present and focused amidst the clamor and distraction of the world.”

How did he get here?

“I started to throw in earnest at Guilford College (North Carolina) with Charlie Tefft, but I break my trajectory into two distinct time periods: before and after apprenticeship. Had I continued down the academic road, I don’t know where I would be or what I would be making.”

Then, an epiphany:

“I vividly remember the smell of Matt Jones’ damp, dirt workshop floor and wood smoke, the kiln chugging along through the night. That was where I wanted to be. Matt’s pottery exerted a gravity I couldn’t resist and it changed the course of my life. After working with Matt Jones and Mark Hewitt, my world seemed to shrink and expand at the same time. My pursuits narrowed dramat-ically, putting into clear focus a rather small corner of alarger ceramic tapestry. But within that focus emerged the infinite possibility of form and surface. Here began the maddening and impossible pursuit for the perfect pot, where line and volume are in steady harmony, and the decoration is strong and natural.”

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He muses on his training:

“If one wants a fast road to self-expression, the apprenticeship is not for them. It is a slow arc and it often feels at odds with our culture of Instant Every-thing. Less and less time is allotted for the things that often take the most time and consideration. The break-throughs that come to me in the workshop are found mostly in my decorative work and if I have one or two in a three-month making cycle I am happy. That sideof the work seems to be where my strengths lie and although I am a relatively proficient thrower, I get most excited when I have a bench full of platters waiting tobe slip-trailed.”

Alex stealthily lays lines to adorn an arc, fluid applied with slippery immediacy, free and controlled, at fever pitch, always dangerous. His touch is supple, his fancy free.

One of his recent bigger vases perches on our mantel. It has a hyper-extended belly and a tulip-shaped neck, a decoration on its shoulder so deft and lyrical it stops me in my tracks each time I pass. I’m not surprised that Alex made it, and I’m always delighted to see it.

“My pots follow the natural cycle of their creation. They are made, then decorated, and then glazed. The strongest and surest forms are left unglazed and undecorated, to stand on their own in the fire. The rest become a curved canvas. Each pot’s shape informs its

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decoration, and I find motifs repeating themselves on certain shapes that call for something specific: a loose line with a few sparse leaves or a complex geo-metric web stretched taught over the form. My main decorative tool is the slip-trailer, an old Clairol hair applicator which contains a watery clay in shades of ivory and russet. Limiting myself to one technique has pushed my deco-ration into new realms and it continues to evolve. The glazing, while not an afterthought, magnifies the quality beneath it. Most of the glazes are ash glazes, which tend to move and run, sometimes pulling oxides out of the slips. There is a fine line between a glaze running too much and obliterating everything I’ve labored so hard to achieve, and a dull glaze that stays exactly in its place, rendering the surface stagnant and sterile. We have to hit it right.”

We exhort the material to behave, and crumple when our folly is occasionally revealed. Humility is our shadow. We have substance.

The work is an arduous meditation; moving wood for firing the kiln is a prayer, clay preparation is a devotion — a focus before action — and then the world is ours. Each pot is a recitation,

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a solitary pilgrimage inward, a time-sensitive spiraling pathway, a substantive reconfiguration by touch. A mound held firm yields to pressure, pliant clay slides open, the walls rise, shape swells palpably, and the silky kaolinitic membrane becomes incrementally thinner with each diminishment of

touch until the wall is moved by pulse alone. Pots are made with blood. Our eyes are in our fingers.

We are pagan materialists, whole earth alchemists, clay worshippers, glaze sanctifiers, kiln dervishes, wild flamers. We put our fingers in the clay, we tease from the inside, we fondle curves, we caress bottoms, we stroke handles, we put our mouths to the rim. We make the lid fit.

But that is not all, for Alex is going out on a limb, flowering:

“With the familial nature of an apprenticeship there is a time when the student, like a child, must reject some of what he has been taught, or the comfort of what he knows, whether that be his home or his ceramic dogma. For me that came in the form of exploring something outside of stoneware and wood-firing. I wanted some-thing that spoke more to the modern world while still giving a nod to the past. Making these slip-cast porcelain lights (Fig. 3) did just that and with the incorporation of decorative elements it brought the hand back into a medium that can be cold and sterile.”

Fig. 3:Porcelain pendant lights by Alex Matisse, 2013. Photo by Jaeman Riley.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mark Hewitt is the son and grandson of former directors of Spode, the fine china manufacturers. He apprenticed with English potter Michael Cardew in Cornwall, UK, and then Todd Piker in CT, USA. He and his wife, Carol Peppe, moved to North Carolina in 1983, where Mark uses local clays and glaze materials to make work that dovetails Anglo-Asian studio pottery with Southern folk pottery traditions. He continues to take apprentices. www.hewittpottery.com

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Perhaps he’ll make urinals one day, but in the meantime:

“I make pots half for myself and half for the people who will buy them. I want my work to connect with someone on a level that is beyond reason. I am in search of beauty and that one simple goal should keep me busy for some time to come.”

Ometto, 2013Wood-fired, salt-glazed stoneware with ash glaze and slip-trailing

36 x 22 x 22 in.Private collection

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24 x 12 x 12 in.Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John F. A. V. Cecil

Urchin, 2014Wood-fired, salt-glazed stoneware with slip

25 x 30 x 30 in.Collection of David B. Sutton

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Urchin, 2014Wood-fired, salt-glazed stoneware with ash glaze and slip-trailing

22 x 26 x 26 in.Collection of the artist

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13 x 17 x 17 in.Memorial Art Gallery; Gift of Jim Hackney and Scott Haight

in honor of Grant Holcomb

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Large Jar, 2014Wood-fired, salt-glazed stoneware with ash glaze and slip-trailing


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Large Carolina Vase, 2014Wood-fired, salt-glazed stoneware with ash glaze and slip-trailing


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Jar, 2011Wood-fired, salt-glazed stoneware with ash glaze and slip-trailing


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Ovoid Vase, 2014Wood-fired, salt-glazed stoneware with ash glaze and slip-trailing


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Carolina Vase - Geo-Floret, 2014Wood-fired, salt-glazed stoneware with ash glaze and slip-trailing


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Charger, 2013Wood-fired, salt-glazed stoneware with ash glaze and slip-trailing

20-1/2 in. diameterCollection of the artist

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Charger, 2013Wood-fired, salt-glazed stoneware with ash glaze and slip-trailing

19-1/2 in. diameterCollection of Dr. and Mrs. William Eby

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Charger - Multi-Point Geo Burst, 2014Wood-fired, salt-glazed stoneware with ash glaze and slip-trailing

16-1/2 in. diameterPrivate collection

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Charger - Dark Moth, 2014Wood-fired, salt-glazed stoneware with ash glaze and slip-trailing

16-1/2 in. diameterPrivate collection

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Charger - Large Berries, 2014Wood-fired, salt-glazed stoneware with ash glaze and slip-trailing

17-1/2 in. diameterCollection of the artist

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Charger - 4-Point Burst, 2014Wood-fired, salt-glazed stoneware with ash glaze and slip-trailing

18 in. diameterCollection of the artist

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Pitcher, 2013Wood-fired, salt-glazed stoneware with ash glaze and slip-trailing


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Vase, 2013Wood-fired, salt-glazed stoneware with ash glaze and slip-trailing

11-1/2 x 8 x 8 in.Collection of the artist

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12-1/2 x 8 x8 in.Collection of the artist

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3-1/2 x 6 x 6 in.Private collection

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Urchin, 2013Wood-fired, salt-glazed stoneware with Shino glaze


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All photographs by Tim Barnwellunless otherwise noted.

E-catalog design byClaire Marziotti.

Alexander Matisse | New Ceramics

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