Robert Rauschenberg Japanese Clayworks

Japanese Clayworks is an exhibition of key works on ceramic by Robert Rauschenberg from the 1980s, highlighting a formative period in the artist’s career.

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Over the course of 15 years, Rauschenberg made several trips to Japan, where he collaborated with the Otsuka Ohmi Ceramics Company (OOCC) in Shigaraki to create ceramic artworks using a newly developed technique that combined ancient Japanese pottery traditions with modern innovations. He worked with local chemists to produce glazes that allowed him to silkscreen his own photographs onto transfer sheets, which were then removed from their backing, affixed to the surface of ceramic panels, and fired in the kiln. Japanese Clayworks is the first series of works that Rauschenberg made at the OOCC.

Reprising important motifs from across his practice, such as wheels and modes of transportation, garden decorations that recall Classical sculpture, and landscapes that are alternately idyllic and strewn with industrial or urban debris, the artist’s specific arrangements of his own silkscreened photographs on the ceramic supports give the works a potency that goes beyond that of the individual images themselves, encouraging viewers to attempt to decipher them, while ultimately refusing any single interpretative meaning.

Testimony (Japanese Claywork), 1985
Transfer and glaze on high-fired ceramic
180 x 200 cm (70 7/8 x 78 3/4 in)

 

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By the mid-1980s, Rauschenberg was already silkscreening his black-and-white photographs onto a variety of supports, but the Japanese Clayworks mark the first series in which the artist incorporated colour photographs into some artworks, such as in Rice Blessings (Japanese Claywork) (1985), where he brought coloured imagery from New York City, Florida and Venezuela together with vibrant brushstrokes.

 

Rice Blessings (Japanese Claywork), 1985

Transfer and glaze on high-fired ceramic

180.2 x 199.8 cm (71 x 78 5/8 in)

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The Japanese Clayworks in the exhibition are accompanied by a further group of ceramic works, made in 1989, when Rauschenberg once again collaborated with the OOCC. In his Captiva, Florida studio, he created the compositions that would form their ground, using his solvent transfer technique and adding strokes of acrylic and sometimes paper collage. He then created the transfer sheets for each work individually, before sending the components to the OOCC, where his imagery was transferred onto its fine but robust ceramic supports.

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On the transfer sheet for each work, the artist added touches of bold brushwork in primary colours, which offset the glassy ceramic surfaces and reintroduce a painterly quality to blur boundaries between artistic categories. These gestures, which are unique to each work, contribute to the dialogue between the mechanically reproduced image and the artist’s hand which is central to Rauschenberg’s practice.

 

Port-Trait II #5, 1989

Transfer and glaze on high-fired ceramic

90 x 60 cm (35 3/8 x 23 5/8 in)

Port-Trait II #1, 1989

Transfer and glaze on high-fired ceramic

90 x 60 cm (35 3/8 x 23 5/8 in)

 

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RR%201244

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The gestural painting harks back to Bob’s real admiration for the Abstract Expressionists, and that Expressionist brushstroke (...) is something you see in his works throughout his career. So that gesture is something that he really held onto, to personalise the images beyond his own photography. — Julia Blaut, Senior Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation

 

Garden-Wise I #2, 1989

Transfer and glaze on high-fired ceramic

60 x 40 cm (23 5/8 x 15 3/4 in)

Garden-Wise I #4, 1989

Transfer and glaze on high-fired ceramic

60 x 40 cm (23 5/8 x 15 3/4 in)

 

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On each transfer sheet, the artist also signed his name in his characteristic capital letters, as well as in kanji, a form of Japanese writing adapted from Chinese characters. Through signing in both languages, Rauschenberg claimed authorship while also paying respect to the cultural context in which the works were made and by which they were inspired.

 

Garden-Wise III #2, 1989

Transfer and glaze on high-fired ceramic

60 x 40 x 0,8 cm (23 5/8 x 15 3/4 x 3/8 in)

Garden-Wise III #3, 1989

Transfer and glaze on high-fired ceramic

60 x 40 cm (23 5/8 x 15 3/4 in) 

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This work on ceramic by Rauschenberg is part of the exhibition L'Argent dans l'art, currently on view at the Monnaie de Paris until 24 September 2023. Made at the Otsuka Ohmi Ceramics Company in Shigaraki, Japan, during the same period in which the artist was working on the Japanese Clayworks presented at Thaddaeus Ropac, this work belongs to his series of Japanese Recreational Clayworks. Executed while Rauschenberg waited for his Japanese Clayworks to be fired, this ceramic painting series, made on prefabricated 'art ceramic' panels that reproduced icons of the Western art history, is the second group of works created at the OOCC. 

Untitled (Japanese Recreational Claywork), 1983
Transfer and glaze on high-fired Japanese art ceramic
85.5 x 113 cm (33.66 x 44.49 in)

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Travel, always accompanied by exploration of local materials and collaboration with local artisans, was a fundamental part of Rauschenberg’s artistic practice. Through his work, he searched for how he, as an artist, could respond to pressing political, environmental and social challenges, contribute to peace and cross-cultural understanding and produce universally meaningful images in an increasingly global world.

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