Garth Clark 1 2 3 4 5 6 - PRINTER VERSION
>> really part of public domain; anything I say or don't say about Hans Coper is not going to change things. I am working on an exhibition on George Ohr, and I don't deal in George Ohr's work.
RB: But at one time you did.
GC: No. I have never in my life sold a single piece of George Ohr's work.
RB: That's strange because I seem to remember seeing an ad for your gallery to that effect. [Editor's note: This interview took place on March 21, 1985. Mr. Clark has informed us in a letter recently, "Since speaking to you a colleague asked us to sell a group of seven small pieces which we did. So my comment, completely true at the time, is not true today. Neither I nor the gallery have ever owned a single piece of Ohr, and, except for the seven inexpensive pots, I have never made any profit from Ohr at all. We do list Ohr in our advertisements together, with 40 other artists in which we have an interest. Partly it is because we see Ohr as part of the stable in a spiritual sense—he's my favorite American potter—and partly it's because I am looking for a great piece of Ohr's work for my own collection."] That's not necessarily the problem though. Going back to your earlier statements about the inbred environment that existed among university ceramic departments where friends wrote about friends, essentially the self-interested trading of articles. What's so different about that and you writing about your gallery artists? That is what I think confuses people.
GC: I generally don't write about the gallery artists. I sometimes will in a newsletter: again. I don't think there is any conflict in that. I mean, we're publishing our own material, everybody knows where it's coming from. When I do write, I write mainly about historical figures even if we deal with them—like Bernard Leach, but as I say, figures, which are very much in the public domain in a way that a young contemporary artist is not, where we are still trying to decide, who is this person and what is their contribution. Bernard Leach, for instance, people love him or they hate him, but we all know where he came from, and we know what his contribution is. So I can work in that area as a historian. The people it seems to bother most of all are gallery owners.
RB: Well, sure it does. You have a certain presence, which you've established over a period of time and a reservoir of credibility based on your scholarship. In the "Echoes" conference and exhibition you organized, for example, you were dealing with your scholarship in an historical area and relating it to contemporary work. You were in a sense providing legitimization of the contemporary work by relating it to the historical pieces. And when an inordinate number of people you represent were included in the exhibition, people began to wonder what was going on and if they could trust relationships you were drawing between the historical and modern work. That's what the criticism turns on.
GC: This is fine. I think that I can understand other people's problems with this. I am least sympathetic, though, when the criticism comes from gallery owners, because I feel they are in the position to do exactly the same thing if they want to put in the work. I sit up until two or three in the morning working on articles after I have been working until 7:00 that day on ordinary business. It's not easy to keep the
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© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign
>> really part of public domain; anything I say or don't say about Hans Coper is not going to change things. I am working on an exhibition on George Ohr, and I don't deal in George Ohr's work.
RB: But at one time you did.
GC: No. I have never in my life sold a single piece of George Ohr's work.
RB: That's strange because I seem to remember seeing an ad for your gallery to that effect. [Editor's note: This interview took place on March 21, 1985. Mr. Clark has informed us in a letter recently, "Since speaking to you a colleague asked us to sell a group of seven small pieces which we did. So my comment, completely true at the time, is not true today. Neither I nor the gallery have ever owned a single piece of Ohr, and, except for the seven inexpensive pots, I have never made any profit from Ohr at all. We do list Ohr in our advertisements together, with 40 other artists in which we have an interest. Partly it is because we see Ohr as part of the stable in a spiritual sense—he's my favorite American potter—and partly it's because I am looking for a great piece of Ohr's work for my own collection."] That's not necessarily the problem though. Going back to your earlier statements about the inbred environment that existed among university ceramic departments where friends wrote about friends, essentially the self-interested trading of articles. What's so different about that and you writing about your gallery artists? That is what I think confuses people.
GC: I generally don't write about the gallery artists. I sometimes will in a newsletter: again. I don't think there is any conflict in that. I mean, we're publishing our own material, everybody knows where it's coming from. When I do write, I write mainly about historical figures even if we deal with them—like Bernard Leach, but as I say, figures, which are very much in the public domain in a way that a young contemporary artist is not, where we are still trying to decide, who is this person and what is their contribution. Bernard Leach, for instance, people love him or they hate him, but we all know where he came from, and we know what his contribution is. So I can work in that area as a historian. The people it seems to bother most of all are gallery owners.
RB: Well, sure it does. You have a certain presence, which you've established over a period of time and a reservoir of credibility based on your scholarship. In the "Echoes" conference and exhibition you organized, for example, you were dealing with your scholarship in an historical area and relating it to contemporary work. You were in a sense providing legitimization of the contemporary work by relating it to the historical pieces. And when an inordinate number of people you represent were included in the exhibition, people began to wonder what was going on and if they could trust relationships you were drawing between the historical and modern work. That's what the criticism turns on.
GC: This is fine. I think that I can understand other people's problems with this. I am least sympathetic, though, when the criticism comes from gallery owners, because I feel they are in the position to do exactly the same thing if they want to put in the work. I sit up until two or three in the morning working on articles after I have been working until 7:00 that day on ordinary business. It's not easy to keep the
>>
© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign