Have you seen Betty you can't see? woodcutter

This issue of Art+Weekend shows you the legendary life of Betty Woodman, a female artist.

Betty Woodman, born in Connecticut in 1930s, died of lung cancer at the age of 87. She is the first living female artist to hold a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States. Since clay was chosen as the material, bottles and vases have become Betty Woodman's most extraordinary creative forms. Earlier, the woodcutter began to learn to make pottery by making complete sets of tableware and pottery ornaments. Since 1950s, she began to lead her creation to the field of sculpture. From the early daily pottery to the large-scale "pottery-painting" installation in recent years, for Betty Woodman, utensils are not only the carrier of metaphor, but also the reference of art history.

Why is she a legend?

Because she is the first living female artist to hold a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States, it is conceivable that this is a rare honor in the male-dominated art circle;

Before her, ceramics were just food containers locked in crowded cabinets. It was she who brought ceramic art into contemporary art. ..

Betty Woodman in her youth.

When you have something beautiful to use,

Your life will be better.

But in her family, her achievements didn't make her look special, because her husband George Woodman is also a famous painter and photographer, and her son Charlie is also good at dancing in the field of video art, while her daughter, Francesca Woodman, who explored the relationship between body and soul with black and white images, became famous at a young age, but chose to jump off a building at the age of 22. The name Woodman was a sensation, and since then it has become synonymous with the art house.

This time, Betty Woodman's work in Shanghai Chi K 1 1 Art Museum is the first show in Asia and was named Yu? Zhou. Mainly introduce Betty? Woodman's comprehensive media creation in recent ten years includes sculptures, triple vases, large-scale installations and fabric works.

"Yu? Zhou's House and Universe is from the chapter of House and Universe written by the French philosopher. In the creation of ceramic art, it is the void in the middle that defines the objects and constructs their spatial volume and use through enclosure, while the closed state of the house refers to the philosopher's mind.

De Man's carpet collection is inspired by Aztec crafts in Mexico. She laid the canvas flat on the ground and decorated it with floral patterns and ceramic fragments. The pottery jar with jumping colors in the middle of the canvas was like a free-growing branch, breaking the traditional formal boundaries of pottery. ?

I hope my works can have wider cultural significance.

Can appear in museums,

Not just in crowded cupboards.

After graduating from the American Craftsman School of Alfred University, Woodman devoted herself to her ceramics career. At first, she just wanted to make some practical ceramic objects and give them beautiful connotations. She didn't even think it had anything to do with art. Cups, plates, dishes and pots were everyday objects.

This group of works, created on 20 15, consists of six pottery bottles and depicts women wearing Japanese clothes. But instead of focusing on the clarity of the facial contour, I used a brush stroke that looked like a flower in the fog. This "girl" who is over 80 years old is still full of passion for the exploration of ceramic modeling. The whole work brought people to the prosperous Kyoto. Graceful Japanese women walk through buildings with tiny steps in Ling Bo, and the color matching with great visual impact shows the influence of the beast party on the woodcutter.

A woodcutter is like a man born for ceramics. As long as her fingers touch the mud, they are full of joy. When she shapes ceramics, her hands are firm and strong. This makes her works look charming and full of energy. As she said, "I want you to feel more emotions, and I want to create visible happiness."

198 1 year, the suicide of her 22-year-old daughter Francesca Woodman became the most important turning point in her creative career. A few years later, I talked about my daughter's death in an interview. The tone was calm, but it was difficult to hide the sadness in my eyes. After that, her works completely broke all boundaries, and her creation began to turn to experiments. Break away from the shackles of daily functionality and break the shackles of household appliances and home space. Her works are no longer just trivial objects in life, but are written into contemporary art history as an avant-garde art form.

These pillows-like kettles are a series of pottery made by Woodman in 1970s, drawing lessons from the shapes of kettles in Crete. The shape of "pillow" affirms the artistry of the work, while the exaggerated bottle body that ignores the proportion echoes Woodman's original intention of making "practical living utensils". ?

At the same time, "pattern and decoration movement" (pattern &; Decorative movement). It also brought some images to Woodman's creative style.

This work was inspired by Picasso's painting of a vase with three ears. One side of the three vases is painted as a monochrome pattern with blue stripes on a white background, and the other side depicts an indoor scene in an abstract way, so as to explore the internal relationship between plane and space.

She became obsessed with splicing. Her ceramic sculptures are not integrally formed, but each part is made separately and finally spliced together, breaking the old concept of splicing painting.

"Wallpaper" series is to "inadvertently" rearrange glazed tiles on the wall, giving these seemingly remaining fragments a brand-new life, which looks like summer flowers spreading on the wall.

Her works are like rivers and seas, where rivers of various civilizations and cultures meet, and Greek civilization can be seen in her works; Etruscan tradition; Baroque architecture and even Tang pottery and Japanese costumes. She also asked the master for advice from a distance, and her ceramic works can always find clues about the art of bonnard, Picasso and Matisse. She unifies the techniques and aesthetics in different spaces and blends them into her unique contemporary artistic language.

The fun of watching art exhibitions lies in being in the same space as the works.

The work itself becomes a bridge,

Establish a dialogue between us and artists.

And then read our introduction,

If you are interested in contemporary ceramic art,

Go and have a look.

Edit | Pool

Internship Editor | Shi Wenbin

Some pictures and texts come from the internet, and the copyright belongs to the original author.