What Picasso’s Ceramics Taught Me

Ceramics are typically about use—things made to hold, to pour from or to serve with. But Picasso didn’t see clay as a vessel for function; he saw it as a field of possibility—a place to test ideas and to take risks.

He’d gone to the village of Vallauris, in the south of France. Saw what those potters were doing, left for a while, let the experience sit with him and when he finally turned back it felt as though a new dialect had rooted itself in his being. He began to converse in clay—pressing, carving, glazing—morphing each vessel into an embodiment of his ideas.

A great example of this is Sujet poule (Hen Subject). A fantastic small ceramic molded to the shape of a hen. Though it radiates an almost playful charm the piece summons the heritage of porcelain, ceramics and pottery, its blue‑and‑white glaze acting as a visual conduit to pottery traditions. It draws on the lineage of Chinese pottery, taps into the vivid language of Japanese Imari and ko‑Imari wares and even delves into the robust history of Islamic stoneware.

The color, the humor, the characters—each feels as though the cast of figures have been plucked from his canvases and they now inhabit a fully three‑dimensional arena. That’s what drew me in: freedom. The willingness to push the frontiers of a medium. Artists push when they’re truly engaged—and that’s what I admire most about his work.

I’ve always believed that making—whether it’s painting, carving, or sculpting— acts as a bulwark, against the certainty of death. Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death speaks to that idea: that our actions, our work, our rituals, are all attempts to leave a trace.

Artists and makers often approach it with heightened intentionality. We craft objects that might outlive us, each one holding a reverberation of ourselves.

Picasso’s ceramics are that to me: small acts of permanence. His paintings— those from his Cubist phase—sprouted from that restless curiosity. He was immersed in a swirl of ideas, about relativity, perception and dimensions and those notions seeped into his canvases. You can see it in the work—the way he insists on showing every side of an object at once, never settling for a viewpoint.

Great art is always representative of its age. It takes root in the soil that nourishes it and constantly converses with the world that surrounds it.

What I love most about looking at Picasso's ceramics is the way a work can catch a fragment of someone, an imprint of their very existence and that is unmistakably magical.

Til next time. Happy Halloween!

What We’re Thinking About

• The Enslaved Artist Whose Pottery Was an Act of Resistance - NYT
• The saying 'Go forward like you know it's going to be there' from USEF Dover Medal Finals has been sitting with me lately
• Hiking Through the Misty Forests and Seaside Vistas of Tohoku, Japan - CN Traveler
• Poetic Justice: On Okwui Enwezor: Selected Writings
• If you're in LA, run don't walk to Peruvian food at Qusqo