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Arts>
Searching for Beauty > Reviews Go
to Helen Bevis in 'Ceramics Monthly'
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Clay Times Book Review 7/27/08Steven Branfman |
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| I'll begin this column
with a disclaimer of sorts: I generally don't review books that
have already received positive exposure in other mags or online.
I do like to spread the wealth. so to speak. Yet, when a book
of such attraction, uniqueness, and provocativeness comes along,
it's difficult to not help but share it with as many others
as possible. Searching For Beauty is one of those books.
Richard Jacobs is a collector. Christa Assad
is a potter. They were brought together by chance when the collector
entered the potter's gallery. Eyeing a piece by Assad, they
had a brief conversation, He bought the piece, and left the
gallery. End of story? Not in this case. Shortly afterwards
Jacobs began writing a series of letters to Assad in which he
reveals himself, probes the potters personality, art, and intentions,
and poses questions to which the answers are all but simple.There
is no denying the inspiration for this book emanating from Rainer
Maria Rilke's classic "Letters To A Young Poet." In
fact Jacobs himself is clear to not only acknowledge this in
his first letter to Assad but to quote fromit and use it to
lay the groundwork for what will follow. But don't prejudge.
Searching For Beauty is no clone. Some
background of Jacobs is called for. After all, why listen to
him at all? He is a collector of pots for sure but for him the
pots only partially stand on their own for a connection with
the potter is critical. He is world traveler and a lover of
history and culture. He is a gifted speaker and writer. He is
a scholar. He speaks with clarity and a wisdom that he himself
denies. Jacobs is a voice worth listening to.Jacob's
letters began in 2002 and the subsequent three years of correspondence
constitutes the book. His first letter is quite revealing of
his personality as he talks of the pot purchased from Assad
and how it has become part of his daily ritual and life. He
describes the importance of art and how this new acquisition
fits into the milieu of the many visual attractions and stimulus
around him. He offers advice to Assad but not in the lecture,
instructional sense. Instead the advice he offers is written
between the lines; subtle, kind, calm, non confrontational,
fatherly in a way. Curiously, he ends the letter with wishes for the very best with no clue that the letters will continue. I'm glad they did.Searching For Beauty is Jacobs' search. It is the underlining theme of all that he writes about. His letters to Assad explode with honesty, directness, and an urgency reserved for only the most important pursuits in life. |
In Assad he has found a target, a recipient,
a container if you will allow the pottery analogy, for the
direction and collection of his deep thoughts and commitment
to aesthetics. But it is not only his writings about art.
He muses about philosophy, politics, and the human condition.
So where is Assad in all of this? There are
no letters back. No direct responses. The narrative is one
sided. Hardly. Assad appears in every letter. Not in the literal
sense but figuratively for Jacobs is writing to her and there
areclues as to her letters or conversations back. Jacobs asks
many questions for which answers are not expected. But he
also poses questions expecting answers and from continued
reading we can assume that Assad has complied. Though it is
not obvious to the reader, there |
| From Ceramic Review 2008 by Jane Hamlyn | |
| I was
dubious about this book before I read it - once past the attractive
cover it is visually uninteresting, dense with print and a few
small black and white illustrations. It consists of forty letters
written between July 2002 and April 2005 by Richard Jacobs,
a retired American academic, to Christa Assad, a young potter
he met on a chance visit to her studio and gallery in San Francisco.
In her introduction she says '...eyeing one of my pots ...he
began an enthusiastic critique. I listened.. .we found common
ground... united by a respect for the history of craft and the
role of the maker.' So began a one-sided correspondence, for
although the young potter was a willing recipient her replies,
if any, are not included. Continuing to read, my sceptical view of this book changed as I warmed to its author. His letters often begin with some personal reference, to his beloved garden, a piece of music, his family, but soon introduce more serious questions for consideration. He is not interested in kiln firing or glaze recipes but in questions of 'why?' rather than 'how?' And although ostensibly addressed to 'a young potter' his questions deal with ideas and concepts which should concern us all, as potters and as people. |
They
are challenging, difficult and sometimes unanswerable questions
about skill, amateurism, prices, state support, collecting,
modernism, aesthetic experience, fame, criticism, postmodernism,
feminism, tradition, innovation, democracy, Abu Ghraib and 'the
dark side of the human species'. This book is not an easy read, but well worth the effort. Richard Jacobs is searching for understanding and insight; extremely well-read he quotes from illuminating and authoritative sources and a pantheon of writers on art and craft: Montaigne, Buskin, Philip Rawson, Peter Dormer, Paul Greenhalgh, Bachelard, Baudrillard, Edward Said, Octavio Paz and many others. His view is somewhat conservative but always humane. He sometimes rambles and could perhaps have better edited his letters before publication in book form. He can also be erudite, exasperating, endearing, elegiac, trite, self mocking and sometimes hilarious. Though originally written for an audience of one this admirable book could be enjoyed by a much wider audience. As a teaching tool it will stimulate vital discussion. And I imagine that if it were broadcast on radio as Book of the Week, with perhaps Andrew Sachs as 'voice of the author', it could become a cult classic. (Back to top) |
From Ceramics Monthly, May 2008 by Helen Bevis |
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| The
interaction between potter and buyer is usually limited to a
short moment. Perhaps a flattering, inquisitive conversation
and the sometimes embarrassing moment of money exchange-I give
you my pot, you give me your money; end of relationship. Perhaps
as the buyer turns collector, and admirer, the encounters will
repeat and lengthen as the rapport deepens, but still remain
essentially superficial. Yet something different is recounted
in Searching for Beauty. A rare and unusual event. In 2002 Richard Jacobs, a Californian ceramics collector and retired educator made an unplanned visit to the Verdigris gallery in San Francisco run by three potters. There he bought a vase by Christa Assad, had a conversation with her, paid for the pot and walked away. Except, for once, the buyer-potter moment didn't end there. He began writing to her. His intentions were honest and direct-he had chosen her as his muse and recipient of his letters to a young potter; inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. These original poems explore the themes of the unattainable in troubled times. Rilke's poems were written in 1903, a century later the quest for meaning and beauty in a turbulent world is no less complex. Over the space of three years, Jacobs sent Assad forty long letters and from the letters came the book. The privacy of a writer and his muse has been published and we have the chance to share in the questions and the quest. Searching for Beauty is a work of biography, autobiography and ceramic histories. It has its basis in an old fashioned communication between mentor and mentee, but these are words shaped by contemporary life and in America, inevitably, the spectre of 9/11 is raised to haunt the search for beauty. In such a world can there ever be beauty again? Jacobs presents Assad with questions about her, about him, about life and about ceramics. These are not questions with simple answers. Answers would somehow spoil the journey; the questions are there to provide food for thought and hand. Jacobs relishes the freedom of retirement from academia to pose endless, sometimes simplistic, questions. He remarks that it is important that one never lose a sense of wonder at the world, "a far more innocent and rewarding motivation for me....is the sense of wonder....the committed defiance of an ongoing engagement with life. I have never lost it." Jacobs has the enthusiastic delight of a child, with a nonstop "why" on his lips. He quotes Rilke as writing, "Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language…. At present you need to live the question." To Jacobs there is hope in uncertainty. He is a Ruskinian idealistic who yearns for a gentler world. The longing for old skills and poetry in today's world is a recurrent sentiment. From the safety of his air-conditioned home and ceramics collection, he takes in vast rafts of literature on a quest to find meaning. The result is a lifetime's erudition released upon Assad and us. Yet each letter is like a ramble about his garden, lightly touching different plants and moving on. Perhaps the most striking letter is number 29, where he takes in torture techniques used in Iraq, a Harvard professor of aesthetics, Soetsu Yanagi, Edmund de Waal and news that "Letters to a Young Potter" was selected for a conference program. It is a mind blowing ramble. The glimpses into his mind are as fascinating as the peeks into his life. |
The details are in the domestic; the wax to stop the pots shuddering themselves to death in the next Californian quake, the Morris wallpaper and his daily routine of chores, gardening with his beloved roses and dashes to the computer. As Jacobs observes there is a need for more why books in ceramics. We know the how very well, but the why is an under explored area. Even less time has been spent investigating the intriguing relationship between potters and collectors. It is this exploration of the potter/collector dialog that marks the book out as a valuable addition to ceramics literature. Indeed (in true Jacobs style) I pose the questions; should there be a relationship? Do the potters want it? Do the collectors want it? Jacobs suggests a potter be allowed visiting rights to their pot so that they can see the pot's life after they have parted company. An object must be seen to exist, but a pot inside a museum, cased or stored, ceases to exist. Its life has been taken from it the moment that it becomes locked away. Arguably once Jacobs seals his pots to his shelves he too is sealing their fate as pots in a collection. Yet Jacobs communes with his pots daily; he loves and needs their presence just as he loves and needs his garden. Collecting is a strange art. Perhaps it is all about the collector's ego; Jacobs writes that "the ego of the collector becomes dependent upon the reputation of the potter to vindicate the decision of purchase. A potter is judged by her pots, a collector is judged by his judgment." Collecting, amassing, discussing, all form part of the eternal search for beauty. We glimpse inside a collector's obsessive mind when he says "I do not need to justify my motivation. I know a need from a want. I want pottery because I have an obligation to support human imagination and creativity in a world where human destruction and tragedy often appears to be triumphant. I need pottery because I am daily enhanced and enriched by the presence of pottery.... Collecting cannot be explained, since it is not a rational pursuit and depends on an unlikely duality-obsession with beauty and a lust for private ownership of beautiful things.... Mortality is the unspoken curse of the collector." Jacobs gives us hints about defining beauty. He says "Beauty lacks precision. At best it is a generous word, lacking the edge of irony or the more favored force of aggressive criticism. It is a dangerous word to us. It is old-fashioned this word, this idea of beauty.... It is the one idea that I do not want clarified or defined for me." The search for beauty continues. There are many rich threads to this book. There is a beauty in ideas, the beauty of a worldly observation; the beauty of self-referential humor, derision and burgeoning comprehension. There, too, is the Beauty and the Beast as represented by Jacobs' pots and the woes of the world. We need the beast to help us see the beauty. Searching for Beauty works on many levels, as one man's odyssey to understand the strands of his life; as a guide to understanding a collector's mind or even simply as an eclectic guide to ceramic literature. The range is intriguing, frustrating, eye-opening and crazy; much like us all. It is a haunting book that demands reading and re-reading of selected passages. Fundamentally the letters
are a petition to Christa Assad to continue making beautiful
pots. To us they are a petition to keep searching for our
own sense of beauty. |
From PYRE (Ceramic Arts Association of Western
Australia)
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| To me
- a potter, maker and artist - reading this book is like indulging
in a rich chocolate cake: intense and nourishing. It delights
all my senses, and I savour the images and thoughts it evokes,
on the many subjects it touches. It is not a book written in
a form of letters, it is a collection of letters published in
the form of a book, and I am reading them as such. One letter
at the time opens a new perspective, provides new insights and
inspires. They are written by a collector to a maker, by a gifted
thinker and creator of insights to a gifted maker and creator
of ceramic vessels. By making the letters public, the writer
and the recipient are creating an inspiring and very personal
gift to all potters, makers, craft people and by extension to
all of us that share the values and aesthetic of hand-made.
The letters, the essays, draw from Jacobs many interests - gardening, reading, collecting, travel, philosophy - and merge his insights, thoughts and concerns with the world of pots and clay in a way that resonates with the values of a maker. He refers to, and quotes from diverse writings opening doors to further exploration of the various subjects he touches upon. He inspires curiosity and thoughtfulness, asks many questions, provides insights and reflections and expands awareness. He is not concerned with the "how" that we makers are so fond of discussing, |
but with the "why" - the elusive, nonverbal, essential core of the making process, and approaches the subject from many angles, never quite providing answers… "Artists can never be experts. Unlike experts, it is what artists don't know that demands they create in order to try to know the unknowable - and their magnificent failures are called art." "Everything, every life experience, thought, hope, understanding and vision guide the hands and form the clay. I cannot believe the pot can contain more subtlety and wisdom than the potter. The pot, even if forever empty, always contains the character and intelligence of the potter." I feel richer for the experience and will return to the book many times, sometimes to take comfort in Jacobs profound understanding of my struggles, sometimes in search of contemplative insights he provides, and sometimes for inspiration and strength his words lend me in moments of doubt. The book is not currently available in Australia,
but don't let it stop you from enjoying it. It can now be
purchased online from the Kestrel Books website: www.kestrel-books.co.uk
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