Click here to sign up for our
monthly e-mail announcements

Price-articles-1998A

Go Ahead -- Touch It

Robert Goff
Forbes Magazine
07.27.98

Ken Price would like you to forget museum rules and touch the artwork.

"The tactile sense is a lost aspect of sculpture," laments the 63-year- old artist from Venice, Calif. He encourages you to prod, probe and run your hands over his ceramic forms, with their mysterious cavities and luscious surfaces: "When people stick their fingers inside, they become much friendlier with the piece."

Forget the fusty distinction between arts and crafts; Price's ceramics are both abstract and functional, both pottery and sculpture.

In the candied shards of his 1972 "Gaud Cup," a mundane vessel is humorously deconstructed. In "Stamp of the Past," from 1989, what looks like a pocked purplish meteor exposes its interior, glazed a velvety yellow. In the center a dark geometric portal invites a wary finger.

Price's works are filled with apprehensive whimsy -- shocking colors, alluring textures and dangerous subtexts.

Museums like the Art Institute of Chicago, Houston's Menil Collection and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis are collectors. And New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art just acquired two Price pieces. Yet both Sotheby's and Christie's still relegate Price to their 20th-century decorative arts departments. "They don't know what they're talking about," declares an annoyed Stephen Alpert, a Boston entrepreneur.

Alpert, 60, has been following Price for 20 years, collecting from each major period of his career. He blames Price, in part, for the lack of serious attention paid to his work. "He isn't enough of a self- promoter," says Alpert.

A disciple of legendary California ceramist Peter Voulkos at the Otis Art Institute in the 1950s, Price was among the first to rebel against the demure esthetic code of American ceramists. Instead of prim and proper designs, he experimented with rough edges; bright colors applied with abandon replaced careful, earthy glazes. He was influenced by Picasso and Mir -- both of whom did ceramic work -- and by the madcap Barcelona architecture of Antoni Gaud.

Some critics insist on finding a crude sexual symbolism in the curves and cavities of his forms. "I'd like to take these people out on a bus tour in the country and say, hey, this is a cave, not genitalia," glowers the sculptor.

Collectors like Alpert are undismayed by the auction houses' condescending attitude, and shell out as much as $45,000 for new works and more for older pieces. On the rare occasion a piece turns up at auction, bidding can be heated. Last March a small cup estimated at Sotheby's for $3,000 to $5,000 sold for $8,000.

As for Price, he doesn't give much thought to how his work is labeled. "I just make the stuff," he shrugs. "The dealer decides what it costs, the critic decides what it means." For the Greeks, earthenware was both functional and spiritual. Ken Price's work is the contemporary continuation of that lofty tradition and a good buy if you can get it.

KLEIN ART WORKS    400 North Morgan Chicago, IL 60622    (312) 243-0400     abstract@kleinart.com