We’re excited to announce that our member Campus is live! Through the rest of the week we will publish a series of articles that explain this exciting new chapter in Cfile’s development. We will describe the unique tools our Campus offers to its members (which we have dubbed Cfilers, a term picked by our readers). With your support we can build a global community that will sculpt the future of contemporary ceramic art.
Campus membership comes in two classes: Individual and Institution (for art schools, museums, etc.) Individual Cfilers can join for as little as $7.50 a month, Institutions for as little as $299 annually. What follows is a preview of Folio, one of the benefits of becoming a Cfiler. Click here to sign up for a free 30 days of access!
Folio is Cfile’s most major project in our online Campus. It will be presented twice a year. It takes the form of a 200-plus-page eBook but it is so, so much more. It is filled with interactive links, videos and is more of a major online exhibition than a publication.
The first one arrives on April 10, 2017 with the blessing of the Duchamp Foundation: Homage to R. Mutt: Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain 1917 and its Aftermath. You’ll want to clear your schedule for the month.
Tetsuya Yamada, Mr. and Mrs. Duchamp (transportable version), 2006, hand-thrown ceramic vase, ready-made urinal, 60 x 34 x 22 inches
Why is the date so precise? Because that date marks the 100th birthday of the rejection of this porcelain vessel for male fluids from the Independent Salon, New York in 1917. It is both the most famous ceramic in the world and the most important art object. It is, for me, the Mona Lisa of the Bathroom. You will note that it has the same enigmatic smile as Mona.
We are bringing all aspects of Cfile Campus to bear because it deals with something big from our readers’ point of view: the place, role and viability of the conceptual in contemporary ceramic art.
Folio will be an exhibition of contemporary homages to the Fountain by an array of major artists. Ostracon Journal will publish an anthology of key essays about the Fountain and some from contemporary works that pay tribute to the pissoir.
Tetsuya Yamada, Mr. and Mrs. Duchamp, 2004, ready-made urinal and hand-thrown ceramic vase, 18 x 8.5 x 8.5 inches. Click to see a larger image.
Forum will have leading scholars available to explain the work and contemporary critics to consider its impact on ceramics and art today.
The next Folio is an even bigger project in some ways: Raw: Tera Cruda in Contemporary Sculpture will be released in the Fall 2017. This edition will survey the top 25 sculptors using unfired clay as a primary medium.
Click here to claim your free 30 day trial of our campus!
Garth Clark is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of cfile.daily.
What do you think of our new projects in contemporary ceramic art scholarship? Let us know in the comments.
recommended reading:
Glyn Thompson : The Lady’s not the Gent’s
Well, Garth, I wouldn’t call it scholarship, because all the basic assumptions that underpin your account were contradicted by Duchamp himself, in two letters that he wrote, from New York, to his sister Suzanne in Paris, on 15 january 1916 and 11 April 1917. And what they tell us, inter alia, is that, as far as Duchamp was concerned, he did not submit the urinal, that was not a Readymade: and that’s just the start. Since the letters can be read on the Smithsonian Institution website, you don’t have to take my word for it. You’ll find them in the Archives of American Art, in the Jean Crotti papers.