Books by Martha Drexler Lynn and Complete Book Reviews
At present Cfilers (the proper noun our members have called for themselves. we love it!) can dialogue and learn with each other. Starting today, writer Martha Drexler Lynn volition be taking questions about her recent book in our new C-Forum, a coming together hall for the global ceramics community. If you are already a cfile.member, view the forum, or begin your 30-twenty-four hour period free trial of cfile.campus!
Garth Clark's review of Lynn'south piece of work,American Studio Ceramics: Innovation and Identity, 1940-1979 follows:
American Studio Ceramics: Innovation and Identity 1940-1979
Lynn, Martha Drexler
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016
Book publishers have an important give-and-take they frequently invoke: heft. The term acknowledges a book's materiality. It's the first affair you observe, other than the title, when you pull a volume from the shelf.
Is information technology too light, also heavy, does it balance in the manus, and what is the texture similar? This can project substance or frivolity or warn you when a book is too oddly shaped to be taken to bed or to fit in whatever bookshelf (i.e. could be over-designed at expense of content).
The heft for Martha Drexler Lynn's "American Studio Ceramics: Innovation and Identity 1940 to 1979" is perfect. It demonstrates gravitas, which is backed up by the sterling inquiry in the volume. It also says "working book" due to the cut out index indents, old fashioned and quaint, only instructive.
It is also a rare book for ceramics: an actual textbook. Aye, it is pretty enough to exist a coffee table book as well. Merely that is where the very few reviewers who have not been seduced seem to get it wrong.
They review it every bit though it is a pic book, designed to give 1 a quick read and lots of images. Pictures abound but bated from occasional full page images they tend to be smaller, then the book can pack more content between the covers.
The difficulty with textbooks, though, is ofttimes the text; numbing in detail, pedantic about minor facts and lacking in verse, resulting in a read as dry equally toast.
Lynn is a highly readable writer. The flow keeps one involved and she has a way of laying out circuitous narratives in a mode that gives the required density of content without condign leaden. She achieves this through rock solid scholarship and familiarity with her subject. Her grasp goes across professionalism. She is also a fan of the genre (a ceramics collector of avant-garde Japanese ceramics) and that shows in visual-verbal intimacy. And lastly, in that location is a humor that it subtle, often wicked and it twinkles through at times. In other words, the book is imbued with a seductive humanity.
I reviewer carped that it is at times repetitive. This is true. But for a very pragmatic reason. Textbooks are not read like novels, they are picked at, read in bursts and set bated, scoured for specific data. That means that it makes sense for comments to exist reprised at different points then information one encounters is contextualized over again at that moment.
More reason for rejoicing is that this is a history of modern and contemporary studio pottery—pots, vessels—something as well ofttimes overlooked because of the supposed greater glamour and "artiness" of sculptural ceramics. The latter makes an appearance at the end of the book but it is not where the poly peptide volition be found.
This allows for Lynn to consider a franchise with further books of the same depth on ceramic fugitive fine art and abstraction: ideally two separate volumes. And so there is American Studio Ceramics 1980 to the Present. I can't wait.
I highly recommend this work for all libraries, ceramists and ceramophiles. Information technology should besides be an essential text book at art schools, in design courses and for the modern decorative arts. This is a fine gift to the field, a long-term companion for ceramic addicts.
Garth Clark is the Chief Editor of cfile.daily.
Starting today, writer Martha Drexler Lynn volition be taking questions well-nigh her recent book in our new C-Forum, a meeting hall for the global ceramics community. If you are already a cfile.fellow member, view the forum, or begin your 30-solar day costless trial of cfile.campus!
Source: https://cfileonline.org/books-drexler-lynns-new-ceramic-history-textbook-includes-subtle-humor-and-humanity/
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