The topic of my exhibition is “Walking through the Space Time”, which has a connection with “the Shape of Time” by George Kubler’s theory: “Everything made now is either a replica or a variant of something made a little time ago and so on back without break to the first morning of human time.①” (George Kubler, The Shape of Time, page 2) In The Shape of Time, George Kubler showed that our knowledge of the distant past relied mainly upon the visible products of man's industry. In contrast, the art of temporal expression, music, talk and ritual, survive only in the expression of remote communities. Thus it is that our working proof of distant peoples is generally of the visual kind, existing in time and space, rather than aural or verbal experiences in time and sound. ①(George Kubler, The Shape of Time, page 2)My integrative exhibition includes three main parts. These works address a wide range of issues, from the personal to the political, and employ both the languages of abstraction and representation. I try to let people find clues and connections between different kinds of art work which come from different cultural backgrounds and different times, as well as the connections between art work and George Kubler’s theory.

　　The first part I want to show is Richard Hirsch’s tripod vessels (picture 1) and Chinese ancient cooking vessels (ding tripods) with three legs (picture 2). Although these things come from different times and different places, they have close connections with each other.

　　Richard Hirsch was born in New York City in 1944. He attended the State University of New York at New Paltz (B.S., 1966) and studied ceramics at the school for American Craftsmen, Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester, New York (MFA, 1971). To add to the challenge, Richard Hirsch chose the raku process to express his ideas, and has ever since been steadily altering, expanding, and refining its definition. He spent a long time making a series of works named Tripod Vessels, which are low-fired pieces. He made his pieces by raku, underglazes, and metallic sulfates. (picture 3) Richard Hirsch said that he also liked to have things made by other people. He loves ancient pots, old Japanese iron tea vessels, and Chinese bronzes. He collected these things just because these objects were very intimate, and so much a part of the human spirit. This helped his vision to see other things. Actually, it influenced him a lot in terms of the forms of his work. The surface of his work is very soft and colorful, like the earth. And the ceramic material itself could easily make us recall functional pots or vessels from long ago. But here, all his works are unfunctional. Therefore, we could get a new way to understand his work, which makes us fresh.

　　Ding tripods have a long traditional history in China. The Shang and Western Zhou dynasties are generally regarded as periods which produced some of the finest ancient Chinese bronzes, including ding tripods and other various types of containers for solid food and wine. Most bronze pieces have three legs. The Big Ke Ding (picture 4) is a bronze ware produced in the Western Zhou Dynasty. It was excavated in Shanxi Province in 1890. It weighs 201.5 kilograms. An inscription of 290 characters on the inside wall can be divided into two paragraphs. In the first paragraph, a big aristocrat named Ke paid much tribute to his grandfather Si Hua Fu for his deeds in assisting the Zhou monarch. He was also made a high ranking official because of his ancestor’s merits. The second paragraph recorded the event of a bestowal by the Zhou monarch to Ke of official's clothes, many slaves and large tracts of land. Thus, he cast the Big Ke Ding and put it in the ancestral temple as an article of sacrificial rites.②

　　(History of ancient Chinese bronze) Long inscriptions on the inside walls were an important feature of the bronze castings in the Western Zhou Dynasty. They have an important link with the development of the Chinese characters. It also has very high artistic value.

　　This jue tripods (picture 5), or ritual tripod, was probably used for heating and serving wine. It resembles the simple and unadorned bronzes, just preceding the Shang Dynasty. It was a time when bronze casting appears to be somewhat tentative and experimental.

　　Without doubt, we could find something in common among these objects, mainly in terms of the form. As a matter of fact, Richard Hirsch once gave a lecture of his work in Sculpture Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in China several years ago. So I got to know that, during the past ten years, he visited China for several times to study the Chinese ancient bronze vessels. And in his work on tripods vessels, he tried to find as many ways as he could to make tripod vessels. By raku, he finally found his personal style. Ultimately, he created excellent work.

　　The second part I want to show is Akio Takamori’s work, and tomb figures of Tang Dynasty, which comes from ancient China. These objects have no certain connections with each other, but they are all the reflections of their own historical culture.

　　Akio Takamori is a Japanese artist. His work has always been figurative, based on the human body and expressive of human emotion and sensuality. These sculptures are physical remembrances of the people who populated the artist’s childhood in post-World War II Japan. The form of his work draws from Japanese Haniwa and Chinese Qin-dynasty tomb figures, and the painted details parallel the expert and flowing lines in the 18th and 19th century Japanese ukiyoe wood block prints. “When I’m building, I’m aware of how much to articulate. If there’s too much articulation, there’s not enough space to render illusion.”③ ( Kate Bonansnga, page 56) The intricate patterns in the clothing on his figures offer Takamori ample opportunity to exercise his proficient drawing skills. They also offer the viewer another source of information about the depicted subject. In one pairing, for example, two middle-aged women lean toward one another exchanging a secret (picture 6). One wears striped trousers with a patterned shirt, and carries on her back a satchel created from fabric decorated with a customary “octopus” pattern of abstracted swirls. The other wears tabi or white socks, with thongs, another traditional Japanese fashion.

　　The Tang Dynasty, which maintained its rule for nearly 300 years, is probably the most well-known dynasty in Chinese history. During the Tang Dynasties, while consummating the pragmatic functions of pottery and porcelain, people began to put emphasis on portraying scenes of life. They produced vivid art works of manors, servants, officials, warriors, poultry and livestock etc. When they died, these works of art would be buried into their tombs so that they could fulfill their long-cherished wishes in the nether world. The burial objects displayed here (picture 7) represent the features of the grand style of the prosperous Tang Dynasties. Every dynasty has its own Aesthetic criterion. During Tang Dynasty, fatness is the Aesthetic for women figures. This means rich and prosperous. This piece is earthenware with pigment. Here, we could find this woman tomb figure is fat. This is the typical style of Tang Dynasty in terms of Ceramic figures. All these figure pieces are low fired with earthen ware.

　　By exhibiting these works together, we could easily find something in common. These works represented the people’s life in the past. They represented their own respective cultures. For us, we could learn from the tradition, but we have to find our own signals and codes to make our art work.

　　The last part I chose is Robert Arneson’s work, his self-portrait and the statues of Buddha which come from ancient China. I would like to exhibit these three different works together, just because they have some internal connections, although, they look like they have no relationship between each other on the surface. Here, I just want to talk about portraits mostly by showing these pieces.

　　Robert Arneson is an American artist, Born in Benicia, California in 1930. He made a lot of ceramic pieces of his self-portrait. He likes drawing very much, even when he was a child. Robert Arneson was encouraged by his father to draw. He became a proficient draftsman early in life and drew cartoons for a local newspaper as a teenager.④ I believe that drawing influences his sculpture a lot. Moreover, Arneson was greatly influenced by the expressionist work of fellow Californian Peter Voulkos, who had studied Pablo Picasso's works in clay. This influence stimulated Arneson to be more adventurous and to break through previously established sculptural boundaries. Arneson rejected the idea that ceramic artists produce only utilitarian or decorative items. He began creating non-functional clay pieces, contradicting the more formal traditions previously associated with this medium. ⑤ ( Arneson and Politics, Steven A. Nash, page 20) Later, He created a number of self-portraits using photographs, mirrors, and drawings; Each one seemed to reveal a new identity. Although by definition self-referential, the ironic and humorous self-portraits were used as vehicles to present universal concepts and feelings. In this funny and defiant self-portrait (picture 8), Arneson shows the “California artist” as everything that distant observers on the East Cost would expect. His arm folded, Arneson wears a crumpled Levi jacket that hangs open, exposing his bare torso underneath and his protruding stomach. A pair of sunglasses blank out the eyes, which as we see on closer inspection are only sockets opening back into the recesses of an empty head, its interior painted blue to suggest the California sky. The sculpture’s pedestal is crumbling at its corner, as if poorly made, with a marijuana plant growing up one side and a beer bottle discarded along the other. The sculpture has its sensuous side as well. The right coloration looks very nice under the sun.

　　It was the period from the dawn of the later Han dynasty (25-220 CE) to the fall of the Western Chin dynasty (265-317 CE) to the Huns that Buddhism was introduced into China by immigrants from Persia, Central Asia, and India. During this time, Buddhism was at first considered an insignificant cult practiced by immigrants or a foreign corruption of Taoism, but did finally assert its own independent identity as it drew more attention from native Chinese followers. ⑥ (History of Chinese Buddhism, page 13)

　　In order to maintain their rule, the rulers let a lot of artisans make Buddha statues. During Northern dynasty and Southern dynasty, a lot of Buddha statues were carved in high mountains. Tang dynasty is the second peak time to make Buddha statues. As I mentioned above, the fatness was still the typical characteristic at that time. This Buddha statue (picture 9) was made during Xi Wei dynasty. I took this picture when I visited the Maiji Mountain Grotto. I spent half a month studying the Buddha sculptures there. After careful studying, I found that this one is very excellent. I believed that the artisan who carved this Buddha sculpture must be a faithful Buddhist. We could see that the face of the statue is very kind; the technique is also skilful. According to the textual research by historians, the face of this statue is really like the people who lived in that time.

　　I exhibit these works together because I found something in common between them in terms of the way they chose to convey their ideas and dreams. Robert Arneson conveyed his ideas by his self-portrait, which was his attitude toward life, society and politics. The artisans who made the Buddha sculptures conveyed their dreams and faith by these statues in the same way as Robert Arneson did. Besides, both of their works reflected the typical histories and politics at the time they lived. Moreover, Robert Arneson used himself as a model to create his work. Similarly, the artisand had their models to make the Buddha sculptures. The only difference is that the models for Buddha sculptures were not idiographic, just the ordinary people who lived at that time. But sometimes, the artisans did use themselves as models to make Buddha sculptures in terms of the eyes, ears, noses, or mouths, maybe the whole face. Because in ancient China, the artisan’s statuses were very low, they didn’t dare to make their self-portraits as Buddha sculptures outwardly. Otherwise, they could lose their heads. Just the emperors had the right to make themselves portraits. The pity is that we don’t even know the names of those who made lots of excellent Buddha sculptures.

　　In conclusion, everything made now is either a replica or a variant of something made a little time ago and so on back without break to the first morning of human time.① (George Kubler, The Shape of Time, page 2). In “the shape of time”, I was very interested in Self-Signals and Adherent Signals. I understood in this way, maybe it is not a right way, but it is my way to try to understand George Kubler’s theory. I believe Self-signals are more important than adherent signals to artists. Although Kubler said that the relationship between self-signals and adherent signals is very compact, they impact each other, the existential value of work of art cannot be extracted from the adherent signals alone, nor from the self-signals alone. ⑦(George Kubler, The Shape of Time, page 2) I believe art itself has its own language, for ceramic sculptures, it has its own unique way to convey artist’s ideas. I think the unique way is shape, space and glazes. As a good ceramic sculpture, these three ingredients could say much more than other forms just like characters. By this view, I would say the shape, the space and the glazes are self-signals, and characters are adherent signals.

　　By this exhibition, I tried to let people get a better understanding about the relationship between art work and society, the history, and people’s real life. For us, we should try our best to find our own way to make our work. In other words, we should find our own code to convey our ideas. Richard Hirsch used earthenware and the raku process to make his pieces. By this way, the surfaces of his work are very soft, just like the earth. Both Akio Takamori and Robert Arneson have their own way to make their work. Therefore, I really hope we could learn from them in terms of the way they looked at the world, the way they thought about their own work, and the way they conveyed their ideas. After all these, I hope we could get a more clear way to look on our own work, by hard work and our diligence, our dreams to be excellent artists will come true in the future.

Hongwei write in Alfred

December, 2005

　　Bibliography

　　① George Kubler, The Shape of Time, page 2

　　② History of ancient Chinese bronze

　　③ Kate Bonansnga, page 56

　　④ ⑤ Arneson and Politics, Steven A. Nash, page 20

　　⑥ History of Chinese Buddhism, page 13

　　⑦ George Kubler, The Shape of Time, page 2