Techniken
- How it all started
An attempt to relate the appearance and early development of ceramics to the emergence of social and intellectual life.
In the way cultural life developed from ritual cults to organised religion, it is possible to demonstrate the development of ceramics parallel to it, from concrete observation and functionality to art in various "life cycles". It was always the wider opportunities to develop its potential in a larger context. - The Origins of Glazes
How nature assisted in their invention
Glazes in the West had their origins in the Middle East and Egypt. Without the arid climate in these regions and local geological and botanical conditions, they could not have been invented. Over a period of four millennia, the flux had to be transported to the glass former in the fire in the same way as the arid natural conditions did. It was only after this period that glaze could become established outside the Middle East in the form of lead glaze. In the Far East, glazes developed in entirely different natural geological and botanical circumstances. - Lost Knowledge Today
China's pioneering role in the development of hard-fired ceramics has been refuted by recent findings. In the 4th-3rd millennium B.C. the potters of northern Syria produced "metallic ware" of great hardness, which only made an appearance in China a thousand years later. From the mineral composition of the body, it is possible to determine a firing temperature of 1000-1100°C. A second type of ceramics from the 3rd millennium B.C., found in northern Syria, was extremely heat resistant and was used for cooking pots. It can be used for "fire bowls" for fires in gardens and on balconies. This type of ceramics is from the period in which the Sumerian king Gilgamesh lived in Uruk (28th-27th century B.C.). Both types can be produced in electric kilns. From a cuneiform glaze recipe from the Ashurbanipal's Library (669-627 B.C.), it is possible to reconstruct the materials and techniques used for the Ishtar Gate in Babylon (605-562 B.C.).
The essay consists of three parts which may be downloaded separately:
- The Evolution of Culture and Ceramics
Just as genes pass on the organic development of humankind according to the principles of Darwin's theory of natural selection, it is memes that pass on the elements of culture. In the interaction of the two evolutionary processes lies the creative act.
- Ability from Knowledge and Art from Ability are Outdated – What now?
All art forms derive from crafts. This is also true of ceramics. Where do we stand today at the beginning of the new century? Social psychology affords us deep insights into our situation.
- Neocraft – the movement for the renewal of the crafts
Craft is not satisfied with being assimilated in fine art; instead it is rediscovering its own special nature. As "Neocraft", it self-confidently sets itself apart from fine art and design.
- Creative Destruction
This theory of innovation, which had originally only been applied to society, expanded beyond the social sciences to become a general principle of historical development.
- Dislimitation
With regard to art, we see that ceramics overcomes its limitations and enters into the world of fine art, but art is also dislimiting itself from within.
- The hidden dragon
The Far Eastern attitude to ceramics has a static element to it, with change occurring within tradition. For us, this is also the case in the crafts. In contrast, art has a dynamic element. A decision in its favour is no longer a change in degree but an absolute one. It requires a different kind of creativity.
- Spirit of the age
It is expected of ceramics that it does justice to the demands of a civilised country to have cultural achievements that continually renew themselves.
- Born to be beautiful
- Knowledge, Certainty and Symbol
Semantic art can represent something figuratively which goes beyond what can be put in words. Symbols are semantic signs. In many ways, ceramics is developing in a direction that corresponds to Symbolism in the late 19
th century. This does not consist of symbolism alone but also of the relationship to history, technology and imagination. - Art and Design – Culture and Civilisation
Whereas in German there is a distinction between culture and civilisation, and also between art and design, in the Romance and Anglo-Saxon languages, no such distinction is made. There, design is applied rather to invention and drawing up plans, and civilisation applies to well-mannered behaviour. The far-sighted historical philosopher Oswald Spengler, who was one of the key players in defining the current concept of history, was in contrast of the opinion that civilisation was the final, decaying phase of culture.
- Chance as superior freedom
Chance appears as the final cause in micro-physics, astronomy and anthropology and it can also be this in art.
- A Bird's-Eye View of Ceramics
With a bird's-eye view, connections between technology and history become visible, especially with reference to the character of clay and its natural suitability for art and functionality and on the other hand to the conditions that determined its pathway through history. Ultimately it becomes clear how knowledge-from-experience developed into knowledge-from-research.
- Ceramics – the whole truth
The attachment to a material can not be art, the argument went from the art academies, to deny the ceramic the artworthiness. It is true that ceramic has its specificity in their binding to the nature, the substantive laws it is subject. But that is not the whole truth.
- Diversity – the feeling of now
When we speak of “new” ceramics, we mean its contribution to a free development of a culture that is in tune with the feeling of the times. Pluralism in politics and world affairs are reflected in the feeling of the contemporary era. We think that our own productivity is a sovereign product of our personality, whereas in fact it is subject to the dictates of the times.
- Applied Art
The kind of art that by definition sees its task in being applied to an object is emancipating itself from this limitation. It is surrendering functionality to the field of design, and thus the responsibility for functionality too. Its specific abilities, with which its journey began, are becoming more spiritual and issue into fine art.
- Ceramics & Experience
In 1905, Wihelm Dilthey wrote Poetry and Experience. Experience becomes comprehension. It does in ceramics too. What could we say about this phenomenon when we mean understanding clay?
- The Realism of the Unreal
Companions of the Creator of the world are in the ideas of ancient cultures creatures who embody noble qualities. There are poetic inventions about the relationships in the world.
- Where does art come from?
The art of the craft comes from the skill. The art of the integration into the culture comes from the instinctive feeling for art. The recreational Art is a new kind of art of the everyday world.
- Geopsyche - The three souls of art in the globality
How do the differences in ceramics in the Far East, the West and in Africa come about? Thinking environmentally opens up a vista on the world.
- God's Clay
Ancient peoples used to believe that humanity had been created from clay, for they saw how it was possible to recreate animate nature from the inanimate material.
- I can do better – Creative Dissatisfaction
In no other field of the arts is there a greater sense of togetherness than in ceramics. It is like a family business, a company in which people not only just do their job but is also concerned that the whole enterprise is sound and it will continue to be so in future.
- Bioceramology: Ceramics is ‘bio’
The definition of ‘bio’ matches the definition of ceramics perfectly because it is related to nature. But animals make pots and nests from clay too. They could have been the mentors of the potters.
- Enlightment
The creative optimism that permeated the Enlightenment era shone its light in all areas of thought, research, production technologies and art as well as raising ceramics to new heights. Looking back into the past does not serve pure cognition but presses us towards the future, into the third Enlightenment, which we have already stumbled into.
- Form follows
Ceramics at Burg Giebichenstein retained its independence as a subject of study, whereas at other art schools it was merged with sculpture or industrial design. As it transpires, the special nature of ceramics has lived up to its status of independence.
- Departures
The emancipation of technical possibilities in the digital revolution, which surpasses historical precedents, creates an atmosphere of a new departure, which may prove to be an opportunity for ceramics.
- The Great Big Wonder World of Art
Talk given at opening of the exhibition at Schloss Doberlug on 19 March 2016
- Laws
Comparisons between related cultures show that there are parallels between certain creative processes in making things. Cultural research formulates them as laws in the evolutionary development of culture.
- Japan: Belief and Ceramics
Japanese ceramics is admired all over the world. Its individuality is said to be based on religion. If we try to get to the bottom of this formula of cause and effect, we can discover our own cultural identity.
- Sense and Purpose
In no other area of art or creativity are humans led beyond the pure activity to a deepening of their self conception other than in ceramics. Gradually, the sense of elation at a creative idea makes way for questions about sense and purpose.
- Faster, further, higher
Social and cultural change in the history of humankind can be deduced from ceramics. It is an example of the potency of Olympic virtues in evolution.
- Where we stand in our culture society
Culture is what people make of themselves and their world. The age in which everyone could show what they were really made of is coming to a close. It is becoming more contemplative and asking what will happen next. Anyone who is concerned about the future of ceramics will not be unmoved by this question.
- Intellect or gut feeling
In no other creative area does one find such a close national and worldwide bond among its participants as in ceramics, or such a progressive motion from experience to curiosity and cognition, from received wisdom to innovation.
- Our journey
In no other creative area does one find such a close national and worldwide bond among its participants as in ceramics, or such a progressive motion from experience to curiosity and cognition, from received wisdom to innovation.
- Light
“It is our endeavour to hold on to the spark of light that bursts forth everywhere from life where eternity touches time.” Thus spoke Friedrich von Schiller two hundred years ago. Since then we have scientifically extended our artistic field of activity, and yet light remains a mystery. For the artist, not only full of admiration but also an effective force.
- Art and Religion
We strive to learn about the creation of the world and of life, and about all the historic events which have occurred. We are overflowing with amazement about what we have come to know about the history of mankind. The transformation in knowledge and skill sweeps us along, even if we were not involved in how it developed.
- Interview with Gustav Weiß
Hedwig Bollhagen Museum Velten, International Museum Day on 21 May 2017
- Beauty in the brain
A new branch of science is neuroaesthetics. But what expectations can the creator of new things in the world have of brain research?
- Brotlose Kunst
The artistic value of art is not the value for which it can be sold and which makes a profit for gallery owners, art dealers and auction houses. Artists have a vision. For this they risk the sacrifices which constitute their life and which they stand by. To the artist, fulfilling this vision is the value. This absence of material worth equates with a freedom from practical usefulness. Where this stops, a new kind of usefulness emerges, in the fields of the symbols, decoration and prestige.
- Ceramics and Digitality
A Chinese proverb says, “When the winds of change are blowing, some people build walls, others windmills.” The wind of digitality has to change ceramics if it is to continue to develop.
- Creative Coincidence
How should we imagine a notion emerging, an idea that we want to put into shape? What are all the things that condense to form an image? Which part of this is thinking inspired by the surroundings and which part is down to redisposition?
- The World of Things
What we make with out hands or with the aid of tools or machines are things. They have their history that goes back to the Stone Age. We may assume that the creation of things is accompanied by a need to make them beautiful, true to nature or useful.
- Possibilities
Culture is exclusively what occurs. Without visions of the future. It will remain that way as long as it is a private matter without an awareness of the whole.
- Beauty – with meaning
You did not come into the world as a herbivorous giraffe, nor as a carnivorous lion. You are a domesticated omnivore, rewarded for his specialised work with pieces of silver. Use your brain; know thyself!
- Interested Pleasure
The concept of disinterested pleasure coined by Immanuel Kant, expresses the fine artist’s disquiet that their works may be perceived as beautiful en passant but that they provoke no deeper interest. In the 229 years that have subsequently passed there have been many prophecies of an increasing intellectualisation of society, and now in the great galleries of the world the prototype of a philosophical aesthetic is emerging. it is the intellectualism of art that interests.
- Our World
Our world moves forward with an increase in intellectuality and freedom. With this, the optimism of the Enlightenment is fulfilled. But our wold is too complicated to be satisfied with that.
- Thinking
“The greatest happiness for the thinking person is to have explored the explorable and to venerate in equanimity that which cannot be explored”, wrote Goethe in his Maxims and Reflections.