Abstract:

The discussions about the identity/status of ceramic art come up relatively heavily after 1980 in Turkey. A theory developed by Attila Galatalı during this period is the first comprehensive study aimed at identifying the modern ceramic art in Turkey. The name of Herbert Read and his approach that sees pottery as a plastic art in its most abstract form occupy an important place both in this theory and in other discourses on ceramic art. Some of Read's statements are repeated insistently for sculptural, even conceptual ceramics. However, what Read tried to include in modern art in the 1930s is not ceramic but pottery. Because in the early 20th century England, "pottery" was tried to be incorporated to the modern art through its pure, abstract structure and this approach developed on the ground prepared by the "egalitarian" view of the formalist aesthetics that flourished in the same country. Therefore, Read's discourses specific to pottery were clearly misunderstood in the Turkish art scene and the expressions he did not actually say were attributed to the British thinker. Rather than a simple translation error, it appears that the situation has been caused by the fact that the modernization process of art pottery in the early 20th century is not sufficiently known in Turkey.

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