The Human Condition: The Stephen and Pamela Hootkin Collection Sept. 2014 | Page 42

in a journey by Ken Price that began when he was a
functional potter for nearly eight years in the 1950s.
In 1960 when Price had his first solo show with the Ferus
Gallery run by the legendary Irving Blum, he admitted
Kenneth Price, The Void That’s There or Perhaps Isn’t There, 1988.

that the vessel was still important to him but announced
that he no longer made pots, he wanted to make art about
pottery. That comment could sound evasive, an attempt

The exquisite work on this bench is an elegant use of

to dodge the craft bullet. But coming from Price it has

ceramics; images harking back to photographic portrait

authenticity. By the time of his solo show Price was not

plaques made for headstones in the Victorian era

part of the ceramics world (a place in which he felt alien),

(and today); and beautiful blends of life, nostalgia, and

but was a central player in one of the most important

mourning. Bole calls this work, “an attempt to cheat fate

twentieth-century art movements in America, Fetish Finish.

and live vicariously through the pretentiousness of your

It gave us not just Price, a gifted colorist, but a wave of

death marker.” 8

new California artists: Ed Keinholz, Ed Ruscha, John Mason,
Robert Irwin, Billy Al Bengston, Larry Bell, and Ed Moses—

NONE OF THE ABOVE
The last work is the one that belongs in the section
“none of the above.” While there is a lot of abstraction
in this collection, there is only one work that is not
figurative: Ken Price’s The Void That’s There or Perhaps
Isn’t There (1988).
I was going to say that this is the only example of pure
abstraction in the collection. But that is not true. Pure
abstraction means that it is non-objective in that it does
not draw from any known object. It is pure shape and
form without literal meaning. Price’s “blobs” that followed
did meet this criteria, but The Void is the very last work

many destined for international careers. As importantly,
Ferus presented Andy Warhol in his first gallery show,
and the stable included Ellsworth Kelly, Jasper Johns, Roy
Lichtenstein and Frank Stella, so Price was familiar with
the work, and a friend of the New York scene as well.
Price did not co-opt art for his ceramics, he lived it.
Peter Voulkos, Price’s teacher, was fond of saying, “once a
potter always a potter.” Certainly it took some time for Price
to either release himself from this form or just use up its
importance in his art. The Void has all of the components
of a vessel. It’s a large volumetric shape (the volume inside
is fictional, it’s near solid) and there is a mouth by which
to enter the space. But it is not a pot; it’s a sculpture, in
the same way that a sculpture of a chair is not a chair.

8 Ibid.

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