Ken Price Sculpture - Retrospective - Essay Example

Museum Report Ken Price sculpture: A retrospective of the work Ken Price sculpture: A retrospective is an art displayed at the Los Angeles Museum of Arts that epitomizes the artist’s perfection in sculpturing. Additionally, the artifact portrays his diverse and in-depth analysis of specific features of the society that he criticizes through the sculpture. The sculpture therefore embodies the development and revolutionary nature of the art as the artists strives to maintain originality while using the readily available material in the society. Ceramics have provided artists with an effective medium through which to express their feelings and thoughts about the society. Artists use ceramics to develop various sculptures that criticize the social and cultural features of the society. Some of the best ceramics artifacts on display in museums today harbor rich cultural and social history of various societies. The works of Ken Price has remained on display at the Los Angeles Museum of Arts. The multicolored sculpture glows in the lights of the display thereby depicting the lustrous nature of the carvings. The smooth flowing edges and curves of the sculpture portray the malleable nature of ceramics the artist manipulates thereby developing the work. Arts provide people with effective platform on which to criticize the developments in the society. In doing this, arts provide artists with the opportunity to maintain a relative criticisms of the various cultural and social developments in the society. The feature of arts presents a daunting task to the artists who must therefore develop an intriguing work but maintain an originality in their works. Ken Price achieves this in his sculpture, which oozes both uniqueness and originality. An evaluation of the material presence The unique sculpture has several molten like lumps that depict the artist’s creativity. As described above, the smooth flowing curves that appear as molten lumps are carefully done curving on the ceramic materials. The artists maintain the caution capable of achieving the illusion of the curves on the ceramic material. The artist curves the intricate shapes of the artifact from the delicate ceramic materials thereby developing the artifact before heating it in order to achieve the strength and longevity the artifact enjoys at the display to date. The artist employs a combination of artistic techniques in order to achieve the finished artifact on display at the museum today. The soft ceramic clay helps with the molding process; wet ceramic clay is not only ductile but also equally plastic in nature. This makes ceramics better than clay in the creation of the artifacts. After molding the raw ceramic clay, the artists employs effective forming techniques to develop the shapes that resemble the molten lumps in the sculpture. After achieving the perfect shape of the sculpture, the artist employs effective surface treatment technique including heating the raw material and oiling in order to achieve the glowing finish the artifact enjoys at the museum today. Surface treatment is an essential process that contributes to the quality of the finished artifact. Price achieves the multicolored smooth finish by painting the artifact after heating it thereby earning the glow it enjoys (Watt and Prudence 22). Influence of the work Just as with any other artifact in the contemporary society, the artifact analyses the portrayal of fundamental features of the society. Several artists, historians and critics of such works have criticized and evaluated the success of the hugely celebrated artifact. Cults and social groupings are common affairs in most societies in the contemporary society. Price therefore develops a cultic artifact with the view of portraying the essence of cults and social groupings in the society. However, such social groupings are always secretive thereby denying the public more information concerning their functionality. With this understanding, the artist therefore exhibits the secretive feature of cults and such societies by developing a unique sculpture and leaves it open for interpretation. Price himself did not try to explain the artifact and its underlying message. The sculpture at the Los Angeles museum of art therefore retains a degree of secrecy around it. Cults and secret societies in the contemporary society exhibit cultural, social and political features since most of such groupings have interests in the governance and the prevailing features of the society. The sculpture by Price exhibits the social, cultural and political features of the society. The artist uses readily available materials to create the artifact. While the artifact does not reveal much owing to its secretive nature, the artifact reveals the economic quality through the artifact’s careful selection of materials and the techniques he employs in developing the artifact. Furthermore, the artifact retains a political undertone in its secretive nature. Politics is often ambiguous yet very essential in the governance of a country. The ambiguity of politics arises from the fact that it features in every aspect of humanity albeit in smaller quantities in some. Politics results in the governance of a nation implying that despite its ambiguity, it influences the lives of everyone in the country. The artifact thus exhibits a level of ambiguity as the one exhibited by politics. Interpretation of the work Price’s works are often interesting owing to the artist’s ability to develop unique works thereby retaining the messages of most of such works. Ken Price sculpture: A retrospective is one such interesting work in which the artists retains a virtue of secrecy in the work while ensuring relevance with the contemporary society, which he targets as his audience and criticizes. Understanding the artifact requires literary knowledge coupled with an ability to criticize such works. Literature is an essential type of art that also seeks to criticize the society but through literature (Lauria and Gretchen 41). Both skills help an audience investigate for specific features of the artifact before comparing and relating such with the prevailing features of the targeted society. In criticizing and analyzing an artifact such as the one in the case requires an in-depth analysis of the features of the artifact loved by the audience and therefore relating such to the society in order to decipher the intended message. Among the features of the artifact, Ken Price sculpture: A retrospective included the molten like slumps despite the use of ceramics in creating the artifact. Additionally, the color combination coupled with the smooth glowing finish earns the artifact the attention the artist had anticipated. The secretive nature of the artifact earns the artifact a feature of ambiguity thereby making it easier to relate with the social and political features of the society. by analyzing such features, it becomes possible to establish the features that attract the audience to such artifacts and the messages concealed by the artists. The messages are their criticisms of the society and are therefore important features of the artifacts that the audience must always strive to understand when evaluating an artifact. Image of Ken Price sculpture: A retrospective. A ceramic work displayed at the Los Angeles Museum of Arts Works cited Lauria, Jo, and Gretchen Adkins. Color and Fire: Defining Moments in Studio Ceramics, 1950 2000 : Selections from the Smits Collection and Related Works at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Los Angeles, Calif: LACMA in association with Rizzoli International Publications, 2000. Print. Watt, James C. Y, and Prudence O. Harper. China: Dawn of a Golden Age, 200-750 Ad. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004. Print. Read More