Those a tad put off by the sight of five porcelain cartoon characters, each a-squat on the can, might be relieved to know of a tradition, of sorts. Robert Arneson, a mainstay of California funk art, once fashioned "Funk John" (1963), a toilet crudely represented in full scatological glory. It was an entry to an invitational from which it was rudely uninvited.
His spirit is afloat in the exhibition Not Teapots at UNLV's Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery through December 20. Here, Russell Biles has installed "U.S. Interest (Velma, Shaggy, Scooby, Fred, Daphne)," the five characters scrupulously reproduced in tones of gunmetal, Skivvies at ankles, each poring through a magazine that pictures them, in a less candid moment, on the cover. You can infer from the depiction on the back cover of a toilet and an American flag, and from the title of the work, a political critique. Celebrity, commodity, crap. Ouch.
It's almost too refined, too Koons, for Arneson, whose wit was more rugged. David Furman's "Dicknose," a title that begs little scrutiny, more clearly springs from it. Here we have a ceramic wall relief worthy of the Della Robbias, with a cartoony figure whose none-too-subtle proboscis is highlighted by the legend, "Hey, everybody, it's Dicknose!" in case you missed it.
Organized by UNLV art department chair Mark Burns and instructor Rebekah Bogard, Not Teapots strives to demonstrate that ceramic artists make more than attractively functional wares. As such, it stands as a counterpoint or extension of Jackpot, a show this spring at the Contemporary Arts Collective for which Burns served as juror, selecting teapots actual and fabulous from around the country.
Some artists in the earlier show stretched a bit to make "not teapots," but this show goes one better. It largely embraces the Arnesonian ethic of ribald incivility, from Tom Binger's tattoo-like clock, "Time Flyz," to John DeFazio's "Luxor Bong," a Vegasy, pharaonic water pipe with a six-shooter spout. Speaking of pipes, Burns offers "B.J.'s Pipe Dream," a wild distortion of a famed René Magritte painting—the pipe is veined and sprouts a twisted torso in smoke—that Arneson no doubt would have admired.
He also probably would have approved of Paul McMullan's "Lust" and "Spotlight," which twist the forms of kitschy molded ceramics—bulls, angels and such—into nearly organic, visceral agglomerations, partly glazed in glossy blood tones, partly in pale matte tones adorned with black clip-art designs.
But Arneson at times slipped from crude to rude, and some of this show's entries lamentably follow him down that road—for instance, Jason Huff's hamfisted characterizations of Michael Jackson and Don King.
Others pursue more lively ends. Kathy Garlock's untitled vessels seem like 1950s-style vases plucked from a shipwreck, encrusted with sparkling barnacles. Carrianne Henderson's "Stones Do Not Move Here" consists of a woman's head repeated four times, arrayed fanlike across a shelf, three iterations seemingly dreaming, accessing a rare mysticism. Bogard's untitled sculpture depicts a fantastic squid-like creature attacking, or maybe mating, another seaform.
Arneson represented a welcome infusion of jocularity into an art world a little too obsessed with itself—even, sometimes, the Pop artists who were his contemporaries. His talents often reached well beyond clever jesting into trenchant commentary and personal expression. But the legacy of crudeness that survives him ill-serves him. It betrays a continuing struggle for ceramic artists to transcend utility and decoration without descending into mere flippancy.
Chuck Twardy has written about art and architecture for several daily newspapers and for magazines such as Metropolis.