Powerful Objects
John Mason's Vertical Sculptures
Primitive. Raw. Imposing. These are just a few words that have been used to describe John Mason’s groundbreaking Vertical Sculptures. Sometimes overshadowed by the work of his contemporaries, Peter Voulkos and Ken Price, Mason was one of the vanguard of ceramists responsible for reshaping the ceramics field in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He studied under Voulkos at Otis Institute and, in 1957, the two men moved into a shared studio on Glendale Blvd. which they shared until 1959 and where Mason remained until 1965. It was in those intervening years that Mason—inspired by Voulkos’ teachings and catalyzed by his own prodigious creative impulses—carved his own stylistic path.
Breaking free of established pottery traditions, he explained in a 2017 interview: “It wasn’t about tapping into an existing structure and continuing it. It was like fabricating something fresh.”
Unlike Voulkos and Price, Mason eschewed the potting wheel, opting instead to explore clay as a truly sculptural, hands-on medium. Breaking free of established pottery traditions, he explained in a 2017 interview: “It wasn’t about tapping into an existing structure and continuing it. It was like fabricating something fresh.” Using nothing but his own physical strength, Mason set about pushing, creasing, crushing, and paddling large slabs of clay onto the floor for what would develop into massive wall sculptures. For perhaps his most famous of these, Blue Wall (1959), he built parts of the work around a central axis; the method was akin to a match striking a new creative fire in Mason’s mind.
Untitled (Vertical Sculpture) is a tangible reminder of not only its creator’s genius, but also a watershed moment in the history of ceramic art.
Mason began creating what became his Vertical Sculpture series, monumental totems of clay built around a wooden post. Using this central axis, he worked each sculpture in rotation, slamming pieces of freshly mixed clay onto the armature and then manipulating them with his hands and blunt tools. After applying a muted glaze palette, often in tones of gray, cobalt, white or black, he fired them, burning away the wooden post within. The resulting works are powerful meditations on symmetry, mass, modularity, and rotation, common themes in the artist’s oeuvre that he revisited consistently throughout his career but always in innovative, unexpected ways. Mason exhibited his revolutionary wall installations and Vertical Sculptures in a one-man show at Pasadena Art Museum in 1960, which included the present lot.
Untitled (Vertical Sculpture) is a tangible reminder of not only its creator’s genius, but also a watershed moment in the history of ceramic art. Mason reflected on those years in a 1997 interview, saying: “There was a feeling that the time had come to do something else. The question was, what it would be, what form it would take and who would do it?” The present work, along with his countless other inventive creations during that era, was the answer.
People sometimes think I have gone through big stylistic shifts. But underlying them all is the first thing that attracted me: the power that an object can have. How it can draw you into it, but not reveal itself. How it can always be elusive in some way, so people want to come back and see it again.
John Mason
Along with his contemporary, Peter Voulkos, John Mason was one of the most important figures in American post-war ceramics. Born in Nebraska and raised in Nevada, Mason moved to Los Angeles when he was 22 to enroll at the Los Angeles Art Institute (now the Otis College of Art and Design) and then studied with Susan Peterson at the Chouinard Art Institute. In 1954, LAAI hired Peter Voulkos to head the ceramics department, where Mason would study at night after working independently during the day.
In 1957, Mason and Voulkos moved to a shared studio on Glendale Blvd. and acquired a large kiln, which they shared until 1959 and where Mason remained until 1965. During these years, Mason experimented freely with his chosen medium, clay, opting to work entirely by hand sans potter’s wheel. He pushed clay to its limits, developing innovative techniques and firing methods in a variety of sculptural modes from totemic vertical sculptures to monumental wall reliefs. The themes of his work—symmetry, rotation, mass, and integration of color and form—were established during this time and would be revisited throughout his career in consistently innovative and exciting ways. Mason’s considerable achievements helped transform clay from craft to fine art and opened the public’s eyes, both within and outside of the art world, to the possibilities of the medium.
Mason was, in addition to being a prolific artist, a respected educator. He taught part-time at Pomona College in Claremont from 1960 until 1967 followed by the University of California, Irvine where he was a key part of the group responsible for building a ceramics department. He remained at UC Irvine until 1974 and served as Chairman of the ceramics department his last year. Mason’s final academic position was at Hunter College in New York where he taught until retiring in 1985 to become a full-time studio artist again. Upon his return to Los Angeles, he returned to clay and worked well into his 80s, firing pottery in the same large kiln that he and Voulkos had built together in 1957.
Mason’s work was exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions throughout his career and can be found in numerous permanent collections including the American Craft Museum, New York; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Norton Simon Museum of Art, Pasadena, CA, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art among others.
Auction Results John Mason
