Suzuki Osamu (1926–2001)
Face of Kana
Ceramic
Stamped “su” on the bottom
With a box signed by the artist (1965)
W18 x H18.4 cm
Stamped “su” on the bottom
With a box signed by the artist (1965)
W18 x H18.4 cm
Exhibitions
Solo Exhibition. Osaka: Yodo Gallery, 1965.Literature
Suzuki Osamu tōgei sakuhinshū. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1982.
This work features hiragana characters rendered in black on Shigaraki clay. It was exhibited at the Yodo Gallery in Osaka from March 22 to 27, 1965, in Sōdeisha: Suzuki Osamu Ceramics Exhibition.
Yagi Kazuo created Vase with Two Small Mouths in 1950, Suzuki Osamu presented Vase with Two Heads in 1951, and Yamada Hikaru presented Vase with Two Mouths in 1952. By 1954, Yagi Kazuo, Suzuki Osamu, Kumakura Junkichi, and others within Sōdeisha were creating works with multiple mouths. Meanwhile, Hayashi Yasuo’s Kumo / Cloud (1948) is renowned as a mouthless ceramic work. As objects divorced from craft—based not on traditional forms but on the artist’s expression of their own inner world—obuje-yaki (“object ceramics”) emerged. By acquiring multiple mouths or eliminating the mouth altogether, these craft works came to reject their very status as functional vessels.
Suzuki Osamu remarked, “Even now I make both objects and vessels, but until 1963 it seems I hadn’t clearly resolved which of the two I was making.” As he suggests, consider his 1963 works Vase with Kana and Clay Mask of Numbers, in which kana and numerals are applied like patterns to both vessels and objects. In 1965, however, a work titled Deizō (clay statue) emerged as a pure object. Shortly thereafter, Suzuki presented the present work, Face of Kana, in an exhibition. Face of Kana elucidates the significance of the birth of Deizō, for it is a work that, while forming a mouth, negates its utility, thereby establishing a new significance as an object. Suzuki himself disliked the term “object” and used instead the words deizō and later deishō (clay image) to designate an infinite world of sculptural form. When the concave surface is taken as the front and the area corresponding to the mouth is positioned below, the mouth of this work appears to vanish. Suzuki’s signature character su is stamped on the reverse of the concave front, in the left corner of the mouthed surface. By rendering the conventional mouth invisible, he created a new world that possesses a mouth yet denies its use.
Suzuki Osamu (ceramist; 1926–2001)
Born in Kyoto to a family of ceramists. With like-minded artists Yagi Kazuo, Yamada Hikaru, and others, he co-founded the avant-garde ceramic group Sōdei-sha (Crawling through Mud Association) in 1948. Suzuki challenged the utilitarian attitude of traditional ceramics with his non-functional objects which he termed deizō or deishō (“clay figures” or “clay forms”). He served as a professor at the Kyoto City University of the Arts and was honored with the Asahi Award of Excellence in 1999.
Yagi Kazuo created Vase with Two Small Mouths in 1950, Suzuki Osamu presented Vase with Two Heads in 1951, and Yamada Hikaru presented Vase with Two Mouths in 1952. By 1954, Yagi Kazuo, Suzuki Osamu, Kumakura Junkichi, and others within Sōdeisha were creating works with multiple mouths. Meanwhile, Hayashi Yasuo’s Kumo / Cloud (1948) is renowned as a mouthless ceramic work. As objects divorced from craft—based not on traditional forms but on the artist’s expression of their own inner world—obuje-yaki (“object ceramics”) emerged. By acquiring multiple mouths or eliminating the mouth altogether, these craft works came to reject their very status as functional vessels.
Suzuki Osamu remarked, “Even now I make both objects and vessels, but until 1963 it seems I hadn’t clearly resolved which of the two I was making.” As he suggests, consider his 1963 works Vase with Kana and Clay Mask of Numbers, in which kana and numerals are applied like patterns to both vessels and objects. In 1965, however, a work titled Deizō (clay statue) emerged as a pure object. Shortly thereafter, Suzuki presented the present work, Face of Kana, in an exhibition. Face of Kana elucidates the significance of the birth of Deizō, for it is a work that, while forming a mouth, negates its utility, thereby establishing a new significance as an object. Suzuki himself disliked the term “object” and used instead the words deizō and later deishō (clay image) to designate an infinite world of sculptural form. When the concave surface is taken as the front and the area corresponding to the mouth is positioned below, the mouth of this work appears to vanish. Suzuki’s signature character su is stamped on the reverse of the concave front, in the left corner of the mouthed surface. By rendering the conventional mouth invisible, he created a new world that possesses a mouth yet denies its use.
Suzuki Osamu (ceramist; 1926–2001)
Born in Kyoto to a family of ceramists. With like-minded artists Yagi Kazuo, Yamada Hikaru, and others, he co-founded the avant-garde ceramic group Sōdei-sha (Crawling through Mud Association) in 1948. Suzuki challenged the utilitarian attitude of traditional ceramics with his non-functional objects which he termed deizō or deishō (“clay figures” or “clay forms”). He served as a professor at the Kyoto City University of the Arts and was honored with the Asahi Award of Excellence in 1999.
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