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Document Type
Text
Exact Creation Date
2017
Language
English
Location
Portland
Abstract
Toward an econo-aesthetic points to a much needed shift to recuperate, or at this point, to imagine a comprehensive approach to being in the world. As such, the artist contains the promise of a reconciliation of the lost connection linking aesthetics and economies. The relationship between art and money has ambiguous overtones increasingly inherent since the end of the renaissance. Porcelain contains clues to that ambiguity because of its tight relationship with both. The history of porcelain or ‘white gold’, so called since its advent in Europe during the 18th century, is the paradigmatic material for deconstructing what I consider a false schism between finance and aesthetics. In this dissertation, I argue that through a conflation of economics and aesthetics, using the history of porcelain as an art material, the role of the artist in community is more clearly identified as essential, in opposition to the marginalized position the artist currently employs in the west, especially the United States. I approach my argument through the history of porcelain in Europe and the US, and by linking that history to a history of economics I found a strong case for a hidden component of vitality through the expression of aesthetic materiality in the processes held within porcelain and economics. The marginalization of the artist is part of a hegemonic imperative seeking to repress the free expression and visionary potential of the creative spirit. Exercising the agency integral within aesthetic practice, in particular through the materiality of porcelain’s vernacular, the most basic characteristic of a free and vital condition contains the seeds of alternative futures leading out from a darkness born of an increasingly myopic view of the modern world.
Disciplines
Art Practice | Arts and Humanities
Publisher
Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts
City
Portland ME
Recommended Citation
Davis, Mary Anne, "THE AMBIGUOUS OBJECT: TOWARD AN ECONO-AESTHETIC THROUGH A HISTORY OF PORCELAIN" (2017). Academic Research and Dissertations. 20.
https://digitalmaine.com/academic/20
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