Lau-Tzu Essays - Drinkware, Pitcher, Jug, Ewers,

Lau-Tzu We turn clay to make a vessel; But it is on the space where there is nothing That the utility of the vessel depends. Lao-Tzu 1 When we fill the jug, the pouring that fills it flows into the empty jug. The emptiness, the void, is what does the vessel's holding. The empty space, this nothing of the jug, is what the jug is as the holding vessel. . . . From start to finish the potter takes hold of the impalpable void and brings it forth as the container in the shape of the containing vessel. Martin Heidegger 2 These twenty six ewers by Peter Beasecker are a sustained meditation and inquiry within the medium of their facture on the form of the ewer. This also is a meditation and an inquiry on the form of the ewer, in another medium. The dialectical oppositions engaged by contemporary clay works--craft and art traditions, utilitarian and aesthetic objects, active use and contemplative regard, vessel and sculpture, surface and form, decoration and depth, concept and process--ramify in both the medium of their facture and the medium of this discourse. In both work in clay and in discursive engagement of those works, these terms deeply implicate their opposites. Form is a matter not simply of shape, but of the structure of the ewer as such, the necessary conditions of ewer-ness, a particular case of the vessel-form. The vessel-form, as Heidegger notes, can be as quotidian as a jug for holding something: The jug is a thing as a vessel--it can hold something. To be sure, this container has to be made. But its being made by the potter in no way constitutes what is peculiar and proper to the jug insofar as it is qua jug. The jug is not a vessel because it was made; rather, the jug had to be made because it is this holding vessel. 3 The jug is, and is thus a thing. The holdingness of the jug is its whatness, constituting the jug as a vessel. The particularities of its vesselness constitute the vessel as a ewer, and indeed as this ewer, with these characteristics. Juxtaposing several things together is to invite their comparison. Beasecker's ewers arrayed on shelves manifest their similarities and differences, eliciting comparison. Each of these ewers is a token within the type 'ewer'. The type is the universal, the class of things; the token is the particular instance, a member of the class. 4 Members of the class 'ewer' notwithstanding, each of these works is an individual, in a sense analogous to the application of the term to persons. The indiviudality of these pieces extends beyond the status of all artworks as quasi subjects:5 it is manifested by the inflections of form, evoking resonance with the gesture of the body. Variations within a type, these works are also variations from the type 'ewer' and variations on the type 'vessel'. Consequently, this essay is of necessity an exercise in interpreting the variorum. 6 The traditional type ewer is a wide-mouthed pitcher or jug, typically with a narrow neck, more or less bulbous body tapering and then swelling intto a relatively wide flairing foot. As the derivation of ewer from aquaria suggests, the ewer is traditionally a vessel for bring and pouring water for hand washing. 7 The general form of the ewer is similar to the classical Greek oinochoe, wine jug. Beasecker's interpretations of the ewer-form maintain the neck of the ewer, which in Beasecker's pieces assumes the function of an absent handle. Beasecker's pieces exchange the wide mouth, extended into a lip for pouring, of the traditional ewer-type for a thin, attenuated spout, emerging not as a modification of the mouth opening from a neck but rather extending directly from the body of the vessel. Freed of the necessity of pouring, the mouth can assume any of several shapes, suitable for filling the vessel; relative to the spout, the mouth is proportionately large. The result of this seperation and concomittant specialization of function is a vessel quicker to fill than to empty. This potential for relative ease of filling in comparison to slowness of pouring out emphasizes the function of the vessel as container, holder of liquid. To receive, to hold, and to pour out slowly is to concentrate attention on these functions. That which performs these several functions is a thing, a type of thing termed vessel. But any number of variations,