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Situation

I would like to use a few examples to illustrate current developments:

1. I recently received a telephone call from a collector in which he told me he had bought a teapot bearing the initials (BL) on the Internet for 8 €. He expressed the hope that he had acquired a piece by Bernard Leach at a sensationally good price and wanted my advice as a gallery owner. I quickly established that the signature of Bernard Leach on the teapot was a crude fake. The object was not worth anything more than the 8 € he had paid for it.

2. My visits to Collect, in London, have made me realize that fewer and fewer representatives of galleries (in the strict sense of the word) are attending this art fair and it is increasingly dominated by mere art dealers. This means that galleries are increasingly withdrawing – or indeed completely disappearing – from the scene. Established premises are being vacated and people are resorting to art dealing, selling art via the Internet, and are no longer calling themselves gallery owners but rather “consultants” – which de facto means “art dealer”.

3. Unlike in the past, fewer and fewer pioneering ceramic art exhibitions are taking place in museums. Instead, auctions are on the increase. What these examples illustrate is an increasing tendency for art to be bought and sold in an impersonal way – a way that I would describe as highly inimical to art. Let me explain what I mean:

Aesthetics

Works of art appeal via the eye to our spirit and soul and can trigger ideas, emotions, memories or moods in the observer. Looking at a work of art calls for a particular way of seeing – which needs time, peace and quiet and concentration if what is seen, felt and experienced is to lead to some form of sensual cognition. This means that a work of art is much more than just a representation of reality – it is an interpretation of that reality.

Against the background of their life history, artists, with their choice of motifs and the way these are represented, communicate their view of the world. Their works bear a significance that they give to them deliberately.

However they are released by the artist into the world of the observer, where they develop a life of their own, thanks to the individual associations that the observer attaches to them. To this extent, a work of art is always an offer of communication - art “develops” in a process of interaction between the work of art and the observer.

Pablo Picasso described this very vividly using the example of a painting: “A picture lives a life like a living creature, undergoing changes imposed on us by our life from day to day. This is natural enough, as the picture lives only through the man who is looking at it”.

However this is only possible in situations where you have immediate contact with the works of art. I can observe this daily in my gallery. Visitors look at, touch, feel and perceive the objects on display – be they vessels or free-standing objects – as qualities such as “beautiful” or “not beautiful” cannot be ascribed to an object in itself but rather refer to the way in which an observer perceives that object.

This means that as galleries we find ourselves operating in the broad field of aesthetics – in the sense of a concentrated process of perception, interpretation and development of sensual cognition. In other words, art not only happens between the work and its observer but also between the work and the user. Objects intended for daily use are distinguished by an added element of haptic enjoyment and pleasure.

Which brings me back to Bernard Leach, who saw his mission as being to produce beautiful, high-quality everyday objects that people surrounded themselves with so that they could develop a natural sensivity to aesthetic beauty. He was convinced that this ennobled the human spirit. And what was both high quality and beautiful for Bernard Leach? His guiding principle was: “Simplicity is the yardstick.”

At the start of the twentieth century Bernard Leach was influenced by early Chinese ceramics – particulary from the Sung Dynasty. Like many English collectors, modern art critics and progressive ceramic artists, he admired ceramics from this period on account of their simple and yet refined but unpretentious charisma. For Leach and his contemporaries this represented a completely new, reduced aesthetic. In his “Potter’s Book” he coined the term “Sung standard” as the benchmark against which the work of modern potters should be judged.

One contemporary representative of this principle of simplicity is the English ceramic artist Edmund de Waal, who uses porcelain and celadon glazes to anchor his works in the period leading up to the Sung dynasty and at the same time lend them a contemporary touch. Benefiting from this historical aura, the purity and preciousness of his materials and glazes results in an extreme aestheticization of his current works, heightened by their presentation as individual objects and – even more so – as installations, putting his works firmly in the category of fine arts.

This means that in ceramic art, too, we are operating in the broad field of aesthetics, which in our society, with its focus on work and efficiency, tends to be dismissed as something with no economic value and therefore only of interest to those of “sophisticated sensibility”.

By contrast, the philosopher Immanuel Kant described aesthetics as “sensory cognitive capacity” and lists it together with reason and judgement as a separate intellectual capacity. I quote: ….The “free play” of sensory cognitive capacity forms the basis of human behaviour as a whole.”

This means that aesthetics, as the personal perception of beauty ¬– contrary to the widespread dismissive attitude I have already described – is, indeed, of individual and social significance.

Spaces

In order to make it possible for these processes to take place, it is important to create the right environment – suitable “spaces”.

Galleries, in the original meaning of the term, see themselves as open spaces for exhibiting art. They invite you to stroll around, take your time, use your powers of perception. They offer scope to allow onself to become involved in a “free interplay” with the work of art.

At the same time, galleries offer artists a platform for showing their works to a broader public, exposing them to recognition or criticism and at the same time “competing” with the works of other artists.

Quality

Ceramic art is a metier that can look back on thousands of years of artistic handicraft. It has always been characterised by innovation and creativity, and has always been - and remains to this day - a source of surprises. That is why when I, as a gallery owner, select objects to exhibit, I always have in mind the question of whether they display these characteristics:

• Innovation, as the development and incorporation of new elements directly derived from existing ones or taking over part of them.
• Creativity is free of questions derived from tradition, as these always contain and thus anticipate possible results.

By contrast, creativity exercises the freedom always to produce something new and surprising. This means that for me as a gallery owner, ceramics have the following characteristics in terms of quality: - correspondence of artistic idea and form - a design commensurate with the materials used - absolute “functionality” in the case of an object for everyday use.

The future

For the future of ceramics it is essential to maintain a high standard of quality. For me as a gallery owner, this involves:

• having a fixed, varied programme that makes the standards of international ceramic art accessible to a broader public, and also provides the customer with a degree of orientation
• co-operating with liberal arts galleries, such as we already have in Heidelberg and Mannheim. With my gallery, I am a member of two associations – “KUNST Heidelberg“ and “Galerienverband Mannheim”
• participating in high-quality art fairs
• actively representing the cause of ceramic art, if possible, in an urban environment.
• publishing information about exhibitions and other activities in more than just specialist journals.

Appeal

I would appeal for spaces in which one can learn to see. Only through constant looking can one be in a position to recognize quality.

• Spaces in which one can discover new things,
• Spaces in which one can make comparisons and communicate with others.
• Spaces that offer artists scope to present themselves and their work and measure themselves against others.

I would like to declare my support for the “old-fashioned”, i.e. traditional gallery which – with its contents and its regular opening times – is accessible to everyone and makes an important contribution to culture in its city and region.