Richard Milgrim is an American ceramic artist renowned for his mastery of Japanese tea ceremony wares (chato). Milgrim first became interested in ceramics while studying at Antioch College in Ohio, where he was introduced to Japanese pottery traditions. His passion for the art form led him to Japan in the 1970s, where he studied with Iwabuchi Shigeya, a specialist in Kyoto ceramics; Tahara Tobei, a 12th generation master of the Korean-inspired Hagi tradition; Fujiwara Yū (who was later named a Living National Treasure), and Kato Koemon, master of Mino wares. He became the first American ceramist to receive the full endorsement from a Japanese Tea School Grand Master—Dr. Sen Genshitsu, still a mentor to this day, receiving his Japanese name Richado in kanji (利茶土)—as well as having both his Japanese and American studios christened by Dr. Sen. He has been living and working in Kyoto, Japan since 1979 and also worked in Concord, Massachusetts from 2000-2013.
Milgrim acquired the present lot as a result of his connection to two important contemporaries of his chosen craft: Peter Voulkos and Peter Callas. Milgrim first crossed paths with Peter Voulkos in 1983, an auspicious year in which both artists had the first exhibitions of their work in Tokyo. Milgrim was showing work from two kilns where he apprenticed, one of them being at Bizen with his mentor, Fujiwara Yu. Yu was already familiar with Voulkos from visits to the United States in the 1950s and 60s, so he called Milgrim and introduced the men, whose shows happened to be just a scant couple of blocks away from one another.
Ceramist Peter Callas traveled extensively in Japan, becoming enamored with wood-fired pottery, and also developed a working relationship with Voulkos beginning in the mid-70s. Callas's cousin had been, by happy accident, in one of Milgrim's college classes; she introduced the two and their paths continue to cross over the proceeding decades. Milgrim came to own the present lot while doing a workshop with Paul Soldner and Peter Voulkos at Peter Callas's New Jersey studio. Voulkos also found great inspiration in Japanese aesthetics and ceramics; it is fitting, then, that Milgrim chose a tea bowl (chawan) fired in Callas's anagama, an ancient style of kiln used in Japan since the 5th century.
For more on Peter Callas, his connection to Peter Voulkos, and his pioneering use of the anagama in the United States, see this catalog essay.
Some evenings I create art. Sometimes I search art out. Sometimes I run into it accidentally.
Peter Voulkos
Peter Voulkos 1924–2002
Few artists can revolutionize an ancient medium, but Peter Voulkos did just that when he brought ceramics into the realm of fine art starting in the late 1950s. Born in Bozeman, Montana in 1924, he studied painting and ceramics at Montana State University and later received his MFA from California College of the Arts in Oakland. While Voulkos began his career by creating utilitarian objects such as bowls and vases that won him wide renown, he began to contemplate abstraction and other fine art principles when he spent the summer of 1953 teaching at Black Mountain College, there he met Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, and Josef Albers. From there, he visited New York, meeting many of the Abstract Expressionists.
Voulkos returned to California to teach at Los Angeles County Art Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design) from 1954 to 1959 and it was in this period that his works really began to evolve. As the decade came to a close, Voulkos moved away from creating functional items, instead morphing vase-like structures into sculpture. He slashed the clay in certain instances and aggressively applied paint to the forms like canvas. No longer content to create works that hid their process of creation, Voulkos made the very act of creation paramount to the understanding and appreciation of his work, much like the Abstract Expressionists that he had associated with.
Voulkos’ artistic output piqued the interest of Peter Selz, the Curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1960, he invited Voulkos to exhibit six of his paintings alongside a number of his sculptures as part of the New Talent series, one man exhibitions that the museum had been offering since 1950 to artists who had not yet had solo exhibitions in New York. Voulkos used this opportunity to illustrate the connection between painting, the classic example of fine-art, and ceramics. After his show at MoMA, the artist spent the summers of 1960-1962, and 1964 in New York teaching and creating work at the famed Greenwich House Pottery and Columbia University.
Peter Voulkos brought ceramics into the realm of fine art. He died in 2002, but his legacy is remembered in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Auction Results Peter Voulkos
