In postwar Japan, a group of young Kyoto potters seeking to start their careers and connect with the exciting new, international modernist artistic milieu found themselves struggling to find their voice as ceramists and to establish clay as an accepted abstract medium. Their frustrations led Yagi Kazuo (1918-1979), Yamada Hikaru (1924-2001) and Suzuki Osamu (1926- 2001) to found the Sodeisha group, or the “Crawling through Mud Association.” As Louise Allison Cort notes in her article Crawling Through Mud: Avant-garde Ceramics in Postwar Japan, the group “questioned virtually all the conventions of ceramic materials, form, decoration, and function (although they never doubted the emotional power of clay as a material), and they addressed broader issues of presentation, social hierarchy, and the political role of art.” They eschewed all historical and traditional forms, from the tea bowl to the ikebana, and instead valued experimentation and the expression of feelings and ideas over the formalism of established models. Members came and went over the course of the group’s 50 year existence—it officially disbanded in 1998—and included several artists represented in Arthur Williams’s collection: Rikichi Miyanaga, Tadayasu Sasayama, and Hiroaki Morino.
The postwar art world needed the expediency of creating associations in order to escape from personal confusion, but today, finally, that provisional role appears to have ended. The birds of dawn taking flight out of the forest of falsehood now discover their reflections only in the spring of truth. We are united not to provide a ‘warm bed of dreams,’ but to come to terms with our existence in broad daylight.
The Sodeisha Group manifesto, 1948
We are honored to present works from the Collection of Arthur J. Williams (1936–2021), a man who lived a life dedicated to, and surrounded by, the arts.
Williams began his career in the mailroom at CBS before working in production and editing TV advertisements. He founded Editing Concepts Inc. in 1970, of which he became Chairman of the Board, and was instrumental in expanding the company to six divisions all related to the film and video industry. He was a founding member of the Association of Independent Creative Editors and served as its president for a time. Williams’s success in the media world afforded him the freedom to follow his passion for the arts, and he became a respected member of the International Academy of Ceramics (Geneva, Switzerland) and the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts (Newcastle, Maine). Additionally, he was on the board of the Craft Alliance of the 52nd St. YWCA, where he curated a number of exhibits for the Elsa Mott Gallery, and he conceptualized the Museum of Ceramic Art - New York, an important virtual platform which celebrates the art of ceramics.
“I am a clay addict. My fixes come in big and small, bright and demure and always quench my need temporarily. Or should I call it a sweet tooth that has a constant craving?...As a collector of clay objects, I am at once picky and open to what shares my home. An artwork has to show creativity, sparks of ingenuity and passion.”
A passionate collector and voracious reader, Williams remarked in a 2000 interview: “Educating oneself is the most exciting thing if not the most important aspect of collecting. Without knowledge, you can’t grow.” His genuine curiosity about art led him to acquire a diverse range of works from Chinese Export Ware and Pennsylvania Red Ware to sculptures by Chakaia Booker and contemporary ceramics from artists around the world. He found great joy in seeking out new pieces and in a note from his personal archive, we are given a wonderful glimpse into his thought process as a collector: “I am a clay addict. My fixes come in big and small, bright and demure and always quench my need temporarily. Or should I call it a sweet tooth that has a constant craving?...As a collector of clay objects, I am at once picky and open to what shares my home. An artwork has to show creativity, sparks of ingenuity and passion.” Williams had a prescient eye for art, especially of the clay variety, and assembled what became one of the most important, and comprehensive, contemporary ceramics collections of the present day.
