Pottery, Politics, Art: George Ohr and the Brothers Kirkpatrick

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Summer 2004 by Sokol, David M

Pottery, Politics, Art; George Ohr and the Brothers Kirkpatrick. By Richard D. Mohr (Champaign and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003. Pp. Xii, 225. Illus., appendices, notes, index. Cloth, $60.00).

This is a study of the interrelatedness of two potteries: the all but unknown Anna Pottery of Southern Illinois, owned and operated by Cornwall and Wallace Kirkpatrick, and the other run by the highly-regarded and widely-collected Mad Potter of Biloxi, George Ohr. On one level, the volume presents the history of both potteries, discusses the work each produces, and explores the impact of the earlier and lesser known potters on the other. On a deeper and more profound level, however, this is a study in iconography, symbolism, and an exploration of the reasons for and reception of work of a highly charged and subversive nature.

This volume is quite valuable, not only because the author gives life and form to both the famous George Ohr and the far less-well-known brothers Kirkpatrick, but also for the way that social, political, and historical contexts are teased out of a minimum of written materials. In addition, the author does a masterful job of comparing that meager written record with the work itself and convinces the reader that the local press entirely misconstrued the meaning of the political and social statements the ceramists were making in light of their own institutional agendas. This is particularly true in regard to the work of the Kirkpatricks, whose whimsical, satirical, and seemingly overt imagery is presented as anti-establishment and subversive. Flasks and jugs that have long been regarded as Temperance Movement warnings against drink are shown to have double meanings; works that seem to share the local prejudices against AfricanAmericans and Indians are presented as more sympathetic to their plights; and the flasks incised with maps of the area can be seen as spoofing local pretensions as much as supporting boosterism.

After exploring the work of the Kirkpatricks, their imagery, their role and importance in their region of Southern Illinois, and the nature of their political, social, and psycho-sexual orientations, Mohr moves on to a discussion of the more famous and highly-collected George Ohr. He takes as a given Ohr's importance, and concentrates on both documenting and inferring the influence of the Kirkpatrick's on his oeuvre, and devotes the larger part of this section to the nature of Ohr's fascination with and exploration of the "triple themes of the vascular, the alimentary, and the abject." (154)

Mohr analyzes the work of these potters, explores their deeper meanings, deconstructs the forms, and concludes that "this is a book about the creative confusion of the products of our bodies and the products of our hands." (9) The author is interested in not only the grotesque and the carnivalesque, as curiosities and as examples of political and social subversion, but goes beyond that to establish a theoretical framework for his explorations in the writing and theory of the Russian theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin. Mohr's thesis is that these two potteries produced work that more than distorted forms, more than produced whimsical images that played with our concepts of exterior and interior, functional objects with sexual forms. These artists were consumed with the abject, were both attracted to and repelled by the sexual and the scatological, and were deeply committed to an exploration of the ambiguities between interior and exterior.

The broader historical picture in which the two potteries are presented is compelling; the description and illustrations of their products is persuasive and the observations on the political, social, and cultural contexts are both thorough and goads to additional reading. The complexity of the deeper analysis of the work is perhaps less convincing at its most analytical. The nature of this journal, its focus and audience, and the limits of space do not permit a detailed examination of the author's analysis of work by either the Kirkpatricks or Ohr. Nor is this reviewer qualified to test the applications of theory to the wider body of work by these potters and their contemporaries. Yet, the very grounding of the clay creations in such a dazzling theoretical framework often seems to root the obvious in too tightly constructed boundaries. As has been famously observed, sometimes a cigar is only a smoke.

Whether one ultimately agrees with the depth and breadth of Mohr's analysis, however, he has certainly laid out an excellent analysis, provided thorough and engaging documentation, and has accomplished several of his objectives. He has introduced us to an undeservedly obscure Illinois artistic treasure, he has documented the influence on that pottery on the work of Ohr, and, and he has caused us to look at the work with newer, sharper, more nuanced, and more theoretical eyes.

David M. Sokol has taught American Art and Museology at University of Illinois in Chicago since 1971. He has published a bibliographical volume American Decorative Arts and Old World Influences, the section on decorative arts in "American Art," and written widely about American painting and architecture. His recent publications include "Oak Park, Illinois Continuity and Change," in the Images of America Series and a coauthorship of a guide to the Frank Lloyd Wright Historic District of that same village. Sokol was the first curator of the Terra Museum of American Art and served many years as the Chairperson of the Historic Preservation Commission of Oak Park. He has lived in Oak Park since 1972, has served a term on the Board of Trustees of the Village, and his wife, Sandra Sokol, in currently the elected Municipal Clerk of the Village.