Ad Reinhardt once said, “The one thing to say about art is that it is one thing.” Betty Woodman’s art is definitely not one thing. It is, in fact, about practically everything. She began as a typical studio potter in the 1940s, but the functionality of her work became increasingly subordinate to her expanding view of herself as an artist. Her work had become as much about sculpture and painting as about utility. In this, she was like many American potters who began moving away from the influence of Bernard Leach and the Eastern tradition he represented. Joining the world of contemporary art in New York, she was swept up in the exuberance of the so-called Pattern and Decoration Movement (Joyce Kozloff, Robert Kushner, Miriam Schapiro, et al.) which was then rebelling against the minimalist aesthetic. Ms. Woodman was in the right place at the right time to develop the flamboyant outburst of form and color that we see in this first major...

 

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