Review: Black Raku and Its Colors Andoche Praudel

Appears in the January 2023 issue of Ceramics Monthly.

An exhibition of the works of Raku Kichizaemon XV (since 2019, Raku Jikinyu), took place in the summer of 2022, in London, at Annely Juda Fine Art. The Japanese potter has chosen to present his black bowls together with works in black and white by artist and theorist Kazimir Malevich, “in the spirit of profound empathy,” to cite Raku’s own words.

Materiality and Connection

This could be the confrontation between two traditions, one Eastern, tied to “the praise of shadows,” following Junichiro Tanizaki’s expression, and the other Western, evoked by the Biblical phrase, “Let there be light,” which is to say that, in the West, darkness is meant to be dispelled. With its close connection to mourning, black has kept its meaning as privation, if not punishment. In a word, it has kept its darkness.

Yet between Raku and Malevich, there is clearly no confrontation. In the first place, the artistic revolution that Malevich (1879–1935) brought about in the Suprematism art movement definitely removed any feature of mourning or affliction from black. To say that black is a color is to affirm its materiality, its density. Black is not darkness. Rather, it becomes the color of abstraction, emancipating color as such from its mimetic function. Black Square, Black Cross, and Black Circle are made of a massive black, with no transparency, thus with no nuances. One understands, therefore, that unlike the black of a painting, the black of Malevich speaks to the ceramic artist.

Infinite Space

The manifesto of Suprematism, in 1915, aimed to break with all traditions in order to link itself with a contemporary and universal dimension, following Kandinsky (for example, the painting entitled With the Black Arc from 1912), in which abstract colored forms fight against, but are also contained by, a thick black stroke. Malevich wants to go further than Kandinsky, which explains his preference for geometric forms originating in science rather than in any specific cultural environment. In any case, the painting represents only itself. It requires no interpretation: forms float or fall in an infinite space that a spectator reads according to his capacities. Presented in the two dimensions of the painting, the forms are caught in absolute space, depending on a fourth dimension that one must imagine. With White Square against a White Background (1918), as with Black Square against a White Background (1915), a metaphysical absolute is at play, evoking the austerity of an anchorite. The limit of the monochromatic recalls that of solipsism: there must be another, i.e. a background of distinct color, even at a minimum, in order for the shape, (in this case, the square) to be perceivable.

Before becoming Raku Kichizaemon XV, the young Raku (born in 1949), thought that the teabowl did not need to be usable. He analyzed this basic form in an abstract manner. He thinks of himself as not an artist, not an artisan, not a ceramic artist, not a potter, but a chawanya (a maker of tea-bowl, he declares as an epigraph to his book). Nonetheless, for a Westerner, he remains an artist. Since the teabowl used in the tea ceremony (chanoyu) has less of a place in Western cultures, we are now ready to widen the category of art to include a vessel like this, that is both functional and decorative.

Two Modes of Expression

In this exhibition, Raku shows bowls on plinths. Malevich’s works are non-objective drawings, in frames. Raku informs us in the exhibition catalog, “It [this work] has more to do with the philosophy of Chôjirô, than with my own works.” Chôjirô (1516–1590) is the founder of the Raku lineage, whose bowls are, in the view of Sen no Rikyu, master of the tea ceremony, the perfect expression of the philosophy of—let us say Zen for short, or wabi, to be more precise. These bowls convey the simple, the denuded, the essential. Junichiro Tanizaki claimed in the 1930s that this aesthetic characterized an entire civilization, one preferring shadows to light. In the tea pavilion, there is never direct light; great attention is paid to the evening or nocturnal ceremony (Yuuzari no chaji in warmer months, and Yobanashi no chaji in winter months), to the very spare light of the lamps.

Two registers, two modes of expression, and yet the whole enters into dialog immediately. This may be due to the graphics of each artist. Non-mimetic, the stroke testifies to the same physical presence, allowing the material to speak. Paper, in Malevich’s case, clay in Raku’s, are givens, as if they belonged to the natural world. The bowl’s form frames the blacks and whites, its rims cut it off from the external world. We perceive the interiority of these works of art: Each of them tends toward silence.

In the dark, the bowl still keeps its shape (round, large, small) and its material (smooth, rough, notched); its reality can be experienced either through touch or sound. Color is a quality that varies according to the external circumstances (the lighting), which the bowl can do without. Color thus belongs to the same register as fired clay, that of fragility and of ephemerality. A white sheet does not absorb any of the wavelengths of the sun’s light, reflecting it completely. A black surface absorbs it all. It is because glaze is glass that its color is never univocal: It depends on the rays absorbed or extinguished.

Black by excess: a diamond; black by default: a piece of coal. Black is never gray (gray not being a color on the spectrum). One would have to say, light black, dull black, etc. 

Until now, we have spoken of black on canvas and not from the tube. We now turn to black on fired clay. As with other colors, neither black nor red exists as such before the firing. If black or red is the desired outcome, the pot, at the moment it is placed in the kiln, can be coated with ochers, yellow or red, or with a grayish ashy mix, etc. Then the object disappears from view. The potter will eventually draw from it either red or black, with the addition of several shades that will be happy or unhappy accidents of the firing. And it is this phenomenon that makes ceramics a separate art, not to be confused either with painting or sculpture.

Several details need to be made clear. First, the ceramic pieces in this exhibition are not fully glazed, but colored by oxides. These are blacks by default, dull blacks. Smoking is not used by the Raku family. Rather, the bowl is heated to very high temperatures, and then removed from the kiln, cooling naturally. The body appears little changed from one firing to another. The bowls are fired one by one, but the protocol remains the same. Raku has named this series Rocks, perhaps a reference to the rocky look of the clay body, reinforced by the sharp cuts made by the potter.

Cosmic Dances

The title of the bowl appearing on the invitation, Gyo, is the samskara of Buddhism, related to various states of meditation. It could, in fact, be a name for Platonic dazedness. The bowl entitled Jo presents interlinked closed black figures, black squares in motion. Raku does not use any part of the ideogram Jo, which, according to his explanation, means grace, a floating rhythm. It is a way of working black on white, with a bow to Malevich, undoubtedly, but which can be read as a spiritual quest without concessions. Reflection on the meaning of words seems to have been born at the same time as the ceramics, without making the work and the title illustrations of each other. Raku relates that Malevich constantly made his abstract geometric shapes dance “cosmic dances” on his surfaces.

As to oxides, providing color in the usual conditions (diluted in the glaze), a given treatment turns them all more or less black: cobalt becomes anthracite, and not blue or pink; copper becomes gray, and not green or red, etc. It is a way of refusing the seductions of color, but also of making available all of its potential. The form of emptiness begs to be filled. Malevich’s works are on paper, but they are not paintings. Western tradition, after all, includes three centuries of black-and-white engravings, copies of the great paintings! Whether in ink or pencil, the black in Malevich’s work could be seen as arising “through a lack.” And Raku’s entire point is to show that this genre of work, hastily classified as drawings, is not at all secondary—no more that the technique of yakinuki (raku firing without glazing),which he has been practicing for many years. This approach has nothing traditional about it, since the potters of the Raku family have always generously coated their works, in particular the first among them, Chôjirô, famous for his blacks, whether bright or flat. But tradition is first of all transmission, and for the Raku family, from the beginning in the 16th century, rupture has been part of the process.

Perception and Emotion

In the first place, there is shock: Raku sees Black Square at the Tretyakov Gallery; his emotion, he says, comes from the recognition of the same commitments as Chôjirô’s, 400 years earlier. He recognizes the same revolt against the superficial and the fake that both men struggled against. “As I stood there, images of Chôjirô’s black teabowls began to float between me and the painting. The barrage of intense black transcended beauty, form, and stylistic individuality. It was resolute in its will to go beyond cognition. What was going on in Malevich’s mind? What change of consciousness does he undergo? What led him to the end point of a single black square? These were some of the questions that came to me after I had calmed down from the rush of awe and emotion that had overcome me.” Raku does not dwell on this but, as Michel Pastoureau (a French professor and author of books about the history of specific colors, including Black: The History of a Color) has remarked, “not to name, at least mentally, the color one perceives is almost impossible. The name of the color is an integral part of its perception.”

The token of a calm modesty, the black bowl is not sufficient unto itself—it expresses as if a thirst for encounters. It exists in silence. 

Since the time of Suprematism, a whole century has passed, and art has not departed from its vocation as critique. A political act, no doubt, but above all a critique of its own tradition and a desire to found its role anew. For Malevich as well as Raku, at stake is the refusal of facility and of mercantile conventions.

Is this not, in fact, the main goal of ceramics?

Not to narrate and not to express

Not to be concerned either with the contemporary or the traditional

Nor struggle to be original

What is important is to sink a plumb line into the depths of my being

Surreptitiously toward the bottom

Into the cave of my existence filled with the things of the world

I descend feeling my way slowly. (Chawanya, 2016)

the author Andoche Praudel trained in Japan, where he regularly presents his work, he is also active on the French ceramic scene. He wrote several books on Japanese ceramics, especially on Raku ware. To learn more, visit @andochepraudel on Instagram, and at galerie-capazza.com_praudel-andoche.