Jun Kaneko

An artist's intimate relationship with his preferred medium: with his ceramics, Jun Kaneko tries the limits

Jun Kaneko, born in 1942 in Nagoya, Japan, and based in Omaha, Nebraska, since 1986, is revered for his role in establishing modern ceramic art, yet he has been equally prolific in a range of other media. This book offers an entirely new and detailed survey and analysis of nearly six decades of Kaneko's work in ceramics, drawing, painting, installation art, and opera design. Tracing the career of this dynamic artist from his early training and subsequent association with the pivotal California Clay Movement to his important public commissions and philanthropic concerns of the present, it focuses in particular on the past twenty years, which have previously not been the subject of a comprehensive volume.

Drawing extensively on interviews he has conducted with Jun Kaneko since 2002, Glen R. Brown reflects on the principal concepts that have shaped Kaneko's art, situating them in the space between a Japanese Shinto ethos and the aesthetic tenets of Western art informel and Post-Painterly Abstraction. These concepts provide context for in-depth discussion of Kaneko's art, from the colossal glazed-ceramic Dangos to the sensitive coloristic stage and costume designs for Madama Butterfly, The Magic Flute, and Fidelio. From these, a fascinating picture emerges of Kaneko's unique, relentlessly self-sustaining creative process and the multiple conceptions of space that inform it. Featuring two hundred color illustrations and substantial information not previously available in published form, this book offers an up-to-date definitive critical survey of this important artist's life and work.

• Die erste umfassende Monografie seit zwei Jahrzehnten zum Schaffen des japanisch-amerikanischen Künstlers Jun Kaneko
• Zeichnet erstmals überhaupt Kanekos Werdegang von den Anfängen bis heute nach und bietet eine detaillierte Übersicht und Untersuchung seines Gesamtwerks

• Basiert auf ausführlichen Gesprächen des Autors mit Jun Kaneko seit 2002

  Autorentext
  Glen R. Brown ist Professor für Geschichte, Theorie und Kritik der Kunst des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts an der Kansas State University in Manhattan, KS (USA). Er ist zudem Experte für historische und zeitgenössische Keramik und publiziert regelmässig zu zeitgenössischem Schmuck und Schmiedekunst.