George E. Ohr

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George E. Ohr (1857-1918) was an early American pottery artist who broke new ground in the late 1890s as he experimented with modern clay forms.^[1] Some consider him the father of the American Abstract-Expressionism movement.

1 Life
2 His work
3 The Ohr-O'Keefe Museum
4 External links
5 References

[edit] Life

Ohr was born in Biloxi, Mississippi, on July 12, 1857, married Josephine Gehring of New Orleans on September 15, 1886, in Biloxi, and died in 1918.^[2]

He studied the potter's trade with Joseph Meyer in New Orleans, a potter whose family hailed from Alsace-Lorraine, as did Ohr's.^[3] Ohr's father had established the first blacksmith shop in Biloxi and his mother ran an early, popular grocery store there.^[4] In his lifetime, Ohr created over 10,000 known pots. He called himself "The Mad Potter of Biloxi" and was a showman of the style of P.T. Barnum, a contemporary. Ohr was an iconic American figure at the turn of the last century. He called his work "unequaled, undisputed, unrivaled."^[5] In 1884, Ohr exhibited and sold his wares at the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans. Of the 600 pieces he brought to New Orleans, no two were alike.^[6] The 1894 fire that burned most of Biloxi also destroyed Ohr's workshop, and it has been noted that Ohr's post-fire works show tremendous "energy" and "fluidity."^[6]

[edit] His work

While Ohr had a healthy self-image, during his lifetime many others in the art world did not accept him or his pots, and considered him a boasting eccentric. In the early 1900s, the Arts and Crafts Movement and its leaders (such as William Morris) advocated that an artist should display control and perfection in all art forms. Ohr displayed little obvious perfectionism in his art or control in his person, antagonizing art leaders nationally and political leaders at home. Ohr's work is now seen as ground-breaking and a harbinger of the abstract sculpture and pottery that developed in the mid-20th century. Ohr's pieces are now relatively rare and highly coveted.^[7]

A notable feature of Ohr's pottery is that many items have thin walls, metallic glazes, and twisted, pinched shapes. To this day potters marvel at Ohr's porcelain-thin walls and unusual glazes. No one has been able to replicate them using a pottery wheel, which is how Ohr made his works. Ohr dug much of his clay locally in southern Mississippi from the Tchoutacabouffa River.^[6] Tchoutacabouffa translates to "broken pot."

Aerial view of the casino barge washed onto the site of the new Ohr-O'Keefe museum in September 2005

[edit] The Ohr-O'Keefe Museum

The Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi has a large permanent collection of Ohr's work. A new museum building for the Ohr-O'Keefe that has been designed by Frank Gehry and will be set on a four-acre site was originally scheduled to open in July 2006,^[8] but was partially destroyed during Hurricane Katrina when a casino barge was washed onto the semi-constructed facility. Efforts are under way to recover insurance, and meanwhile, a major national exhibition of Ohr pottery was planned by the museum for 2007.^[9] In early 2008, the planned traveling exhibition, titled "George Ohr Rising: The Emergence of an American Master," was being shown at the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, California.^[10]