Funk Art

ファンク・アート / 1960s–1970s / Style / Postwar American Art

A movement in ceramics and sculpture around the San Francisco Bay Area that deliberately soiled good taste and the authority of abstraction alike. Garish colour, bodily humour and the wilful misuse of craft materials laugh at the hierarchy of art itself. An early precedent for treating coarseness as a strategy.

Funk Art — Robert Arneson, Portrait of George Moscone — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0 · © Gary Stevens — Robert Arneson, Portrait of George Moscone — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0 · CC BY 2.0 · © Gary Stevens

Funk Art — David Gilhooly, Merfrog Family fountain, 1978 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Joojay — David Gilhooly, Merfrog Family fountain, 1978 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Joojay

At a glance

Visual cues

Garish glaze colours
Bodily, off-colour motifs
Craft materials deliberately misused
Finishes that keep their handmade roughness

Best used for

Merchandise, ceramics and product ranges for brands that would rather be funny and physical than tasteful, in food, drink and nightlife
Art direction for youth and counterculture work, where an aggressively unrefined finish signals independence from corporate polish

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Dictionary entry

Type: Hand-pushed uneven lettering, left slumped and never cleanly typeset
Composition: One lumpen object shot frontally, filling the frame, with nothing composed around it
Material: Bright running glazes over bare clay, with drips, thumbprints and firing accidents kept
Caution: Aiming only at vulgarity and making it rough removes the base, which is the knowing misuse of craft materials, and the result reads as merely careless.
Further study: The 1967 Funk exhibition in Berkeley / The change in the standing of ceramics / Its relation to the West Coast counterculture

Related entries

Lowbrow (Pop Surrealism) (ローブロウ)Shared effects: Rebellion / Play.Compare Funk Art and Lowbrow (Pop Surrealism)
Neo-Dada (ネオ・ダダ)Same Postwar American Art lineage.Compare Funk Art and Neo-Dada

Cite this entry

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Link: https://indexstyle.org/styles/funk-art
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