User:Coletteskim/sandbox/Andrew Lord

Andrew Lord (b. 1950) is a British sculptor whose works focus on central themes of memory, experience, and associations to material objects.

Introduction
Andrew Lord left the Central School ceramics department in 1971 to distance himself from the rising tide of studio ceramics and to place his work in the domain of fine art. During this time period, he adapted Cubism and then Process Art and Performance Art to ceramics. His sources and affiliations in painting, ceramics, poetry, the natural world, and the city have constructed a personal genealogy.

In 2002, Adriaan van Ravesteijn, former principal of the Amsterdam gallery Art & Project, described Lord by using an allegory of ‘a sea of sculptors’ "... we would have to look for him at the outer limits of the convoy, far from other artists, amid a wide expanse of sea. Along the flank of this ship we can still see clear signs of damage from a collision that he once had with another ship. Many years ago, ceramists sailing the waters of the applied arts had tried to abduct him to their own camp. Unfortunately for them, but not for us, the attempt failed, so that Andrew Lord was able to dedicate itself to sculpture, an art form which he has now enriched with a completely unique artistic language."

Early Life
Andrew Lord was born in Rochdale, Lancashire, England. His father, William Andrew, was a grainer, marble, and sign-painter and his mother, Maud Andrew, was a seamstress. He attended Rochdale College of Art (1966-1968) and the Central School of Art and Design, London (1968-1971), where he studied under the guidance of two teachers, Gilbert Harding Green and Bonnie van de Wetering of whom he later wrote,"Unlike anyone I ever met Bonnie had no fear of naming things, or facing things. Engaging you so directly, naming things with such directness that any conversation might become an intimate reflection on art and love. I used to long for those conversations."The Central School course concentrated on industrial and studio techniques and the history of ceramics, which Lord rejected at the time. In 1972, he travelled to the Netherlands to work at ‘de Porceleyne Fles’, a ceramics factory in Delft, at first constructing large scale sculptures for Dutch municipalities in the factory’s Architectural Department, later working in the Experimental Department, a studio within the factory where artists worked.

Within the world of ceramics, Lord gained early recognition with sculptural work made soon after his student days. Art critic Tony Birks wrote,"He distill traditional forms, materials and values from a variety of sources and cultures and produces essential works of originality. He is not concerned with satire or pastiche... He is a contemplative and rather isolated figure... traveling around the world to study the arts of the past. It is ironic that his carefully and deliberately made pieces are in distinguished public and private collections around the world, by way of fine art galleries, but are regarded as crude, childish or clumsy by some of the regular outlets for hand-made objects."In 1974, with a scholarship from the British Council and the Mexican Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, Lord travelled throughout Mexico looking at Pre-Columbian art and architecture. Lord left Mexico City in 1975, spending time in New York before returning to England and then Rotterdam, where he received a fellowship from the Rotterdam Art Foundation (1976-1979). While living in Rotterdam, Lord travelled extensively in Europe and Egypt, and made frequent visits to Paris. Though his travels he found inspirations for works based on paintings by Gauguin, Cézanne, Monet. He wrote in No.1 First Works,"I tried to understand how Picasso, Cézanne, and Monet had looked at objects and how they had observed light and shade. In my studio in Rotterdam I painted the objects I was making as if through other artists' eyes. When a particular kind of light fell across a plan or vase I recorded it with brushstrokes I'd seen in paintings. I discovered that styles of different painters could be reached at different times of the day; late Monet at dusk, Impressionism through the bright, fractured light of Dutch mornings; and Cézanne through the broad blocks of Dutch afternoon light."His first solo exhibition, 'Pottery', was held at Anthony Stokes Gallery at Langley Place, London in 1978, installed on Barry Flanagan's 'Rowford Process' furniture.

In 1978, he move to Amsterdam where he exhibited with the leading Dutch art gallery, Art & Projec t with whom he worked until 2002. He made his second solo exhibition 'Angled Pottery' with Art & Project in 1980. Lord’s work was introduced to New York in 1981 by Irving Blum, former director of Los Angeles’ Ferus Gallery, at the Blum Helman Gallery. His first show received positive reviews,"The most original show of the month, and the most difficult to categorize...before long we realise that they may not really be sculptures at all, but paintings that happen to be performed as much as painted, in three dimensions. His pieces are sculpture in that we can all walk around them, but fundamentally they are paintings, wrote John Russell, in the New York Times."In 1981, Lord was invited by Kasper Koenig, former director of Museum Ludwig, to show with the Heute-Westkunst exhibition in Cologne, after which he left Amsterdam for New York. Lord's work, already collected by American painters Jasper Johns and Ellsworth Kelly, was introduced to New York in 1981.

From 2014 - 2015 Lord was resident at La Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris.

Legacy
Lord has been to have pioneered [and in many ways founded] a genre. From the 1970s onwards his work has been collected largely by artists; Barry Flanagan, David Hockney, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Mark Lancaster, Roy Lichtenstein, Peter Struycken, and Cy Twombly. in the 1990s his expressive, unconventional handling of material influenced a generation of younger fine artists who have since begun making ceramics. In 2015, describing Lord as a style originator, ceramic historian Garth Clark echoed Tony Birks' text of 1976 ''Lord has always been unique, a loner ... the seeming casualness with which he moves the clay and the "sloppy" glazing has irked the ceramics community for five decades while at the same time intriguing the art world ... Today Lord's look is everywhere, Lord Pots and Lord Sculpture abound throughout New York and beyond.''