Passions and tensions between pottery, ceramics and contemporary art. The double process of artification and patrimonialization in a peripheral world of contemporary art

Abstract

This article proposes to analyze the displacement of artistic borders through the case of contemporary ceramics, within the great nebula of the worlds of contemporary art. Beyond the classic division between art and crafts, we observe the cohabitation of two regimes - patrimonial and contemporary art - giving rise to an art between two processes: artification and heritage. This study shows that despite its multiple tensions between know-how and culture of technophilia, it is thanks to the differential values between contemporary art and traditional potery that ceramics exists as a world of singular and peripheral contemporary art. And that the difficulty of its definition is crossed by paradoxes, which coexist and assert themselves within the collective identity of this artistic community as a value.