If you were in Miami earlier this month, you might have spotted this bog on display at Parker Gallery’s Art Basel booth. The sculpture isn’t the resurrection of Maurizio Cattelan’s stolen gold loo, but a 1964 glazed stoneware edition by the Bay Area pioneer Robert Arneson. Arneson’s work in the 1960s and 1970s was a radical departure from the art that was coming out of other art schools in California, and together with the likes of late greats Clayton Bailey, Viola Frey and Sandra Shannonhouse, Arneson helped push an alternative narrative from the staid ideas of the time, using wit, and some of the less savoury sides of modern life. Arneson—considered a founding father of Funk Art—paved the way for a new Californian aesthetic, which is still hugely influential in ceramics and beyond.
