Craft’s battle for acceptance: Visual and spatial consequences

Many curators, art critics and collectors situate ceramic sculpture on the border between art and craft. Other media that could well be defined as forms of craft, such as photography, have been admitted to the art world. The same is true of banal, finished products, such as Duchamp’s urinal, welcomed to the realm of art after a complex philosophical argument supported its admission to the Holy of Holies, categorizing it as a ‘readymade.’ In this postmodern age, however, in which everything appears possible, ceramic sculpture has yet to gain acceptance as an art form. Why is this medium still struggling to enter the Promised Land?