Jonathan Adler (2:21)

Think back to when you were 12 years old wearing that Rush tee. What was it about pottery that you just liked?

Jonathan Adler (2:29)

It's funny. I'm not a spiritual person at all, like, at all. However, when I touched clay, it was just on like it has been my. My Spouse, my love, my side piece, my everything for the last many, many years. And it's sort of how I think. I just think in terms of clay. And it's funny, you know, when you're young, you think, I don't know, you think the world, you can evolve in myriad ways. For me, it was kind of just like, no, I'm a potter. That's what I am. I just knew I never thought I could make a good living at it. So I'm one of the luckiest humans alive. But yeah, I've just kind of pursued my passion and luckily it has worked out.

Jonathan Adler (3:11)

What did your parents think when you picked up pottery?

Jonathan Adler (3:14)

You know, my parents were actually very supportive. I like to claim that I am sui generous and that I really am a, you know, self creation. But the truth is I'm very much a product of my parents. My dad was a lawyer, but a brilliantly talented artist who spent all his spare time making art. My mom is a very creative and colorful person. And so they never taught us any lessons or, you know, they were never Brady Bunch people. And part of that was sort of also not telling us what to do. So when I wanted to be a potter, they were like, okay, I mean, were they sick of supporting me until I was like 29? Yes, but. But they also didn't ever say, like, that's ridiculous, you can't be a potter.

Jonathan Adler (3:58)

Ooh, what was your dad's artwork like?

Jonathan Adler (4:00)

My dad was incredibly brilliant. And it's interesting, when he got out of school, he really faced a challenge. He was like, I want to be an artist, but I want to also, you know, have a nice family. And so he might have made the right choice and pursued like law and was a successful lawyer. But for him, art was an endless passion and he wasn't really stuck to a particular style. So I think that when you make your passion, your profession, you end up having to sort of stick to a specific style to make it commercially successful. And I wonder sometimes if making art, your career is creatively stultifying. So I think about my dad a lot. He, you know, in a way, he is a muse for me because in my own work, I strive to not be creatively stultified and to really just be endlessly experimental as he was.

Unknown (4:59)

So we went to school together.

Jonathan Adler (5:00)

But you spent a significant amount of.

Unknown (5:02)

Time down at risd.

Jonathan Adler (5:04)

I did. Rhode Island School of Design.

Unknown (5:07)

What has stuck with you from the time that you were at Rhode Island School of Design?

Jonathan Adler (5:14)

So when we were in college, I always used to think the RISD people were like, not. I always thought we were better than them. Cut to. We weren't. They were better than we were. They were much more hard working and creative and brilliant. And there's still so many RISD people who are amazing. I think one of the things that stuck to me was it really being in that kind of art school environment where people are doing critiques and everyone gets together and criticizes things in a very verbose, overly high minded way. And it's sort of like. I think one of the things that stuck with me is to try to not ever think of my work in the same way people used to do critiques in school. That's not to say I'm not intensely analytical, but I try not to get too caught up in it all.

Unknown (5:58)

I remember I took one course at RISD and the teacher took. It was a drawing course. She leaned at me, she goes, you.

Jonathan Adler (6:04)

Might want to try design.

Jonathan Adler (6:07)

Ouch. They're not necessarily so nice. My RISD professor was not exactly the nicest.

Jonathan Adler (6:12)

I read that. I didn't know if this is Internet, you know, fallacy or not, but some RISD professors were not kind to you. Is that an Internet meme or.

Jonathan Adler (6:23)

No, it's real. And I feel really bad. I had this RISD professor who I said to her, like, I want to go to grad school. And she's like, you don't really have any talent. And honestly I've. I've dined out on that story for the last 30 years and I feel so bad for her. I don't everyone, you know, I don't want to drag her through the mud first. All I'll say is that her name began with a J and ended with Aki Rice. And there you go, you know. And as I look back, it's quite interesting. And doing this mad show has made me think a lot about that period in my life and about how my sensibility was formed and, and actually about what pottery was like at the time. And this is going to sound weird and perhaps somewhat arcane, but pottery was actually like a very macho thing in sort of post war America. It was very much associated with like abstract expressionism and it just had a very macho vibe. And my work at the time, the stuff that I was making that my professor told me, you know, that she rejected me for was actually not so macho. I was making these teapots that were inspired by Chanel handbags and rap music and they were really quite postmodern and if I'm being honest, had A little bit of a gay sensibility, which not all of my work has. And I think that maybe I just didn't really conform to the norms of what the pottery world was at the time. Of course, since then, it's evolved. This is a long time ago. But, yeah, doing the show has really made me stop and think about what the heck I have been doing for all these years and what my sensibility is and how it happened.

Unknown (8:03)

How did the pop sensibility enter pottery for you?

Jonathan Adler (8:07)

Well, I think it's a really interesting question. I guess I'm. As I said before, I'm a very postmodern dude in the sense that we're the same age. You know, postmodernism was sort of all the rage, visually, in which it was a mashup, like postmodern, visual postmodernism, as opposed to sort of conceptual, academic postmodernism. Visual postmodernism was about a mashup of different styles and a permission to sample and to just have myriad sensibilities and. Which was quite liberating for me. And I think one of my sensibilities or one of my interests has always been culture and pop culture. And, you know, I was a semiotics major in college. I bet you were, too.

Unknown (8:51)

I was actually English and American literature.

Jonathan Adler (8:53)

Oh, you were smarter than I was. Oh, I get it. So, yeah, I've always been interested in culture and communication, and pottery is a strange canvas for engagement with culture, but it's who I am, and I made it. My canvas.

Unknown (9:11)

My guest is Jonathan Adler. We're gonna talk about his new exhibit at the Museum of Art and Design called the Mad, Mad World of Jonathan Ad. It features his works and works of artists who influence him. You know, you're at this job that you quit. Fired, quit, fired. You do have talent. Clearly, you have talent. What was the breaking point.

Jonathan Adler (9:35)

Again? Looking back, it's so funny because, you know, now that I've been doing this a long time, it sort of seems like, oh, yeah, it was fate. Not so much. I've had an extraordinarily lucky run. The breaking point was that I was a terrible employee, and I got fired from three jobs in a row, and I was unemployed and unemployable, and I started making pots and teaching night classes at Pottery Studio in Hell's Kitchen. I was broke, and I got an order, and I finally had an opportunity to succeed. Like, not to suggest that, you know, I didn't have opportunities in life. I just didn't. I didn't succeed at any of them. And so Suddenly, when I got a soup saw of success, I was. I saw, all right, I have a chance to really live my dream of being a potter. I am now going to be an animal. And that was the breaking point. Just like getting an order from Barney's and making the pots. And then I just entered this really crazy world where I just didn't even look up from the wheel for five years.

Unknown (10:40)

As we enter the studio, we get a glimpse into how you work or how you worked. And you list five steps you use, no matter the material. Brass, ceramic. They are. How did I say it? Maquette.

Jonathan Adler (10:50)

Maquette.

Jonathan Adler (10:51)

Yes, maquette.

Unknown (10:52)

Prototype, firing, sampling and ordering. Can you walk us through these steps?

Jonathan Adler (10:55)

Of course. So I. First of all, I hope people go see the show because it was an incredible thing.

Unknown (11:02)

It's really fun. First of all, it's really fun and I learned a lot.

Jonathan Adler (11:05)

I'm so glad we're gonna talk about that.

Jonathan Adler (11:07)

Yeah, I think it's really cool the way I did the show, if I say so myself. I think it's the new paradigm in museum shows and everyone should have to follow my lead. But the way we work in my studio, you know, I started out as just me and some clay, and now I have a team who works with me, but it's still a craft based design practice. And so the process is we start with like a little ceramic maquette, like a little tiny model with which I work out my ideas, and we kind of have a dialogue and then once kind of have a direction for something, then we take it to a full scale model crafted from clay and then send that. Now, I'm lucky to work in myriad media. You know, whether it's brass, acrylic, but still, everything starts as a pottery prototype that we then ship to a different workshop around the world, get the sample back, critique it, decide on whether or not it should make it into the line. And about 50% of what we make actually ends up being ordered.

Jonathan Adler (12:09)

Oh, wow.

Jonathan Adler (12:09)

Yeah.

Jonathan Adler (12:10)

When you're critiquing, what are you looking for?

Jonathan Adler (12:12)

Well, I'm kind of just. I'm trying to tune out the noise. So I'm looking at it and thinking to myself, does this need to exist? My motto is, if your heirs won't fight over it, we won't make it. It's a very, very, very simple. It's a very simple rule for whether or not something makes it into our collection. And I have to look at something and be like, you know what? This is cool. But is it cool enough? Is it something that if I were you know, somebody were to buy it and then kick the bucket, would their heirs be like, I want it. No, I want it. No, I want it. And that's really my very simple rule. If your heirs won't fight over it, we won't make it.

Jonathan Adler (12:50)

Somebody just wrote that down in our control room.

Jonathan Adler (12:52)

Oh, good. You should sort of catalog all the stuff you have at home and be, will my kids, nieces, nephews, will they fight over this when I kick the bucket? And if they won't jettison it, get rid of it.

Jonathan Adler (13:04)

My guest is Jonathan Adler. We're going to talk more about the Mad, Mad World of Jonathan Adler, which is at the Museum of Art and Design. After a quick break, you're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is design and ceramicist Jonathan Adler. We're talking about his new exhibit at the Museum of Art and Design called the Mad Mad World of Jonathan Adler. Okay, so the second MAD in the title is in capitals. The Mad, Mad World of Jonathan Adler. Why is the second MAD capitalized?

Jonathan Adler (13:43)

The second MAD is capitalized because it is the acronym for the Museum of Art and Design, which is where the show is. So it's, you know, kind of the title just seemed to make sense to me because the show itself is about really a dialogue between my own work and the pieces from mads, the museum's archive that inspired it. And when I cheekily said earlier that I think I've set the new rule for how all museum shows should be organized, what I was really referencing was the fact that I try to be very communicative. And for me, it was really interesting to juxtapose my work with the stuff that inspired it and to try to communicate to the viewer sort of the journey of how people develop their sensibilities, you know. And I think Mad, the Museum has always meant so much to me in its previous incarnation as the American Craft Museum. I sort of used to go there in my youth and haunt the halls of the museum. And it's surreal for me to be having a show there, but it's really getting into the archive and remembering how my sensibility was formed and how the different movements of really post war American craft, which is a somewhat arcane genre. But, you know, it was fascinating for me to remember, like, oh, I would see these funk ceramics from the 70s and they sort of reminded me to be irreverent. Or I would see these beautiful Ruth Duckworth or Val Cushing ceramics from the 70s that remind me to just strive for Beauty and Formal Majesty or Judy Kensley McKee's animal inspired furniture, which inspired me to make animals in my artwork. So it's really a. A cool, I think, dialogue between inspiration and the output of said inspiration.

Jonathan Adler (15:47)

Yeah, it was great. You got to dig around the museum's archives and you got to see all of this great work. What stuck with you?

Jonathan Adler (15:55)

Well, first of all, it's so cool. I would love to just, like, be an archivist at the museum. Not really. It's, like, a lot of work. But what really stuck with me is that, you know, I've been at this now for 30 years, and I've just been in it. Like, I just, you know, I get to work, I have to deal with things. I'm an applied artist or a designer, whatever the. Whatever you want to call me, but I'm just in it. I don't really have time to reflect. And doing this show was quite a profound experience. And it took me back to why and how I started and what my influences are. And it actually was fascinating because I realized that my inspiration and influences were sort of set in stone early in my life, and my work has just been like an expression of them.

Jonathan Adler (16:44)

Let's talk about a couple of different categories. Optimista Optica.

Jonathan Adler (16:51)

Well, I sort of did a taxonomy of my work and of the inspirations and gave each one a cheeky title. So the one.

Jonathan Adler (16:59)

Please help me out.

Jonathan Adler (17:00)

I will help you out. Because they're all sort of fake words. I think what you're saying is Optimistica, which is.

Jonathan Adler (17:05)

Optimistica, yes.

Jonathan Adler (17:06)

Optimistica, which is one sect. The museum, it's broken down into. I hope I can get this right. Animalia, which is animals. Optimistica, which is really kind of about the joy of creativity and a sincere, childlike love for creativity. Oh, Authentica, which is my homage to sincere modernist artists who strove for beauty, strived, strove for beauty in craft and design and sort of a sense of purity and materiality. Metallica is really about how much I love artists and craftspeople who work in metal and about being able to work in a material that is more durable than clay and sort of being able to make things that are even more attenuated and fragile than I can in clay. That. So the first, broadly speaking, I sort of broke it up in my own mind into the two broad facets of my sensibility. The ones I just described, I would say, are my modernist sensibility, which are very sincere and kind of pure, if I dare say so. And the other side of the show, I thought of as my more postmodern sensibility. And the categories in that were erotica, in which I cheekily explore the human body, inspired by a lot of the craftspeople who did that before me. Amirakalia, in which I engage with the idea of America. It was sort of. It was a real thing thing in post war American crafts to engage with what it meant to be American. Much of it, quite. Much of the art from that period, quite subversive and ambivalent. I'm less ambivalent, if I'm being honest. I am just. I love this country. I feel so lucky to be here. But I still engage with the idea of America in my work. And Funkiana is the last bit in the postmodern section, which is about my love for, again, an arcane genre of ceramics called funk ceramics, which was a California 70s movement that was totally subversive and irreverent, silly, mad fun and reminds me to try to never be too serious and to be willing to subvert anything and everything.

Unknown (19:34)

And the place where we get a little bit of an art history lesson is you. To complement your own work, you take these things from the archives. So for authentic, you write a bit about the studio craft movement. First of all, what is the studio craft movement for people who don't know?

Jonathan Adler (19:47)

Yeah, well, the craft movement in general, it's a weird word, craft, because it has. It conjures so many different things for people currently. If you say crafts, someone might think you're making, I don't know, just like you might be taking pool noodles and making animals. I don't know. It's sort of like crafting is a. Is a just fun thing that people might do as a hobby. The art and craft movement at the turn of the last century, I guess, was sort of the beginning of when people started to really make things with art, with artistic intentions. But really what happened is, I would say in post war America especially, or Starting in the 30s and 40s, there became this movement of artists who were working in media that were not considered art, like ceramics, glass weaving, and taking these somewhat mundane materials and turning them into an art movement. And so there became, you know, ceramic artists and weaving artists. And so that craft movement is what really formed my sensibility. And those were the people with whom I was obsessed in my youth. When I was a teen potter, nerdy as that sounds, it's who I was.

Unknown (21:09)

In your Metallica section, you talked about how you could make things that were going to be metallic that ceramic might not allowed you to make, and what you Put forward for people to experience is the work of. It's John Prip. Yes, this beautiful tea set. Tell people who he is and what you admired about his work.

Jonathan Adler (21:31)

John Prip was again, a post war brilliant, I guess, silversmith, metal worker. And I think what I love, first of all, I think in this show I included a teapot of his. And that's because teapots are, to me and to most potters, sort of the ultimate challenge, the favorite playground. It's a really. It's a very. It's like sort of a specific thing, but you have to get everything. It has to feel right and pour right. And John Prip's metal teapot is like a distillation of what a teapot can be. And so I just had to include it because it's like so perfect. It's just pleasingly perfect. It sort of looks like it was meant to be. Like, it's actually John Prip is what I. So when I'm making things, I think my goal, in addition to making things that your heirs will fight over, is I want things to feel like they were uncovered rather than created. Like there's sort of a lightness of touch and like, that was like, yeah, of course that object exists in the world so that you're not overly concerned with, you know, the work it took to make it there. But it sort of just feels light and easy and inevitable. And I think John Prip's work has that feeling of inevitability.

Unknown (22:45)

And in Optimistica, you write, you made these beautiful cups and vases and they have circus performers on it and they're all about joy. But you say in the text, it says you have to be self critical, have self critical analysis to make things that are joyful. What did you have to ask yourself? What do you ask yourself when you're thinking about making something that is just purely joyful?

Jonathan Adler (23:14)

Well, there's a lot of reasons not to make things in the world. You know, there's both conceptual and commercial. You know, you sort of have to think like, God, does anybody really need, like a vase that has a circus performer on it? The answer, of course, is no. But you need to kind of suspend your disbelief, I suppose, and just sort of take a flight of fancy and think, all right, I'm just going to make this. And I think this should exist. And you know that that's sort of the leap of faith that creativity requires. And then after you take that leap of faith, then you need to sort of, you know, take it through all the steps to make it like a commercially viable thing and to work on its own terms. I really like working in as an applied artist rather than art artist because there's sort of a. There's sort of a logical rational structure to it. You know, think price is not arbitrary like in the. In the fine art world, price is arbitrary. It's like, I don't know, should this be a million or 2 million? You know, in the applied art world that I inhabit, it's sort of like, all right, how much does this thing cost me to make? How much? You know, what should our margin be? There's like, there's a really logical, rational sort of structure to it. And I really enjoy that.

Jonathan Adler (24:34)

And then on the back wall there is a section devoted to Howard Cotter.

Jonathan Adler (24:40)

Howard Kotler is. Yes. Howard Kotler was a ceramic artist. Artist. Artist who I think is somewhat underappreciated. I mean he's well known. Ish. But he was, I guess he worked mostly in the 70s and 80s and his. He had a diverse body of work that was sincere, subversive, gay, ambivalent about America. He kind of captured everything to me and he's just one of my forever muses. And I thought he was somewhat under appreciated. And so yeah, it's its own discrete section of the show. It's just like cot Laria, an homage to Howard Kotler, an underappreciated but really important artist to me.

Jonathan Adler (25:29)

We got a nice text here that says great interview. Jonathan Adler is awesome, imaginative and a real original wit. Thanks for putting his mad show on my radar. It sounds great.

Jonathan Adler (25:39)

To not know me is to love me.

Jonathan Adler (25:43)

I'm gonna ask you a question. You were quoted in a recent New York Times article and you said so many things I make fail.

Jonathan Adler (25:51)

Bro, bro. Totes, totes. So much stuff fails. Yeah. And some of the best stuff I make fails. Like I've discovered there's no rhyme or reason to anything in life. That's my. Now that I'm done certain age, I think I have realized, like, if anyone ever were to seek my wisdom, which they'd be ill advised to do that. But I would say what I've learned is that absolutely nothing makes any sense whatsoever.

Jonathan Adler (26:19)

So just kind of do what you think is right.

Jonathan Adler (26:21)

Yeah. And it probably is wrong. Who knows? But you know, I think that I just try to make stuff and tune out the noise. And some of it works, some of it doesn't. But I'm the luckiest dude on earth ever.

Jonathan Adler (26:37)

How do you balance being an artist and being a brand? This is the Big brand year for you. I mean, you have to kind of balance the two. How do you do it?

Jonathan Adler (26:48)

It's so funny to say that because first of all, my sister always makes fun of me and says that her brother has been replaced by a brand. Like, you know, as if I've become a Stepford person, which I wish. If only I wish. You know, I think a brand isn't as introspective and tortured as a person. I don't know. I mean, it's funny. When we were young, the idea of being a brand didn't exist. Brands were Kellogg's, Pillsbury, you know, and then during the intervening years, people have become brands and it's such a silly word and concept. I never really thought about it, but I guess it happened to me. I became a brand. Weird. Never saw that coming.

Jonathan Adler (27:35)

They don't teach you that in art school?

Jonathan Adler (27:38)

No. Yeah, it's very. It's. Yeah. I don't even know what it means, but here I am.

Jonathan Adler (27:43)

What do you want to do next?

Jonathan Adler (27:45)

Make more pots. Yeah. And funnily enough, you know, it is something I grapple with. What do I want to do next? I've been lucky to make a lot of stuff and one of the interesting things about doing this show has been that it's actually gotten me back or even more in touch with my love for clay. Like, I've always worked in clay. I still make the prototypes in my studio. I'm still like a potter first and foremost, but this has, like, kind of reminded me of like what I've. What it all means, you know, and it's that I love to make stuff in clay. So that's what I want to do next. Make more pots.

Jonathan Adler (28:22)

The name of the show is the Mad Mad World of Jonathan Adler. It's the Museum of Art and Design. Jonathan, thank you for coming to the studio.

Jonathan Adler (28:30)

It was an absolute delight. Thank you so much.

Unknown (28:34)

Trip Planner by Expedia. You were made to have strong opinions about sand. We were made to help you and your friends find a place on the beach with a pool and a marina and a waterfall and a soaking tub. Expedia made to travel.

Alison Stewart (28:49)

Since WNYC's first broadcast in 1924, we've been dedicated to creating the kind of content we know the world needs. Since then, New York Public Radio's rigorous journalism has gone on to win a Peabody Award and a Dupont Columbia Award, among others. In addition to this award winning reporting, your sponsorship also supports inspiring storytelling and extraordinary music that is free and accessible to all. To get in touch and find out more, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.