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Book Review By Amy Gogarty

Walter Dexter: The Torso Masterworks by Jonathon Bancroft-Snell
(Toronto: Ronald P. Frye, 2012)

It is so rare to find a monograph on a living Canadian ceramist that
one cannot be blamed for high hopes and great expectations when
such a document appears. Walter Dexter: The Torso Masterworks is a
handsome book with many beautiful photographs of exquisite works,
and my anticipation was keenly aroused when I received my review
copy in the mail. The Yorso works are a series of flat-slab-bottle shapes
Dexter produced throughout his career, particularly over the last ten to
twelve years. They resemble a human torso stripped of head and limbs
and are imbued with a liveliness of colour and spirit that makes them
especially powerful when exhibited as a group. Most are decorated
with brilliant colour, rugged texture and vigorous brushwork, which
link them closely to the work of modern artists such as the Regina
Five or the Painters Eleven in Ontario. In September 2007, Jonathon
Bancroft-Snell, the author of this book, presented a large number
of these works in a retrospective titled Ti7bute, and that exhibition
became the impetus for this book.

With so many beautiful and inspiring examples from this series
photographed so compellingly by Sebastian Frye, it seems churlish to
criticize the text, but it must be done. The text
is nearly impossible to follow; it is disorganized
and virtually incoherent. While claiming to
focus on the torso vases (roughly 1996-2011),
the author traces the artist’s history beginning
with his 1931 birth in Alberta at the depth
of the Depression, his attendance at the
Alberta Institute of Art and Technology (later,
ACAD, in Calgary), where he encountered
his life-long mentor Luke Lindoe, and his
later moves to Kelowna, Vancouver and
eventually Victoria. Strangely, his attendance
at art school is discussed in Chapter 1, “The
Beginning,” and again in Chapter 2, “Return
to Alberta,” yet the name of the school is not
given until Chapter 4, “The Vancouver Years,”
which, confusingly, opens with a discussion of
Dexter’s teaching in Alberta. The book concludes with a very useful
catalogue raisonné of as many torso works as could be located. At the
bottom of each page is a diagram indicating the relative size of bottles
as small, medium and large. However, the diagrams are in inches while
all dimensions for the works are in centimeters,

There seems to be a general confusion about craft, functional
pottery and “art.” Asserting Dexter had to make functional work to
survive despite wishing to make art, he states (107) “Walter is first
and foremost a potter and that is how he continues to see himself.”
‘That potters engage in creative and artistic work even while making
functional pieces does not seem to be appreciated, despite this
being widely discussed in critical circles. Some statements challenge
credibility, such as when he mentions small file cards Dexter used to
market his work, writing: “Given that very few studio potters today
use any form of visual marketing aids, that was in itself quite creative
and innovative, especially in the sixties” (101). Are not artist websites
“visual marketing aids,” and do not nearly all professional potters
today access some form of website to promote their work?

Potters Guild of BC Newsletter - May 2012

Walter Dexter then (upper
right) and now (above).

‘The book is rife with these sorts of disconcerting disjunctions
and non-sequiturs, which, frankly, make it difficult to review
as it is nearly impossible to follow any train of thought. The
author is clearly an enthusiastic supporter of contemporary
Canadian ceramics and of Dexter, and he is able to supply
interesting anecdotes illuminating the personal and economic
relationship between artist and dealer, dealer and collector. The
book opens with a sublimely beautiful poem about unloading
a kiln by Rona Murray, Dexter's late wife, which provides
moving insight into these two artists’ shared life. However,
this is not a sufficient basis for a book. If ceramics is to be
taken seriously as a valid and important form of creative art practice, it
must be addressed with the same level of critical attention and serious
scholarship given other art forms. That will only come about if we
demand it. We have numerous examples of artist-scholars producing
serious, critical writing such as Paul Mathieu, Leopold Foulem, Sandra
Alfoldy or Brian Grison, whose excellent article on Dexter in Ceramics
Art and Perception 76 (June, 2009) helped sort out confusions with the
book. Dexter surely deserves a serious monograph, one that places his
work in a broad aesthetic and critical context with clarity and factual
detail. This is a lovely book to look at,
but, to understand this artist better,
you will need to look elsewhere. we

Jonathon Bancroft-Snell and one of
Walter Dexter's torso masterworks.