Pot c. 1920

This black pot, made by Maria Martinez, sits here at the Minneapolis Institute of Art like a little black sun. It’s funny to think about pottery as painting, but in a way it is. This is a painting in three dimensions. You can feel the artist’s hand in the perfectly smooth curves and how the flat black geometric designs sit against the slightly shinier black of the pot itself. The surface is so smooth that you feel like you could run your hands over it for hours. There's a single vertical line in the centre of each motif which seems to be slightly raised from the surface. It gives a certain dynamism to the piece. Martinez's work reminds me of Agnes Martin's in a way, there is that same quiet, contemplative quality, but here it is translated into a functional object. Like all great art, the meanings of this pot are multiple and open to interpretation.