Untitled 

Christian Royal created this untitled ceramic work sometime after 1993. The artist's rendering of foliage and insect-life on a domestic object invites us to consider the politics of ornament. During the modern era, decorative or applied arts have often been considered "minor," in contrast to the fine arts of painting and sculpture. These assumptions were not shared by earlier eras, and are actively challenged by artists today. The ceramic object here, with its imagery of a butterfly and fruiting vine, seems to gesture at a particularly feminine or domestic aesthetic. Yet its very presence in a museum suggests a challenge to these categories, as it revalues forms of artistic labor that are easily dismissed. To gain a deeper understanding of this work and its cultural context, one might investigate the role of gender in the history and institutions of art. One might also investigate other examples of ceramics in contemporary art.