FREE ESSAY ON LAU-TZU

LAU-TZU

We turn clay to make a vessel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing
That the utility of the vessel depends.
Lao-Tzu 1
When we fill the jug, the pouring that fills it flows into the empty jug. The emptiness,
the void, is what does the
vessel's holding. The empty space, this nothing of the jug, is what the jug is as the
holding vessel. . . . From start to
finish the potter takes hold of the impalpable void and brings it forth as the container
in the shape of the containing
vessel.
Martin Heidegger 2
These twenty six ewers by Peter Beasecker are a sustained meditation and inquiry within
the medium of their facture on the
form of the ewer. This also is a meditation and an inquiry on the form of the ewer, in
another medium. The dialectical
oppositions engaged by contemporary clay works--craft and art traditions, utilitarian and
aesthetic objects, active use and
contemplative regard, vessel and sculpture, surface and form, decoration and depth,
concept and process--ramify in both the
medium of their facture and the medium of this discourse. In both work in clay and in
discursive engagement of those works,
these terms deeply implicate their opposites.
Form is a matter not simply of shape, but of the structure of the ewer as such, the
necessary conditions of ewer-ness, a
particular case of the vessel-form. The vessel-form, as Heidegger notes, can be as
quotidian as a jug for holding something:
The jug is a thing as a vessel--it can hold something. To be sure, this container has to
be made. But its being made
by the potter in no way constitutes what is peculiar and proper to the jug insofar as it
is qua jug. The jug is not a
vessel because it was made; rather, the jug had to be made because it is this holding
vessel. 3
The jug is, and is thus a thing. The holdingness of the jug is its whatness, constituting
the jug as a vessel. The particularities of its
vesselness constitute the vessel as a ewer, and indeed as this ewer, with these
characteristics. Juxtaposing several things
together is to invite their comparison. Beasecker's ewers arrayed on shelves manifest
their similarities and differences, eliciting
comparison. Each of these ewers is a token within the type 'ewer'. The type is the
universal, the class of things; the token is the
particular instance, a member of the class. 4 Members of the class 'ewer'
notwithstanding, each of these works is an individual,
in a sense analogous to the application of the term to persons. The indiviudality of
these pieces extends beyond the status of all
artworks as quasi subjects:5 it is manifested by the inflections of form, evoking
resonance with the gesture of the body.
Variations within a type, these works are also variations from the type 'ewer' and
variations on the type 'vessel'. Consequently,
this essay is of necessity an exercise in interpreting the variorum. 6 
The traditional type ewer is a wide-mouthed pitcher or jug, typically with a narrow neck,
more or less bulbous body tapering
and then swelling intto a relatively wide flairing foot. As the derivation of ewer from
aquaria suggests, the ewer is traditionally a
vessel for bring and pouring water for hand washing. 7 The general form of the ewer is
similar to the classical Greek oinochoe,
wine jug. Beasecker's interpretations of the ewer-form maintain the neck of the ewer,
which in Beasecker's pieces assumes the
function of an absent handle. Beasecker's pieces exchange the wide mouth, extended into a
lip for pouring, of the traditional
ewer-type for a thin, attenuated spout, emerging not as a modification of the mouth
opening from a neck but rather extending
directly from the body of the vessel. Freed of the necessity of pouring, the mouth can
assume any of several shapes, suitable for
filling the vessel; relative to the spout, the mouth is proportionately large. The result
of this seperation and concomittant
specialization of function is a vessel quicker to fill than to empty. This potential for
relative ease of filling in comparison to
slowness of pouring out emphasizes the function of the vessel as container, holder of
liquid. To receive, to hold, and to pour out
slowly is to concentrate attention on these functions. That which performs these several
functions is a thing, a type of thing
termed vessel. But any number of variations, of shape, of surface, might be given to
things within this type. These variations are
the articulations of nuanced inflections of form and thus of the particularities of form
and content within the type. These
articulations are the expression of the way the particular ewer-thing stands forth. The
form of the particular ewer-thing is its
stance, its gesture, its way of being- in-the-world. This gestural aspect of the
ewer-thing's particularity of form is given in its
distal, visual aspect. Regarding the ewer distally, visually, is to engage its sculptural
qualitites. But it is also given in tactile
perception, and through this proximal apprehension conditions the hand in the handling of
the ewer-thing in its use, emphasizing
the utilitatian vesselness of the ewer. Together, these modes of appprehension of the
thing in the particularity of its thingness thus
conditions the gesture of its use. This conditioning of the user's bodily gesture in the
use of the thing is a nuancing of stance, of
the user's way of being- in-the-world. Attending to the nuancing of stance and gesture in
filling and holding and pouring from a
vessel is a reflexive attending to one's way of being-in-the-world. Attending is a
being-present, and in attending to one's
disposition in being-in-the-world, one is the clearing in which being has presence to
being. Centering clay on the wheel and
centering the self are deeply related, as Mary C. Richards suggests. 8 So also is the
contemplative using of a ewer.
Endnotes
1 Lao-Tzu. Tao Teh Ching, XI. Passage quoted in C. G. Jung, Synchronicity, trans. R. F.
C. Hull. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1969), p. 70. Return
2 Martin Heidegger, The Thing, Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. (New
York: Harper and Row,
1971), p. 168. [Das Ding, in Vortrage und Aufsatze, lecture given at Bayerischen Akademie
der Schonen Kunste, 6 June
1950; initial publication in Jahrbuch der Akademie, Band I, Gestalt und Gedanke 1951, pp.
128 ff. Return
3 Martin Heidegger, ibid. p. 159. Return
4 For the distinction of type and token, C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles
Sanders Peirce, v. IV, eds. C.
Hartshorne, P. Weiss (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933), p. 423. Cf. Nelson
Goodman, Languages of Art: An
Approach to A Theory of Symbols (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976), p. 131, n. 3. Return 
5 The term 'quasi subject' is Mikel Dufrenne's; see The Phenomeno- logy of Aesthetic
Experience (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1973), pp. 146, 196, 299. Return
6 I have appropriated the title and more from Stanley Fish, Interpreting the Variorum, Is
There a Text in This Class? The
Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980),
pp. 147-173; cf. Fish's
Interpreting 'Interpreting the Variorum', ibid., pp. 174-180. Return
7 The etymology of ewer is from Middle English, from Norman French, from Old North French
eviere, from Vulgar Latin
aquaria (unattest- ed), from Latin aquarius, related to water, from aqua, water. OED
III.356, s.v. Return
8 Mary C. Richards, Centering: In Pottery, Poetry, and the Person (Middleton: Wesleyan
University Press, 1962); see ch.
1, Centering As Dialogue. Return