Biography

One of Northern California’s most prolific illusionist sculptors, Richard Shaw distinguished himself as part of the legendary ceramics movement that emerged at the University of California, Davis, in the 1960s. Shaw’s work differed notably from that of his colleagues, however, in his use of high-fired porcelain and innovative decal transfer techniques. Shaw is best known for his humorous and whimsical trompe l’oeil ceramic sculptures of ordinary objects that are often absurdly comical and teeming with clever art historical references.

Shaw was born into a family of artists in Hollywood in 1941. His father, Dick Shaw, worked as a cartoonist for Walt Disney Studios and the United Productions of America, and as a child, the young Shaw enjoyed drawing trains, fighter planes, and battle scenes. Shaw pursued art at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, and while he had every intention of becoming a painter, he began working in clay when he enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1961 and met sculptors Robert Hudson, Manuel Neri, and Ron Nagle. After entering the graduate program at the University of California, Davis, he met colleagues William T. Wiley, Robert Arneson, and Roy De Forest, from whom he inherited a penchant for puns and parody.

Among Shaw’s most celebrated ceramic sculptures are those that replicate common objects including playing cards, stacks of books, and envelopes, all of which bring to mind the 19th-century still-life paintings of William Harnett and John Frederick Peto. Martha’s House of Cards (1980) is a three-dimensional still life featuring 28 life-sized playing cards balanced upon two worn, hardcover books. Shaw decorated the cards using a decal-transfer technique to apply photo-offset lithographs directly to glazed porcelain.

Shaw named the sculpture in honor of his wife, Martha, a fellow ceramist whom he met while attending Orange Coast College. Traces of Shaw’s subtle yet graceful wit emerge in what might be considered homage to their successful union. The playing cards, cast in the fragile material of porcelain, evoke the seductive nature of chance and luck associated with card games—and perhaps marriage. The ensemble is carefully balanced upon two books, one titled Porcelain at Vincennes, referring to a noted French porcelain factory, and the other titled We Pick Our Pleasures, which may allude to the couple’s shared passion for art. “One of my favorite artists is my wife,” Shaw once noted. “We did all of this together through the years. And we’re still making art. … I think Martha and I understand each other, although she is probably more understanding than I am.”1

In the mid-1970s, Shaw became known for a series of walking “stick-man” structures made from mundane objects cast in porcelain. Little French Girl (1996) is an extension of this series and resembles the paintings of 16th-century Italian mannerist painter Giuseppe Arcimbolo who cunningly combined fruits and vegetables to make crazy anthropomorphic figures. Shaw admires artists like Arcimbolo, who dared to poke fun at high art by employing ordinary objects: “There is something I like about spending all that time and talent on the mundane … it seems so absurd, nuts, and wonderful … and yet a way to make poetry,” he once explained.2

In Little French Girl, Shaw uses staples of American fast food to create a humorous parody of Romanian artist Constantin Brancusi’s ca. 1914 sculpture of the same name. The torso of Shaw’s Little French Girl is built from a stack of hamburgers, and her legs are composed of a series of hotdogs. Her spindly, pumpkin-shaped head sports a bowler hat reminiscent of those made iconic by French surrealist painter René Magritte, and she stomps upon a slice of melting Brie cheese and a flaky saltine cracker—perhaps an oblique reference to the increased production and consumption of American fast food around the world. Shaw’s placement of a single, fallen domino at the base of the sculpture reminds us that our attempt at interpretation is no more than an illusory game.

Shaw’s intriguing sculptures successfully function on various levels. While their striking realistic illusionism may induce a state of childlike wonder in many viewers, they also satirize the formality of high art. According to critic Bill Berkson, “the eye is tricked into a state of hyperalertness so that you look harder to perceive what’s actually there, all the while flailing about mentally for an exact memory of the familiar thing it’s meant to represent. The mild, deadpan deception, unsettling at first, then hilarious, produces an aesthetic-cum-philosophical buzz, which lingers.”3 —A.W.

1. Louise Lieber, “A Conversation with Richard Shaw,” San Francisco Art Institute Alumni Newsletter, February 1979, 3.
2. Richard Shaw, quoted in Richard Shaw: Illusionism in Clay, exh. cat. (San Francisco: Braunstein Gallery, 1985), iii.
3. Bill Berkson, “Shaw Business,” American Craft, October/November 1996, 81.

(SJMA Selections publication, 2004)

Richard Shaw was born in Hollywood in 1941. He received his B.F.A. in 1965 from the San Francisco Art Institute, where he studied with Ron Nagle, Robert Hudson, and Manuel Neri. He received his M.A. in 1968 from UC Davis, where he studied with William T. Wiley, Robert Arneson, and Roy DeForest. Shaw’s work has been exhibited extensively around the country. Shaw was the subject of a one-person show at the San Jose Museum of Art in 1981 (catalogue). Most recently, his work was featured in a solo show at Braunstein Quay Gallery in San Francisco. Shaw lives in Fairfax, California. (SJMA Collections Committee, 2000)

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