John Mason, Rosalind Krauss, and Ceramics in Postmodern Sculpture

Clay sculptor John Mason (1927–2019) has been said to make abstract expressionist ceramics, minimalist ceramics, and conceptual ceramics. Yet by comparing Mason’s conceptually rigorous 1970s works in firebrick with superficially similar – and much more famous – firebrick sculptures by Carl Andre, I argue that Mason’s work demands to be understood within a ceramics context. No mere imitator of New York art movements, Mason actually holds an important place in their theorization: central to my argument is that the first version of Rosalind Krauss’s influential article “Sculpture in the Expanded Field” ( October , 1979) was an essay on Mason’s work.