Arnold Zimmerman (1954-2021), also known as Arnie Zimmerman, was an American sculptor and ceramic artist.Kuspit, Donald. "Arnold Zimmerman," American Ceramics, Volume 15, Number 1, 2006, p. 72.Koplos, Janet. "Arnold Zimmerman at John Elder," Art in America, May 2000.Clowes, Judy. "Arnold Zimmerman," American Ceramics, Volume 11, Number 1, 1993, p. 53. His work ranged from monumental to miniature, and abstract to figurative, encompassing totemic vessel forms, tabletop sculpture and figures, murals, and room-size installations.Lynn, Vanessa S. "Arnold Zimmerman: Stretching," Ceramics Art and Perception, Issue 12, 1993.Ellison, Jr., Robert A. and Glenn Adamson. Shapes from Out of Nowhere: Ceramics from the Robert A. Ellison Jr. Collection, USA: August Editions/Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2021. Retrieved April 22, 2022.Pereira, João Castel-Branco. Arnold Zimmerman Cerâmicas, Lisbon: Museu Nacional do Azulejo, 1992. Retrieved April 22, 2022.Rubin, Edward. "Arnold Zimmerman and Tiago Montepegado," Sculpture, May 2010, p. 74–5. He was part of a multi-decade, 20th-century shift in American ceramics during which artists challenged clay's identification with function and craft, engaging fine-art domains such as emotional expression, social commentary, figuration and narrative.Mullavey, Kevin Dean and Nancy Shaw Palmer. American Clay Artists 1989, Philadelphia: Clay Studio, 1989. Retrieved April 22, 2022.Collischan, Judy. "Clay Incarnate," Clay Bodies, New York: Neuberger Museum of Art, 1999. Retrieved April 22, 2022.Smith, Roberta. "Looking at Clay From All Angles," The New York Times, June 13, 2021. Retrieved April 27, 2022. Zimmerman first gained recognition in the 1980s for deeply carved, architectonic sculptures characterized by rough physicality, rhythmic surfaces, gestural presence and Italian Romanesque influences.Harrison, Helen A. "A Celebration of Ceramics," The New York Times, August 14, 1983. Retrieved April 27, 2022.Levin, Elaine. The History of American Ceramics, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1988. Retrieved April 22, 2022.Del Vecchio, Mark. Postmodern Ceramics, London: Thames & Hudson, 2001. Retrieved April 22, 2022.Clark, Garth The Human Condition: The Stephen and Pamela Hootkin Collection, Madison, WI: Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, 2014. Retrieved April 22, 2022. In the mid-1990s, he shifted to figurative work that critic Donald Kuspit wrote, examined the interaction of finite man and infinite matter, artist and creative work: "There is a sense of futility and folly as well as seemingly senseless idealism and innocence built into Zimmerman's parables of the all-too-human."Kuspit, Donald. Arnold Zimmerman: Parables of Folly, New York: Greenwich House Pottery, 2004.
Zimmerman's art belongs to the public collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Bladder, Tongue, and Tangle," 1994, Arnold Zimmerman, Collection. Retrieved April 28, 2022. Los Angeles County Museum of Art,Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Arnold Zimmerman, Collection. Retrieved April 28, 2022. Smithsonian American Art Museum,Smithsonian American Art Museum. Arnold Zimmerman, Artist. Retrieved April 28, 2022. and Brooklyn Museum,Brooklyn Museum. Arnold Zimmerman, Artists. Retrieved April 28, 2022. among others. In 2021, his work appeared in the Metropolitan Museum exhibition, "Shapes From Out of Nowhere." He received fellowships and awards from organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and New York Foundation for the Arts.Princenthal, Nancy and Jennifer Dowley. A Creative Legacy: A History of the National Endowment for the Arts, 1966-1995, New York: H.N. Abrams/National Endowment for the Arts, 2001. Retrieved April 28, 2022.The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. Arnold Zimmerman, Award Winners. Retrieved April 28, 2022. Zimmerman, who worked out of a Brooklyn, New York studio for most of his career, died in Hudson, New York in 2021.Perreault, John. "Arnold Zimmerman," American Ceramics, Spring 2003, p. 40–1.Johnson, Garth and Ann Rosenthal. "Arnold 'Arnie' Zimmerman, Ceramic Sculptor of Monumental Works, Dies at 66." Studio Potter, August 31, 2021. Retrieved April 22, 2022.
Early life and career Zimmerman was born December 13, 1954, in Poughkeepsie, New York and grew up in Ossining, New York. He apprenticed as a potter in Lincolnshire, England prior to enrolling at the Kansas City Art Institute, where he studied under ceramic artist Ken Ferguson and earned a BFA In 1977.Clark, Garth and Vicky A Clark. Keepers of the Flame: Ken Ferguson's Circle, Kansas City, KS: Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and Design of Kansas City Art Institute, 1995. Retrieved April 22, 2022. Prior to graduating, Zimmerman studied stone carving at a Lacoste, Provence, France limestone quarry, an experience that figured prominently in his early work.Perry; Barbara. American Ceramics: The Collection of Everson Museum of Art, New York: Rizzoli; Syracuse, NY: Everson Museum of Art, 1989. Retrieved April 22, 2022. He continued his studies at New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University completing an MFA in 1979.
In the early 1980s, Zimmerman moved to New York City and opened a studio in a converted Williamsburg, Brooklyn factory in 1983. In his first professional decade, he appeared in major ceramics surveys at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, SUNY Stonybrook, American Craft Museum, Seattle Art Museum, and National Museum of Ceramic Art, among others.Halper, Vicki. Clay Revisions: Plate, Cup, Vase, Seattle, WA: Seattle Art Museum; American Federation of Arts, 1987. Retrieved April 22, 2022.Wechsler, Susan. The Raw Edge: Ceramics of the 80s, Greenvale, NY: Hillwood Art Gallery, C.W. Post Center, 1983. Retrieved April 22, 2022. Five of his monumental works were also selected by the Everson Museum of Art—noted for its ceramics collection—to line the front entrance of its building.Speight, Charlotte F. and John Toki. Hands in Clay, Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1989. Retrieved April 22, 2022. During that period, he met his wife, Ann Rosenthal, a member of the avant-garde theater scene then working at the performance space Franklin Furnace.
In his later career, Zimmerman had solo shows at the Garth Clark Gallery, Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, Museu do Azulejo, Snug Harbor Cultural Center,Raynor, Vivien. "Portugal's Esthetics, Reflected in Old and New Ceramic Tiles," The New York Times, April 10, 1994. Retrieved April 22, 2022. Greenwich House Pottery, and Rhode Island School of Design Museum (RISD),Smee, Sebastian. "'City' of ceramic dreams," The Boston Globe, December 11, 2009. among others. His work also appeared in surveys at the Katonah Museum of Art,Ilse-Neuman, Ursula and Janet Kardon. Conversations in Clay, Katonah, NY: Katonah Museum of Art, 2008. Retrieved April 28, 2022. Islip Art Museum,Harrison, Helen A. "Inner Child," The New York Times, October 14, 2001. Retrieved April 27, 2022. Neuberger Museum of Art, and Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.
Work and reception Zimmerman's art embodied the movement of ceramics into the mainstream of contemporary sculpture through successive bodies of work exploring modernist abstraction, figural expression, and moral and philosophical themes. He drew on a wide range of art historical sources, from Tuscan Romanesque and Manueline Portuguese gothic architecture to humanistic artists such as Pieter Bruegel and Honoré Daumier to analytic cubism.Forrest, Neil. "Feat of Clay," Imprint, November–December 1990.Schwartz, Judith. Confrontational Ceramics: The Artist as Social Critic, London/Philadelphia: A & C Black/University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. Retrieved April 22, 2022. In the 1980s, Zimmerman first received recognition for monolithic works that combined elements of monumental, figurative and relief sculpture and the ceramic vessel tradition. In the 1990s, his work became increasingly fantastical, employing intricate modeling and glazing in anthropomorphic sculptures, and eventually, multi-figure, narrative tableaux. Art historian Judy Collischan related this sculpture to the work of Hieronymus Bosch and Bruegel writing, "Zimmerman’s fascination with exaggeration and the bizarre … is in line with the grotesque, a decorative form of art that intertwines elements from human, animal, and foliage sources … There is a blend of humor with deformity [that] combines anthropomorphic form with a moralizing content that relates a lesson about pretense and folly." With the sprawling, 200-piece installation, Inner City (2007–10), Zimmerman fashioned these tableaux into entire cities and populations.Baas, Fredric. "Arnie Zimmerman/Tiago Montepegado," Ceramics Art and Perception, Issue 74, 2008, p. 46–50.Rubin, Edward. "The Wizard of Clay Wizardry," NY Arts, Spring 2010.
Early monumental sculpture Zimmerman's early monumental works of blue, pink, green and tan earthenware employed exaggerated scale, carved reliefs, and implicit figuration with a body/vessel duality. Critics described the massive pieces as masculine, brawny and expressive. Zimmerman hand-built them in thick, three-to-five-inch walls or coils that were dried and fired slowly, which enabled deep carving. Their dominant forms—influenced by Romanesque stone columns and pilasters—departed from the symmetrical, neck-shoulder-belly structure of conventional vessels, using exaggerated proportions and twisting, undulating stances that captured human movement in ways writers described as eerie, humorous and gendered.
Zimmerman energized the work with rebus-like, rhythmic, carved abstract and geometric shapes, ridges, symbols and curvilinear motifs, as well as primal surfaces showing evident finger marks, scrapes and paddle lines. New York Times critic Helen Harrison wrote that the sculpture had "a mysterious and commanding presence … like huge ceremonial objects created by some unknown culture [whose] symbolic marks … seem to indicate hidden meanings that only the initiated may decipher. The roughness of the clay body and the crudely formed undulations of the shape contribute to the feeling of primitive mystery." In the late 1980s, Zimmerman turned from vessels to column-like, gate and arch structures with more representational, carved forms that referenced architectural styles of ancient Crete, the Middle East, and Manueline Portugal (e.g., Arch, 1988).
Figurative sculpture The 1990s was a decade of greater formal experimentation for Zimmerman, which extended to figurines, tabletop pieces, fountain and tile works, and multi-figure tableaux. He was greatly influenced by travel, including a residency at the Sant'Anna tile works in Portugal, where he explored the Azulejo decorative tradition, which often features exotic or grotesque plant, creature and maritime motifs. His work there resulted in a series of colorful, attenuated and flattened totems whose whimsical imagery—incorporating elemental motifs and condensed symbols such as tradesman's insignias—hinted variously at fantastical figures or heraldry.