George Ohr (1856-1917) was regarded as an eccentric in his lifetime but has emerged as a major figure in American art since the discovery, in 1965, of thousands of examples of his work. Since that date research on Ohr has increased exponentially as has his cult figure status. Scholars and collectors alike are attracted to his manipulated and deformed pots as much as to his eccentric personality and legendary rediscovery. As a result Ohr has come to be canonized as a prophetic and mythical figure untouched by late nineteenth century societal and cultural concerns of both Biloxi, Mississippi and the United States.
Ohr's career (1880-1908) was coincident with the last quarter of the nineteenth century, which was a time of cultural, social and spiritual upheaval. This dissertation examines specific issues of this time period with which Ohr would have been involved.
In response to the development of new forms of advertising and visual display some artists created personas which would attract attention to their work. James McNeill Whistler and Elbert Hubbard are apt examples. Ohr also adopted this strategy and portrayed himself as an eccentric, uneducated, and uncultivated potter. Ohr's persona was specifically fashioned to establish himself as a Southern character in order to appeal to his dominant Northern client base.
Also in response to a changing economy which had enabled individuals to claim vast accumulations of wealth over a short period of time, Ohr seemed to have embraced the notion of socialism and the importance of the individual. Ohr was particular attracted to this humanitarian side of socialism. Related to this idea is the somewhat subversive empowerment of the grotesque popularized by the Symbolists and such writers as J.K. Huysmans and Oscar Wilde. Ohr's highly individualized pots, I assert, are abstractions of abject nature. His forms, of which he proclaimed there were "no two alike," appear to ooze and melt with glazes that suggest bodily fluids, disease and decay.
After studying the ways in which Ohr related to specific issues of his nineteenth-century milieu, this dissertation uses these conclusions to provide a new interpretation of Ohr's art. Rather than viewing his works as purely formalist, his pots become expressions of his sensitivity to underlying tensions of late nineteenth and early twentieth century culture. His art explored very similar, essentially parallel themes to those of his life: the divide between crude craft and "real art," between the salable commercial commodity and the priceless work of art, between the common or low-class and the refined, between the ugly and deformed (or even the obscene) and the beautiful.