Adrian Saxe

American, b. 1943

La Cienega Wang Doodle
1994

Porcelain, Stoneware, and mixed media
10.5 x 17.5 x 6 in.
Gift of the Nora Eccles Treadwell Foundation
2003.39

Adrian Saxe’s La Cienega Wang Doodle is a playful collision of formal and cultural elements. Drawing upon ceramic traditions from around the globe, this piece embodies the eclectic spirit of the West Coast. La Cienega Wang Doodle takes its name in part from La Cienega Boulevard, a major thoroughfare in West Los Angeles known for its restaurants, design shops, and art galleries, and in part from the popular blues song “Wang Dang Doodle,” by the Chicago-based blues artist Willie Dixon. Such a lively combination of references is embodied in the form, which incorporates porcelain, stoneware, and various ornamental elements. La Cienega Wang Doodle is a tribute to the variety of source material ceramists began to explore during the postmodern period.

Deeply influenced by his mentor Ralph Bacerra, Saxe embraced surface decoration and ornamentation. He worked with Bacerra at Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles in the mid-1960s, before leaving to establish his own functional ceramics business. He later returned to Chouinard—by then renamed the California Institute of Arts—to receive his BFA degree in 1974. He is a professor of ceramics at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Matthew Limb

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This object has the following keywords:

• abstract - Genre of visual arts in which figurative subjects or other forms are simplified or changed in their representation so that they do not portray a recognizable person, object, thing, etc.; may reference an idea, quality, or state rather than a concrete object. For the process of formulating general concepts by abstracting common properties of instances, prefer "abstraction." For 20th-century art styles that were a reaction against the traditional European conception of art as the imitation of nature, use "Abstract (fine arts style)."
• biomorphic
• indigo
• mixed-media
• sculpture

This object was included in the following exhibitions:

• Uses of the Real I , 1/20/2008 - 4/30/2011
• Uses of the Real Part II , 7/1/2009 - 8/30/2010
• ARTH 4790 & 6790: History of American Studio Craft (Ceramics) , 2/6/2015 - 10/9/2015
• Unearthed , 8/23/2022 - 5/14/2023
• Holding Space: Highlights from the NEHMA Ceramics Collection , 3/1/2025 - 7/12/2025

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