Edmund de Waal: British Art Lecture 2015, Tate Britain

Edmund de Waal is a master of both prose and porcelain. A world-famous ceramicist, his pottery is a paragon of elegance, characterised by pure white veneers, with the occasional dash of cobalt blue. He is also an acclaimed writer. In The Hare with Amber Eyes, he traced his family history via a collection of netsuke, a type of Japanese miniature. The book leads the reader from an art dealership in late 19^th Century Paris, through the horror of Nazi rule and into the present day.

This October, de Waal published The White Road: a Pilgrimage of Sorts. The book chronicles the author’s travels across Europe, Asia, and America to uncover the history of porcelain, his chosen medium. Rigorously researched, it is a rich social history as much as it is a history of ceramics.

Evidently, this is an artist who is uniquely well-placed to understand the interplay between the verbal and the visual. It is fitting, then, that his chosen subject for this year’s British Art Lecture is the relationship between poetry and contemporary art. Expect discussion of how poetry works as a visual medium, and how quotation enters into the work of artists from Agnes Martin to Anselm Kiefer.

The lecture takes place at Tate Britain’s Clore Auditorium on December 2.