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SLOTS: S-87

Date1987

Maker Howard Kottler American, 1930-1989

Label TextIn the last years of his life, Howard Kottler made a series of multifaceted ceramic works stylized as cubist sculpture. Often modeled on mass-reproduced knickknacks and frequently using dogs as stand-ins for human portraiture, he recast these “low art” subjects in the language of art history, coating them in faux gold or silver leaf to suggest a level of opulence and glamor that remains only surface-deep. Like many of Kottler’s works from this period, SLOTS holds subversive messages below its high-gloss surface, opening to reveal scenes and double-entendre jokes that are hidden from the viewer: lifting the ears reveals a drill bit that transforms into a human hand, seemingly controlling the inner mind of the dog, and hidden in the jaws is a smaller terrier dog staring down a surreal passageway evocative of a Giorgio de Chirico painting. This process of revelation and visual doubletalk suggests a hidden inner life, a subject that particularly interested Kottler as a gay man.

Object number2023.22.7

Provenance[William Traver Gallery, Seattle]; purchased from gallery by Dennis Braddock and Janice Niemi, Seattle, Washington, August 1996; gift to Seattle Art Museum, 2023

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture, June 21 - September 2, 2024.

Credit LineGift of Dennis Braddock in memory of Janice Niemi

DimensionsVariable Overall: 31 x 18 x 21 in. (78.7 x 45.7 x 53.3 cm)

MediumWhiteware with glaze and silver lustre