Edmund de Waal
Edmund de Waal: A Life of Art, Sculpture, and Cultural Significance
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#### Full Name and Common Aliases
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Edmund de Waal is a British artist, sculptor, and potter born on May 26, 1966.
#### Birth and Death Dates
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May 26, 1966 (still living)
#### Nationality and Profession(s)
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British; Artist, Sculptor, Potter
Early Life and Background
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Edmund de Waal was born in London to a family of Greek Cypriot descent. His father, Sir Nicholas de Waal, was a diplomat and lawyer who played a significant role in the UK's relationships with Greece and Cyprus. Edmund's early life was marked by exposure to art, culture, and language, which would later influence his work as an artist.
Growing up between London and Athens, de Waal developed a deep appreciation for the intersection of art and politics. His family's cultural heritage and his own experiences living between two worlds have been significant factors in shaping his artistic perspective.
Major Accomplishments
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Edmund de Waal has achieved numerous accolades throughout his career:
Tate Britain Acquisition: In 2012, the Tate Britain purchased de Waal's work "The White Light of Japan," a vitrine containing 100 Hanji leaves, for £6.5 million.
Turner Prize Nomination: De Waal was nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize in 2005, recognizing his contributions to contemporary British art.
Notable Works or Actions
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Some notable works and actions by Edmund de Waal include:
The White Light of Japan (2012): A vitrine containing 100 Hanji leaves that explore themes of impermanence and the ephemeral nature of life.
Contemplating the Viewer (2005): A series of ceramic sculptures that examine the relationship between art, politics, and human experience.
Impact and Legacy
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Edmund de Waal's work has had a lasting impact on contemporary art:
Challenging Traditional Notions: De Waal's pieces often push against traditional notions of sculpture, pottery, and ceramics.
Investigating Human Experience: His work frequently explores themes such as impermanence, identity, and the human condition.
Why They Are Widely Quoted or Remembered
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Edmund de Waal is widely quoted and remembered for his thought-provoking art pieces that challenge viewers to reconsider their relationship with objects, nature, and each other.
Quotes by Edmund de Waal
And rather impressive – I want to be bourgeois and ask how you find time for five children, a husband and a lover?
It is a discreetly sensual act of disclosure, showing their pieces together in public. And assembling these lacquers also records their assignations: the collection records their love-affair, their own secret history of touch.
The vitrines exist so that you can see objects, but not touch them: they frame things, suspend them, tantalise through distance.
Charles bought a picture of some asparagus from Manet, one of his extraordinary small still lifes, where a lemon or rose is lambent in the dark. It was a bundle of twenty stalks bound in straw. Manet wanted 800 francs for it, a substantial sum, and Charles, thrilled, sent 1,000. A week later Charles received a small canvas signed with a simple M in return. It was a single asparagus stalk laid across a table with an accompanying note: ‘This seems to have slipped from the bundle.
Even when one is no longer attached to things, it’s still something to have been attached to them; because it was always for reasons which other people didn’t grasp... ′ There are the places in memory you do not wish to go with others.
This is the strange undoing of a collection, of a house and of a family. It is the moment of fissure when grand things are taken and when family objects, known and handled and loved, become stuff.
How objects are handed on is all about story-telling. I am giving you this because I love you. Or because it was given to me. Because I bought it somewhere special. Because you will care for it. Because it will complicate your life. Because it will make someone else envious. There is no easy story in legacy. What is remembered and what is forgotten?
Does assimilation mean that they never came up against naked prejudice? Does it mean that you understood where the limits of your social world were and you stuck to them?
There is something about that burning of all those letters that gives me pause: why should everything be made clear and be brought into the light? Why keep things, archive your intimacies? Why not let thirty years of shared conversation go spiralling in ash up into the air of Tunbridge Wells? Just because you have it does not mean you have to pass it on. Losing things can something gain you a space in which to live.