Porcelain Obsession in Bruce Chatwin's Utz
Utz, the eponymous main character of Bruce Chatwin’s final novel, is a Jewish collector who risks his life in Czechoslovakia during its period of Soviet rule under Stalin. Although he has multiple opportunities to leave the country, he cannot bear to separate himself from his Meissen porcelain. Intriguing in his own right, Utz also provides Chatwin a point of departure for investigations into the nature of art, the psychology of obsession, and private collecting.
Chatwin links art and life in a discussion about golems—mythical beings made from clay and brought to life by specific words. According to certain Jewish beliefs, Adam was the first such creature. In Utz’s view, “Not only was Adam the first human person. He was also the first ceramic sculpture.”
Following Utz’s logic, if humans are descendants of Adam, then we are all ceramic sculptures. Utz is a literal manifestation of this rationale: ordinary in appearance and meek in manner, he lives only in terms of his porcelain. His passion for collecting encompasses the entirety of his being.
Chatwin writes further: “[Utz] detested violence, yet welcomed the cataclysms that flung fresh works of art onto the market. ‘Wars, pogroms, and revolutions’, he used to say, ‘offer excellent opportunities for the collector.’”
In the context of violence, Chatwin’s phrase “flung fresh works of art” evokes human carnage, thus linking art—as well as Utz’s passion for art—to the transmogrified body. In a telling moment, the family physician explains Utz’s youthful obsession with porcelain as a “perversion. Same as any other.”
Summer allegory, Meissen porcelain, 1767. Koldinghus Museum, Denmark.
Utz’s all-encompassing fascination with porcelain is linked to the power of corporeality through physical violence and also through sex. For him, “private ownership confers on the owner the right and the need to touch.” Seduced by the life force of the artworks he so dearly loves, Utz views museum curators as his enemy. Porcelain artworks trapped behind glass in a museum die “of suffocation and the public gaze.” The private collector, by contrast, “restores to the object the life-giving touch of its maker.”
Augustus the Strong, Böttger stoneware, ca. 1713. The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Chatwin’s novel encourages readers to ponder porcelain’s possible life-giving power by emphasizing its connection to alchemy. Augustus the Strong, who was the factual King of Poland at the turn of the 18th century, called his own passion for Chinese porcelain “a sickness.” Desiring porcelain of his very own, he forced alchemist Friedrich Böttger and polymath Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus to conduct experiments that resulted in the creation of the European version of the material in 1709. The famous factory in Meissen, Germany, was founded the following year.
Utz believes porcelain is integral to the search for immortality. For him, the material has an almost supernatural quality; it is “the antidote to decay.” Since Utz is a student of the art of porcelain making, the reader assumes he may be attempting to secure his own ever-lasting life. As a result, when Utz supposedly dies and his collection mysteriously disappears, these events are left open to interpretation.
Footed cup with Minerva on the lid, Meissen porcelain, 1735. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
If we assume Utz did actually die, perhaps he destroyed his collection to keep it from becoming the property of a museum. (The Czechoslovakian government forced him into this agreement.) Utz may have loved his porcelain so much he was willing to destroy his collection to save it from death by public display. Or he may have been so thoroughly obsessed that he couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else owning “his” artworks. Chatwin also hints that Utz may have managed to secretly hide his collection away, perhaps even faking his own death to join the porcelain at a later date.
Shepherd, Meissen porcelain, ca. 1750-60. Honolulu Academy of Arts.
Like the Meissen porcelain figures adored by its main character, the smallish size of Chatwin’s short novel Utz does not detract from its beauty. To the contrary, the author’s economic use of language distills the power of its meaning, and its narrative multiplicities mirror the mysteries and subtleties of both art and life.
Chatwin writes: “When reconstructing any story, the wilder the chase the more likely it is to yield results.”
This is certainly true of Utz—a novel whose various possible endings encourage readers to examine the interrelationships of art, collecting, passion, love, creation, life, and death.
I wasn’t expecting a review of this subject matter, but I am now quite intrigued to read this book.