In the intervening decades following the creation of Edo, lot 55, Ken Price had moved back to Los Angeles and finally to Taos, New Mexico, and continued his exploration of acrylic paint over fired clay forms. He adapted the Japanese lacquer technique wakasa-nuri, in which different colours of lacquer are built up over an uneven surface and then polished back to reveal patterns, to his painted sculptures, which we see in the variegated colouration of Flat Back. The art critic Peter Schjeldahl called this ‘psychedelic lichen’ and swooned that ‘Price’s color...belongs to the works as matter-of-factly as eye color belongs to the eyes of somebody you happen to be mad about’ (Peter Schjeldahl, ‘Feats of Clay’, The New Yorker, October 6, 2003). These colours complement his perfectly intuitive forms that whilst abstract, feel like living, extremely charismatic creatures, be they lumpy bodies, serpents, or sea creatures.

Price referred to his last decade as his ‘golden period’. He had hit his stride with organic, lifelike shapes that feel effortless, but in fact bear the underpinnings of decades of technical skill practiced, refined, and perfected. The architect Frank Gehry, one of his most ardent admirers, wrote that Price was a sculptor but also a craftsman, perhaps a nod to his roots as potter all those years earlier.