US $25 The Global Journal of Prints and Ideas November – December 2016 Volume 6, Number 4 Panoramic Wallpaper in New England • Christian Marclay • Fantastic Architecture • Ania Jaworska • Barbara Kasten Degas Monotypes at MoMA • American Prints at the National Gallery • Matisse at the Morgan • Prix de Print • News PHILIP TAAFFE The Philip Taaffe E/AB Fair Benefit Prints are available at eabfair.org Philip Taaffe, Fossil Leaves, screenprint, 25x38” variable edition of 30 Philip Taaffe, St. Steven’s Lizards, screenprint, 25x34.5” variable edition of 30 Thanks to all the exhibitors and guests for a great fair! November – December 2016 In This Issue Volume 6, Number 4 Editor-in-Chief Susan Tallman 2 Susan Tallman On the Wall Associate Publisher Catherine Bindman 3 Julie Bernatz A French Panoramic Wallpaper in the Home of a New England Lawyer Managing Editor James Siena and Katia Santibañez 8 Isabella Kendrick Zuber in Otis Associate Editor Susan Tallman 10 Julie Warchol To The Last Syllable of Recorded Time: Christian Marclay Manuscript Editor Prudence Crowther Prix de Print, No. 20 16 Colin Lyons Editor-at-Large Time Machine for Catherine Bindman Abandoned Futures Juried by Chang Yuchen Design Director Skip Langer Exhibition Reviews Julie Warchol 18 Webmaster Ania Jaworska at MCA Chicago Dana Johnson Vincent Katz 21 Matisse Bound and Unbound Joseph Goldyne 25 New Light on Degas’ Dark Dramas Vincent Katz 29 Degas at MoMA Ivy Cooper 33 Prints in the Gateway City Lauren R. Fulton 35 On Paper, on Chairs: Barbara Kasten Book Reviews Paige K. Johnston 38 Higgins’ and Vostell’s Fantastic Architecture Catherine Bindman 40 (Printed) Art in America News of the Print World 43 On the Cover: Christian Marclay, detail of Actions: Splish, Plop, Plash, Plash (No. 4) Contributors 72 (2015), screenprint with handpainted acrylic. Image courtesy of the artist and USF Graphic- studio ©2015. Photo: Will Lytch. This Page: Ania Jaworska, detail of Faking It from A Subjective Catalog of Columns (2015), screenprint on folio paper. Art in Print 3500 N. Lake Shore Drive Suite 10A Chicago, IL 60657-1927 www.artinprint.org Art in Print is supported in part [email protected] by an award from the 1.844.ARTINPR (1.844.278.4677) National Endowment for the Arts. No part of this periodical may be published Art Works. without the written consent of the publisher. On the Wall By Susan Tallman rints are, most commonly, pictures type; Lauren Fulton reports on the recent P of things. But they are also frequently exhibition of these seldom seen works. pictures on things. Take the early 19th- Other essays and reviews here touch century panoramic wallpaper that opens only lightly on architecture, but it is this issue of Art in Print. It depicts Roman always present. The National Gallery of ruins, Roman skies and Roman bushes, Art’s survey, Three Centuries of American but it sits stolidly adhered to the four Prints, reviewed here by Catherine Bind- walls of a dining room in a house in the man, charts American visual culture Berkshires. It offers many illusions—the from its early images-as-tools pragma- fantasy of being far away, of being out of tism to its sophisticated images-as-art doors, of brick and mortar dissolved into dominance, which also means from pic- blue heaven and rolling Campagna—and tures-in-an-album to pictures-on-the- at the same time, provides the tangible wall. As is evident from Ivy Cooper’s assurance of being exactly what it is: examination of contemporary print- printed paper glued to plaster and lathe. making in St. Louis, artists routinely As discussed by Catherine Bindman and consider the print as an occupier of space, by the house’s owners, artists James Siena not simply a delineator of it. and Katia Santibañez, the magic lies in The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibi- this doubling of solid reality and make- tion of Degas monotypes (which was so believe. substantial it is covered here by two writ- If the term “architectural prints” ers) included no pictures of buildings, yet prompts visions of Piranesi etchings and the artist’s ability to evoke the intimacy their many near relations, the centuries of close interior spaces is essential to the of conversation between flat paper and power of many of these works, as Vin- three-dimensional structures have pro- cent Katz and Joseph Goldyne point out. duced a nimble variety of strategies and Katz also reviews the Morgan Library forms—Piranesi’s views and wallpaper and Museum’s recent exhibition chart- are two, to which we might add archi- Panel of wallpaper depicting the Crystal Palace ing Henri Matisse’s involvement with the tectural blueprints, schematized pro- as seen through a garden archway, with flights of art of the book, from Mallarmé’s Poésies jections, printed paper models and an steps and architectural framework, with falsified to his own famous Jazz—a work that can perspective (1853–55), color machine print on endless array of depicted interior spaces. paper, 99 x 53.6 cm. Published by Heywood, be viewed both in the lap and on the wall. Contributors to this issue have looked Higginbottom & Smith, Manchester, England Finally, this issue contains a survey of at the many ways that artists negotiate (probable). ©Victoria and Albert Museum, recent work by Christian Marclay, an between the space of architecture and London. artist who has spent his career elucidat- the space of the page. In some cases, the ing the incongruence of sound and vision. connection is clear to see: in her Subjec- architecture from the late-20th-century Marclay’s work isn’t about architecture, tive Catalog of Columns (2015), recently on economic forces. but few artists have focused more persis- view at the Museum of Contemporary Art In the project selected by Chang tently on our myriad, imperfect strategies in Chicago, architect Ania Jaworska mim- Yuchen for this issue’s Prix de Print, artist for representing one type of experience icked the didactic crib sheets of architec- Colin Lyons has gone further—not sim- through another. People often talk about tural orders and styles that have served ply proffering a visionary design on paper the “failure of representation,” but failure to educate architects for centuries; Julie but building one: his Time Machine for is too pejorative a word. As with the Warchol discusses her wry accounting of Abandoned Futures (2015) features a roof Colosseum over the mantelpiece in the recent architectural history through the composed of etching plates and acid that Berkshires, there is space for delight in styling of vertical support elements. together form a battery to power the elec- the gap between experience and its repre- A far more conceptual—even exis- trolytic cleaning of mechanical destritus sentation—the gap that bedevils and tential—critique of the discipline is left behind after the Klondike Gold Rush. enchants and motivates all the activities embedded in Fantastic Architecture, the Barbara Kasten is best known for we call art. 1970 book assembled by Fluxus artists abstract still-life and architectural pho- Wolf Vostell and Dick Higgins. Paige K. tographs that fragment the perception of Susan Tallman is the Editor-in-Chief of Johnston reconsiders this “tripped-out coherent space, but her earliest work with Art in Print. thought experiment,” recently re-released photography used the human figure, a in facsimile form, and its contention that bentwood chair, a drafting grid and the only the unfettered ideas of art could save architectural-office medium of diazo- 2 Art in Print November – December 2016 ‘Phantasmagorias of the Interior’: A French Panoramic Wallpaper in the Home of a New England Lawyer By Catherine Bindman Vues d’Italie wallpaper installed in the house of James Siena and Katia Santibañez in Otis, MA. All color images of the wallpaper in the house are courtesy of Armin Kunz, New York. s New York artist James Siena tells with scenes from Italy—the Colosseum in appeared to be intact. Though neither A it, the small town of Otis in West- Rome, views of the Mediterranean, and artist immediately recognized the paper, ern Massachusetts (incorporated in 1810) the Carnival in Venice—all in full color Santibañez soon noticed the printed has only ever been distinguished for two on an imported paper almost 150 years inscription: “Mongin fecit in Rixheim things: an early nudist colony, established old.”3 Sixty-five years later, when Siena 1818.” It was not difficult to establish that in 1933, and the house of Squire Lester and his wife, the artist Katia Santibañez, they were now the owners of the Vues Filley, a noted lawyer, member of the acquired it, Squire Filley’s house was still d’Italie, a panoramic wallpaper designed State Legislature and founder of the local the grandest in town and its dining room by Antoine Pierre Mongin (1761–1827), Episcopal church.1 Filley’s eight-room, walls still harbored their remarkable Ital- who, for 20 years, was the chief designer red-brick residence, built in 1812, was the ian fantasy. of one of the preeminent manufactur- first grand home in Otis, and in at least By 2004 the wallpaper was water- ers of such papers, Zuber & Cie, based in one respect its interior decoration was stained in some places and slightly shred- Rixheim in the Alsace. It is fortunate that noteworthy.2 As the 1939 WPA guidebook ded in others, but the colors retained not only was Zuber one of the few firms of the area noted, “one room is decorated their vividness and the original scheme that allowed artists to sign the wallpapers Art in Print November – December 2016 3 scenes taken from literature.8 Exported to America, they introduced a carefully calibrated fantasy world into the draw- ing rooms and dining halls of grandiose plantation houses and presidential man- sions as well as into the homes of up-and- coming bourgeois consumers like Squire Filley of Otis.9 For during the 19th cen- tury, as Walter Benjamin suggested, the home became increasingly understood as a refuge against the new demands of industrial and business life.