New Concepts in Printmaking 2, Willie Cole [Wendy Weitman]

New concepts in printmaking 2, Willie Cole [Wendy Weitman]

Author Cole, Willie, 1955-

Date 1998

Publisher The Museum of Modern Art, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books

Exhibition URL www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/210

The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history— from our founding in 1929 to the present—is available online. It includes exhibition catalogues, primary documents, installation views, and an index of participating artists.

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STCfliri- PROt TOP, 5|LE\ EUCTRt<. v^- /-yf A( 'r'" ' New Concepts in Printmaking 2: Willie Cole everyday life. Robert Rauschenberghad a friend drive a Will ie Cole constructs his assemblage sculptures from car onto outstretched paper to create his twenty-foot found domestic objects and imbues them with spiritual, Tire Print of 1951. The Nouveau Realiste artist Arman and often mythical, power through allusion and metaphor. printed found rubber stamps in allover compositions and Since the mid-1980s, he has been preoccupied with the later flung paint-dipped household objects onto paper 2 steam iron as a domestic, symbolic, and artistic object. and canvasto create imprints. Several others, including Cole first assembled used irons into iconic figurative Jasper Johns and Yves Klein, used the oiled or painted 3 forms reminiscent of African art. In exploring ways to human body to make impressions. Contemporary artists infuse these unpretentious figures with the potency of have continued to work in this way. Donald Judd's early their progenitors, Cole discovered the scorch. woodcuts are inked imprints from assembled wooden Imprinting an object on a malleable flat surface is the structures, and nearly all of Nancy Spero's work is cre simplest way to transfer an image and constitutes the ated with repeated rubber stampings on paper. essenceof printmaking. Cole (b. 1955) has manipulated Cole's iron scorches have added a symbolic and spiri 4 this medium in the course of his other artmaking and tual voice to this tradition of artist imprints. He enjoys expanded its boundaries to accommodate his creative the predetermined format of the scorches.Cole also likes fusion of materials and meaning. In the late-1980s, using the physical act of the process and the surprise of how it 5 heat as a kind of ink and an iron as a stamping device, he appears when he lifts off the iron. But his choice of the began creating elaborate compositions out of repeated branding iron as an artistic instrument also derives from printed forms. He imprints hot irons in minimal rows, his knowledge of African art and world religions, and his decorative patterns, and figurative shapesonto surfaces aim has been to release through his work the power ranging from paper and canvas to mattress padding and found in his African sources. plaster. The scorches from the surfaces of the irons take I think that when one culture is dominated by another on mask-like appearanceswhile concurrently evoking the culture, the energy or powers, or gods of the previ African ritual of scarification. In other works he has ous culture hide in vehicles in the new cultures / expanded his scope to include impressions of the iron in think the spirit ofShango (Yoruba god of thunder and plaster, as well as multiple etched-glass renderings. Cole lightning) is a force hidden in the iron becauseof the has said that irons played a part in his own heritage, fire, and the power of Ogun—his element is iron— is growing up in Newark, New Jersey, with a grandmother 6 also hidden in these metal objects. and great-grandmother who worked as housekeepers and frequently asked him to repair their irons. He had at The first scorches date from 1988-89, the year Cole least fifteen broken irons with him when he moved into spent as artist-in-residence at The Studio Museum in his first studio in 1980. Harlem. Early works such as Proctor Silex (Presence & Artists have often been attracted to the direct visual Evidence) and Presto (Presence & Evidence) incorpo 1 effects created by imprinting. Moreover, because the rate the iron in both sculptural and printed compo process bypassesthe usual contact between the artist's nents—an actual iron's presence and evidence. Evoking hand and the work of art, it creates an aesthetic distance the sense of a found object's prior life is an important that has also appealed to artists at various times in aspect of Cole's work, and he instills a feeling of recent art. In the 1950s, many artists explored ways of metaphorical history into each piece. In the former work, incorporating objects from their daily environment into Cole encases the scorches behind a glass fire screen, their art and eschewedthe spontaneousartistic gesture. embalming the prints as if they were specimens in an This aesthetic tendency led to numerous creative anthropological display. In the latter, a figurative assem approaches to transferring, imprinting, and recording blage sits on a wooden ironing board that extends out from an expanse of scorched canvas, suggesting a Domestic I.D., IV of 1992 (cover), he labels each face diminutive chieftain against a backdrop of his warriors. with its commercial brand name to encourage this inter Violence remained an undercurrent in Cole's work as pretation, thus ironically suggesting the tribes of Silex, he slowly abandonedthese hybrid pieces in favor of pure General Electric, or Sunbeam.This format is reminiscent scorching. "I like the fear element, that I could get of the Surrealist and Conceptual device of mislabeling burned doing that. I definitely have a fear of being compositional elements for ironic effect. The window 7 burned." Cole often compoundsthe senseof danger that frame in this work, with its obvious signs of wear, rein accompaniesthe scorching process with the allusive for forces both the domestic, intimate reading of the indi mat of his works. The Domestic Shields of 1992 present vidual scorches and its symbolic history. The buckling ironing boards covered in scorched patterns that resem paper reminds us of the violence of the searing heat used ble West African motifs. The boards themselves are also to imprint the mythical faces, adding an ominous and suggestive of African shields, and Cole installs them poignant overtone.

9/i6 Stowage. 1997. Woodcut. 49 x 95 Vu" (125.9 x 241.5 cm). Publisher: Alexander and Bonin Publishing, Inc., New York. Printer: Derriere L'Etoile Studios, New York. Edition: 16. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Jacqueline Brody Fund and The Friends of Education Fund

vertically in a militant warrior posture. Many of these In a monumental work titled Sunflower (1994) Cole works were made outdoors over an open fire. In describ united the decorative potential of his scorching with a ing this process Cole said, "Sometimes if I feel real powerful and evocative form. The sunburst configuration aggressive I go outside and I start a big fire in a can. I was inspired by elaborate mandalas used in Indian med take the iron completely apart, and I just take the bottom itation and was further suggestedto Cole by a spectacu pad with the pattern on it, put it on a long pole, like a lar astronomical phenomenonthat blanketed the news in 9 8 branding iron, and heat them in that." July 1994. Typical of his working process, he imprinted In the early 1990s, Cole also began appreciating not Sunflower on a canvas backed with mattress padding and just the aggressiveness,but the individual beauty of the wood.This homage to van Gogh suggestsa dynamic, pul iron surfaces,and discoveredthat every brand of iron had sating shield, all the more potent becauseof the method a different face. He began using a variety of irons in a of its creation. The act of scorching takes on a ritualistic single work to allude to different tribal associations. In dimension in this enormous scale and emblematic shape. Sunflower also exemplifies Cole's use of the stamping Notes process for extensive repetition of an existing form and 1 For moreon the mediumof imprintssee Georges Didi-Huberman and DidierSemin, L'Empreinte (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1997). the creation of intricate, overlapping patterns. 2 Armanbegan the Cachets,or rubberstamps, in 1954and the Allures Recently,Cole has employed the iron within the print- d'objetsand Coleresseries, in which paint-coveredobjects create the making medium of woodcut. And he is as innovative with markingson canvas,in 1958. this traditional medium as he is with the scorch.The four- 3 SeeJasper Johns's Study for Skinof 1962and Yves Klein's Anthro by-eight-foot print titled Stowage (1997) is derived from pometriesof 1960. 4 His earliest works on paperwere pastelsthat coincidedwith his a diagram of a slave ship he found in a childhood school- beginningsas a painter in the 1970s.As his interestshifted to sculpture book. To create this work, he cut holes in the oversized heabandoned these Post-Impressionist-style drawings. wood planks that comprise the printing block and 5 Conversationbetween Cole and the author,April 23,1998. inserted twelve different irons. Each face suggestsa dif 6 Interview with Coleby ElizabethA. Brown.Published in Brown, ferent tribe along the African coast that might have trav SocialStudies: 4+4 YoungAmericans (Oberlin, Ohio: Allen MemorialArt eled in this massive slave vessel.The central plank was Museum,1990), p. 19. 7 Ibid. cut to accommodatean ironing board that represents the 8 Quotedin transcriptof Colelecture at ThinkingPrint: Booksto Bill ship itself. This unconventional printing matrix fuses the boards1980-1995 Symposium,The Museumof ModernArt, June 26, customary grainy wood surface with the perforated 1994,p. 21. metal faces of the irons and the ironing board.The result 9 Conversationbetween Cole and the author,April 23, 1998. Most ing monumental print integrates medium, form, and likely,the artist wasreferring to the cometShoemaker-Levy 9 whichcol piercing social comment and is a further example of his lidedwith Jupiterand received extensive news coverage. inventive use of printmaking to fit his own vision. Cover:Domestic I.D., IV. 1992.Iron scorchand pencil on paper mounted in /s" Cole uses the branding process to draw out what he recycledpainted wood window frame, 35 x 32 x 13 (88.9x 81.3x 3.5 cm). calls the spirit in the object. The smell, the texture, and The Museumof ModernArt, NewYork. Purchasedwith fundsgiven by the searing physical act all contribute aspectsof meaning AgnesGund to his unique approachto imprinting an image.The scorch Fold-out:Special project by Willie Cole.The Soles of His Feet.1998. Iron A" also embodies personal experiences from Cole'sAfrican- scorchon paper,14Vi x 123 (36.2 x 32.4 cm). Shownactual size American background and reflects the creativity with which he asserts that heritage. In his two-dimensional The exhibition and brochure are made possible through work, Cole has embraced the iron scorch as the most generous donations from The Cowles Charitable Trust, direct, succinct, and meaningful visual analog to his lay Penny and David McCalI, and The Contemporary Arts ered iconography and has expanded our understanding Council and The Junior Associates of The Museum of of the symbolic power of the printed mark. Modern Art.

The Museum Producedin conjunctionwith the exhibition IVIodem Aft NewConcepts in Printmaking2: Willie Cole Department of Prints June9-0ctober 13,1998 and Illustrated Books