Print/Out and Printin' at Moma • Edition Jacob Samuel • Copycat At
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May – June 2012 Volume 2, Number 1 Print/Out and Printin’ at MoMA • Edition Jacob Samuel • Copycat at the Clark • Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge Ellsworth Kelly at LACMA • Carlos Garaicoa • Jordi Alcaraz • Glenn Ligon • 62 Years of “Contemporary” Prints • News History. Analysis. Criticism. Reviews. News. Art in Print. Now in Print. www.artinprint.org Subscribe to Art in Print. May – June 2012 In This Issue Volume 2, Number 1 Editor-in-Chief Susan Tallman 2 Susan Tallman On Prints and Exhibitions Managing Editor Sarah Andress 4 Julie Bernatz Jacob Samuel and the Peripatetic Printshop Associate Editor Annkathrin Murray Britany Salsbury 10 The Serial Drama of the Serial Format: Journal Design the Print Portfolio in “Print/Out” Skip Langer and “Printin’ ” John Ganz 17 In, Out, and Shaken All About at MoMA Exhibition Reviews 21 Aprile J. Gallant The Art of Copying: Copycat at The Clark Art Institute Courtney R. Thompson Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe M. Brian Tichenor & Raun Thorp Ellsworth Kelly: Prints and Paintings at LACMA Editions Reviews 30 Charles Schultz Carlos Garaicoa Jordi Alcaraz Andrew Blackley Glenn Ligon Book Review 33 Susan Tallman The Elephant in the Room: Four MoMA Print Surveys News of the Print World 40 Contributors 48 Membership Subscription Form 49 Cover Image: Martin Kippenberger, detail of Inhalt auf Reisen (Content on Tour) (1992). ©Estate Martin Kippenberger, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne. Photo: Lothar Schnepf. Art in Print This Page: 3500 N. Lake Shore Drive Hans Collaert the younger after Stradanus Suite 10A (Jan van der Straet), detail of Invention of Chicago, IL 60657-1927 Eyeglasses from Nova reperta (c. 1599–1603), www.artinprint.org engraving, plate 19.7 x 26.7 cm, sheet 28.3 x 34.4 cm. Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, [email protected] Houston. From the exhibition “Prints and the No part of this periodical may be published without Pursuit of Knowledge” [see review page 24]. the written consent of the publisher. On Pictures and Exhibitions By Susan Tallman rints are so neatly suited to collecting but also to reflect the world as perceived tion, and it depends on our perception of P (rarely has an art form announced “col- by everyone else; to be global and inclusive, how rare or how repeatable an experience is. lect them all” quite so clearly), that it is easy but also coherent and reasoned; to reflect Though the show is now down, some of to forget how poorly they can fare in exhibi- the diversity of the contemporary art scene those Renaissance prints’ pursuit of knowl- tion. Often small and intricate, they can be and still have a central point to make. To edge can still be accessed through Harvard’s difficult to see under glass or at a distance. its credit, “Print/Out” does not attempt to nifty website [http://www.harvardartmu- Then there is the fact that the poetics of define the ‘state of the print’—instead it seums.org/exhibitions/upcoming/detail. reiteration, accumulation and variation that makes the point that this ‘state’ is a diffuse dot?id=33226]; Heinrich Vogtherr’s anatomy are the glory of print portfolios are usually territory lying everywhere and nowhere: the flap print can be even be downloaded as an lost in displays cramped for wall space. And, land of command-p, outsourcing, as well as app for your iPhone. It’s fun, but quite a dif- of course, works on paper are dodgy about acid baths and burins. ferent thing than encountering the woodcut light and must be shepherded back to the The distinguishing characteristics of the on its hoary grey paper. The exploration of safety of Solander boxes at regular intervals. ‘original’ print are hard to pinpoint in either that difference is core to both “Print/Out” So it is not surprising that museum print of these shows. When Dürer added images and “Copycat,” as it should be to the think- galleries are so often small, unobtrusive to celestial maps composed by Johannes Sta- ing of anyone who cares about visual expe- spaces tucked away behind the stairs. The bius and Conrad Heinfogel, was he engaged rience. This is why print exhibitions remain last half-year, however, has seen a number in making an ‘original’ print? Is Permanent vital. Download the brochure, but go to the of ambitious, important print exhibitions, Food, a magazine of pages taken from oth- museum. from Harvard’s majestic “Prints and the Pur- er magazines, ‘original’ in the same way? suit of Knowledge” to the Museum of Mod- Is originality a function of how something Susan Tallman is the Editor-in-Chief of ern Art’s provocative “Print/Out,“ that have is produced? Or how it is perceived by the Art in Print. had profound things to say about the inter- viewer? For a long time, the original print action of art, print and culture. was defined by exclusion—original prints “Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge” did not reproduce things created in other is one of those grand historical shows that media. “CopyCat,” at the Clark Art Institute, shed light on something that has been lying is the most recent exhibition to take repro- around for eons without attracting much ductive prints seriously as objects of study, attention. In this case, it is the body of print- addressing through historical objects some ed matter upon which science, as a human of the questions embedded in the contem- endeavor, was built: prints that could be porary art of “Print/Out.” The Ellsworth cut and glued to become useful tools; prints Kelly print retrospective at the Los Ange- that offered evidence of the physical world les County Museum of Art offers another pictorially (Dürer’s famous Rhinoceros) or angle on the question. Kelly’s early litho- schematically (horoscopes, maps, geom- graphs replicated his paintings, but Kelly is etries); prints that, like poetry, represented so attuned to the specific properties of visu- allegorically a particular mode of mind. This al experience—light, color, weight, shape, exhibition could have been a dry display of scale —his prints quickly became things in sheets locked in vitrines; instead it was given their own right; whether or not the compo- life through replicas that could be handled sition exists elsewhere seems irrelevant. at will, magnifying glasses that seduced Great prints have always engaged in savvy visitors into going slow and searching for negotiations between the power of specific details, and a light-safe cupboard whose presence (this paper, this ink, this place on doors the visitor had to open for a peek at earth) and the power of distribution. Renais- the vivid colors of Springinklee’s astonish- sance printmakers undoubtedly thought of ing 1515 astrolabe [see page 25]. On the day their work in more utilitarian terms than I went, the Block Museum’s guest book was Ellsworth Kelly does his; their images had scrawled with the message, “I loved it!!! ♥ jobs to do, and 16th-century artists did not Emma, Age 6.” have the luxuries of choice with regard to The difficulties faced by “Print/Out,” the papers, inks, and techniques that make the newest iteration of the Museum of Modern physical attributes of contemporary prints Art’s periodic print overview, were of a dif- read as choices rather than necessities. ferent order. In the category of thankless Nonetheless, we pay those now ancient tasks, organizing a high profile, infrequent, objects a different kind of attention than we international survey of contemporary art do their reproductions; and we pay uncom- must be up there with chaperoning a mid- mon old reproductions a different kind of dle school dance. Viewers expect the show attention than we do commonplace new to represent the curator’s personal vision reproductions. There is a calculus of atten- 2 Art in Print May – June 2012 Hans Sebald Beham, Man’s Head and Woman’s Head, 1542, engravings from two plates on single sheet. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gray Collection of Engravings Fund, G8908. Photo: Department of Digital Imaging and Visual Resources, Harvard Art Museums, ©2011 President and Fellows of Harvard College. From the exhibition “Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge” [see review page 24]. Art in Print May – June 2012 3 Springing into the Void: Jacob Samuel and the Peripatetic Printshop By Sarah Andress Fig. 1. Jacob Samuel’s portable aquatint box. t the center of the Museum of Modern Untitled (2011), the last of which was commis- A Art’s “Print/Out” exhibition, in the midst The aquatint box functions like this: sioned specifically for this show. “Edition Jacob of the bright screenprints and the rough wood- the etching plate sits on a shelf between Samuel” is, in fact, one of several nodes around cuts, the loud wallpaper and the quiet wall- the lower chamber and upper chamber which the exhibition is organized. bound etchings, sits a curious construction on (each chamber is made from the bel - Even so, the presence of the aquatint box is a low plinth: two wooden folding chairs face lows of an 8 x 10 inch view camera). The a peculiar touch, at once theatrical and didac- each other as if in conversation, suspending whole contraption sits on two level sur- tic, like a butter churn in a museum of Colonial between them an apparatus composed of two faces—the floor and two folding chairs American life. Given the show’s largely con- black accordion bellows, one sticking up and facing one another. Powdered rosin is ceptual bent, its emphasis on printed matter one dropping down, some pretty brass hinges, placed in the lower chamber and air is as a tool of social networking and its titulary and a nifty sliding wooden drawer (Fig.