September – October 2011 Volume 1, Number 3

Street Art: Prints and Precedents • Prints and • Wiener Werkstätte: Changing Impressions South Africa at MoMA • Nancy Princenthal on Image + Text + Books • Gauguin’s Paradise Remembered September – October 2011 In This Issue Volume 1, Number 3

Editor-in-Chief Susan Tallman 1 Susan Tallman On the Corner

Managing Editor Gill Saunders 2 Julie Bernatz : Prints and Precedents

Reviews Editor Charles Schultz 10 Jessica Taylor Caponigro A Matrix You Can Move In: Prints and Installation Art Associate Editor Annkathrin Murray Heather Hess 18 Changing Impressions: Journal Design Wiener Werkstätte Prints and Textiles Julie Bernatz Jay Clarke 26 Creative Direction The Politics of Geography and Process: Chris Palmatier Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now Annual Subscriptions We have three membership levels to Book Reviews 29 choose from. Subscribe via Paypal on Nancy Princenthal our website or by post. See the last It is Almost That: A Collection of page in this issue to print the Image+Text Work by Women Subscription Membership Form. & Writers

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Cover Image: Art in Print Robert Dighton, detail of A Windy Day— 3500 N. Lake Shore Drive, Suite 10A Scene outside the shop of Bowles, the Chicago, IL 60657-1927 printseller, in St Paul’s Churchyard (c.1785), www.artinprint.org watercolor, 32.5 x 25 cm. The Victoria and info @ artinprint.org Albert Museum, no. D.843-1900. This Page: No part of this periodical may Detail of stenciled graffiti on the West Bank be published without the written barrier wall at Bethlehem, Israel, 2009. consent of the publisher. Photograph by Tantum Collins. Art in Print September – October 2011

On the Corner By Susan Tallman

nce upon a time, prints were ity. The beauty of the electronic image and Textiles”). In all these places, the O critical, socially dynamic—even is that it can be everywhere and no- print acts as a bridge between the par- dangerous—things. All those tiresome, where; street art, installation art, and ticular and the repeatable, the populist indirect and time-consuming print artists’ books on the other hand drama- and the esoteric, the difficult message processes were developed and toler- tize the specific: this place, this thing, and the appealing surface. ated (and yes, sometimes adored) be- this moment in time. If the contem- The politics of all this are intrigu- cause they could get the word out: the porary plenitude of pixels is a logical ingly convoluted: as street artists have teachings of Buddha, the mendacity extension of printing, it would be easy been welcomed into the museum, for of the king, the imperial tax code, the to think of these forms as anti-prints. example, their work has become both price on Jesse James’ head. Prints have a And yet, rather than being deployed more exclusive (most museums cost great reputation as tools of democracy, against multiplicity (as, say, much Ab- money to enter; printrooms have an but the truth is that both the powerful stract Expressionist was) they unstated cover charge paid in cultural and the powerless, the crown and the frequently employ it. capital) and less exclusive (prints in a throng, have turned to prints to press museum are not going to be painted their point of view. over, rained on, plastered over—they The Museum of Modern Art’s ex- will be available to all the people who hibition of prints from South Africa, could not get to that particular street reviewed in this issue of Art in Print by corner on that particular week.) Simi- Jay Clarke, demonstrates that prints larly, most print-based installations can can still be vital tools of social change. only be in one place at one time, which Printeresting.com observed, during the puts them into the same snootily ex- protests in Wisconsin last spring, that clusive category as oil , but “while Twitter and Facebook may be frequently they are made up of mod- amazing organizational tools, holding ules that allow them to be recreated in up your iPhone at a political rally to other spaces, and to be responsive to share a political graphic is less effective those spaces. Is this exemplary power [than…] old-fashioned paper and ink.” Stenciled graffiti on the West Bank barrier wall sharing between and audience, or There is no doubt that—in the right at Bethlehem, Israel, 2009. Photograph by just a further indulgence of the already circumstances—prints still have a so- Tantum Collins. over-privileged consumer? Which is cial role. more admirable—the total (and neces- That said, their original raison This issue of Art in Print looks at this sarily unique) design schemes imposed d’être—broadcasting information—has conundrum in urban streets from 18th by the early Wiener Werkstätte, or the been taken over by other, vastly more century to 21st century Los An- bits and bobs of Werkstätte fabrics that effective technologies, and this has geles (Gill Saunders, “Street Art: Prints American clients added at whim to been the case for close to a century. and Precedents”); in the trajectory of their mish-mosh interiors? Digital technology just exacerbated the installation art over the past forty years Prints have always operated at situation imposed by analog devices (Charles Schultz, “A Matrix You Can the crossroads: market-friendly and from radio onward: the disembodi- Move In: Prints and Installation Art”); rabble-rousing; elitist and egalitarian. ment of the message as a condition of in the hand-held intimacy of book At a time when cultural and politi- its distribution. works (Nancy Princenthal, “It is Almost cal discourse seems so impossibly en- So now we live in a world awash in That: A Collection of Image+Text Work trenched, the borders of each camp so potential pictures. It is probably no ac- by Women Artists & Writers”) and in cleanly drawn, one can only be grateful cident that this rising tide of ethereal the odd transformation of the Wiener to the print for—as ever—mucking up images has coincided with the rise of Werkstätte from high-minded reform- the edges. strategies such as street art, installation ers to purveyors of cozy, domestic con- art, and artists’ books—forms that em- sumables (Heather Hess, “Changing Susan Tallman is the Editor-in-Chief of phasize physical locality and corporeal- Impressions: Wiener Werkstätte Prints Art in Print.

1 Art in Print September – October 2011

Fig. 1. Robert Dighton, A Windy Day—Scene outside the shop of Bowles, the printseller, in St Paul’s Churchyard (c.1785), watercolor, 32.5 x 25 cm. The Victoria and Albert Museum, no. D.843-1900.

2 Art in Print September – October 2011

Street Art: Prints and Precedents By Gill Saunders

Fig. 6. Ben Eine, Scary (2008), screenprint, 30 x 80 cm. The Victoria and Albert Museum, no. E.319-2010. ©Eine.

raffiti, street art, and their printed offered their wares on the street; such anonymous caricature (attributed to G progeny, now ubiquitous, may ap- things were part of a public dialogue Bartolozzi) shows the window of Mat- pear to have sprung fully formed from about newsworthy events, religious thew Darly’s shop in which prints were the spray cans and stencils wielded by belief, morality, and politics. Cheap, under violent attack from the a new breed of artist, operating outside accessible and topical, such prints master, printseller and caricaturist Wil- the system and eschewing the tradi- were also disposable. Political and so- liam Austin, who was offended to find tions. But like any other art form, street cial satires in the form of cartoons himself the subject of a print mock- art has a rich vocabulary of sources and and caricatures circulated in much the ing his ambition.2 Robert Dighton’s precedents. Its motifs, graphic styles same way, and were also available from charming watercolour of a windy day and references are drawn, wittingly print-sellers. In 18th and 19th century in St. Paul’s Churchyard shows a crowd or otherwise, from sources as various London, the shop windows where tumbled and tossed by gusts of wind, as skateboard culture, album covers, newly published prints were displayed against the backdrop of Bowles’ print comics, film, protest posters and ’60s were a source of public entertainment shop, its window plastered with rows psychedelia, Mexican Day of the Dead for those who could not afford to buy, of prints. (Fig. 1) ephemera, Renaissance vanitas and and even for those who were illiterate In the 19th century, with the appear- danse macabre imagery, printed ballads, but could nevertheless recognize the ance of letterpress posters and notices broadsides and caricatures, and the monarch or politician lampooned in and the rise of lithographic advertising work of artist printmakers down the exaggerated guise. The interaction of posters, print enjoyed an increasingly centuries. prints and their audiences can be seen dominant presence in public spaces. By It is not only older print imagery and in George Woodward’s Caricature Cu- the later 20th century this presence was styles that serve as precedents, but an riosity of 1806, which shows a plump perceived to be oppressive as advertis- earlier print culture itself. Print has a clergyman and a skinny volunteer of- ing sites multiplied in number and size. long history as a , infiltrating ficer studying their own caricatured This period also saw, alongside the pro- the public arena and playing a part in portraits in the window of what is liferation of corporate advertising, a the information exchange of the street. probably William Holland’s shop (Hol- subversive, unsanctioned colonization In the 17th and 18th centuries, itiner- land published the print)—the former of public space by fly-posted posters. ant sellers of ballads and broadsheets is outraged, the latter is flattered.1 An These came from varied sources—the

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ger has likewise explained her attach- ment to the street (literally and philo- sophically), saying, “I wanted my work to enter the marketplace.”4 Some fly-posting is done with spe- cific political or social ends in mind: the New York activist group the Gue- rilla Girls (Fig. 3) began their cam- paign against bias in the by fly-posting their messages around the city, as did the less well-known PESTS in a similar protest against the exclu- sion of African-American artists from mainstream galleries and sponsorship. Presaging contemporary street art, the PESTS devised a distinctive logo—a wasp-like insect whose armoury was enhanced by a pair of serrated pincers Fig. 2. Jenny Holzer, from Truisms (1977-79), posters installed in windows of Printed Matter, New York, image courtesy: Jenny Holzer/ Art Resource, ©2011 Jenny Holzer, member Artist Rights and a scorpion’s tail—that featured not Society (ARS), NY. only on their flyers, but also on a series of stickers.6 (Stickers have remained indie music scene, political campaign- into the street by fly-posting around a popular format for contemporary ers, countercultural groups, artists— the New York (Fig. 2), using the cover street artists, enabling random acts of who perceived fly-posting as an -effec of darkness to put out their subversive, subversive collage and tagging.) For tive strategy for the anonymous, the enigmatic and confrontational messag- other artists, fly-posting is a strategy impoverished, or the illegal. The tactic es. Holzer—who has worked in formats for disrupting the routine public con- has been adopted by those who have from LED screens to till receipts and sumption of information. Fly-posting no public voice, no public forum, and stickers—acknowledges that it has al- printed material with enigmatic or by those ranged against entrenched ways been important to have her work provocative messages can work like economic or institutional power. Some in public spaces: “It’s necessary for me the teaser campaigns employed by artists have resorted to fly-posting pre- to continue to practice outside. This corporate bodies to build interest in a cisely because gallery spaces are closed is where my work went originally, and new product or an event. Whether the to them, or because they want to sub- where I still feel it operates best.”3 Kru- content is a graffiti tag or a product vert the values and assumptions of the institutional space, or because they wish to thwart private or individual ownership of their work. In the 1970s and 80s, artists such as Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger de- ployed printed matter in public spaces in ways that are clearly precursors of contemporary street art strategies and rationales. Both Holzer and Kruger adopted the language—verbal and vi- sual—of commercial graphics and pub- lic signage, and both, in their different ways, set out to critique the admoni- tory language of government and cor- porations as well as the seductive lan- guage of advertising. Both chose to put their work into the kinds of spaces usu- ally occupied by conventional ads, and Fig. 3. Guerrilla Girls, Do Women Have to be Naked to Get Into the Met. Museum? (1989), in the beginning both got their work posters on city wall, ©Guerrilla Girls, image courtesy www.guerrillagirls.com.

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Fig. 4 Swoon, Alixa and Naima (2008), blockprint with handcoloring and cut paper on exterior wall, Philadelphia. Building now demolished. launch, the effects are cumulative and wall, you’re declaring open season on Prague Spring to American antiwar build to a critical mass of curiosity and that wall. I don’t know if I can say I’m protests. Inspired by the events of May awareness. Ben Eine, best known for reclaiming something for anyone, as ‘68, British activists—tenants, workers, his super-sized single letters on shop much as saying we can all participate anti-apartheid and CND groups, civil shutters and his prints and paintings of in it... We’re telling advertisers, ‘Hey, if rights protestors—used posters in this words and phrases, enjoys this tantaliz- you have something to say, that’s fine, way, and in Northern Ireland, painted ing approach. When he first began to but if anyone else has something to say, articulated the grievances of paint the single letters, he anticipated they can also say it… It’s about opening both sides of ‘the Troubles,’ offering up the questions they would invite: “Why? up the conversation.”8 heroes and martyrs on every street cor- Who? What does it mean? Is it an ad- As Swoon makes clear, an essential ner. Certain iconic motifs from this era, vert?”7 Like many contemporary street tenet of street art is the reclamation such as the raised arm with clenched artists, Eine works both by hand and of public space “for the people,” a goal fist, emblematic of workers’ power and through simple means of mechanical with clear roots in the social and politi- protest, have been picked up and re- reproduction like stencils. cal activism of the 1960s. It is not sur- peated ever since: it appears in South Swoon, who pastes woodcut and prising, then, to find in contemporary African political prints of the 1980s linocut cut-outs on walls (Fig. 4), sees work echoes of the impact, energy and [see Jay Clarke’s review of “Impressions her use of public space as a means of mordant wit of 1960s protest posters from South Africa”, this issue] and can marking the street as territory for dia- such as those produced by Atelier Pop- be seen again in Pure Evil’s simple post- logue and collaboration, often prefer- ulaire in the white heat of May 1968 in er image from 2009 captioned ‘your ring spaces where the public/private . Printed with basic screenprint heart is a weapon the size of your fist.’9 demarcation is itself ambiguous: “The techniques on cheap newsprint paper, Although street art is characterized main thing about street work is that these posters constituted a that by a rhetoric of resistance to corporate the minute you put up anything on a was repeated in confrontations from values and an implicit desire to subvert

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street works can be recreated because “I have print blocks I keep that I can work with again and make multiples, so in a way, the images can be thought of as permanent.”10 She also uses screen- print (again, a stencil process) for edi- tioned prints. (Like many of her peers, Swoon comes from a conventional art-school background; she studied Re- naissance art and portraiture, and these influences are apparent in her work.) Ben Eine’s practice is rooted in graf- fiti, but his work has mutated into a more socially acceptable manifestation of street art. As well as painting giant single letters in public places, he has made a number of large-scale murals (and also prints) of single words. Scary (Fig. 6) and Vandalism pun on the con- Fig. 5. D*Face, L.A. is for Anarchy, (2009) paint and stencil, downtown Los Angeles trast between his own work, which is www.dface.co.uk. essentially decorative and cheering, and the uncontrolled excesses of old-school existing power structures, many artists press coverage and blog commenta- graffiti. Authorities often claim that operate simultaneously in the street tors; images of it will be shared on the graffiti and street art (the differentia- and the gallery or museum. Like Kruger web, and it may well—if it survives for and Holzer, artists from Blek le Rat and long enough—feature on one of the to Eine, Swoon and Sweet Toof burgeoning tours of street art land- have proved to be surprisingly conven- marks. London street artist D*Face, tional when they have ventured into for example, has made the crossover the marketplace with printed work. In from street to gallery, but he still sees almost every case they have adopted his urban interventions (“subversive the traditional apparatus of printmak- intermission[s]” as he calls them) as vi- ing and print marketing, producing tal to his practice (Fig. 5): “Putting work signed and numbered limited editions. into the public domain enables one per- For the street artist, has son’s voice to be heard and seen by hun- been a positive development, offering a dreds instantly; thousands if the spot’s natural route to a sustainable creative right. That has appeal when you want practice. Work inscribed on walls and the public to stop and question what street furniture is inherently vulner- they’re being spoon-fed.”5 able and transient—likely to be erased There is often no clear demarca- by insensitive local authorities, over- tion between the art made in and for painted, subject to the intervention of the street, and the spin-off prints for rivals, even demolished; prints on pa- the gallery. Many street artists, notably per have a perverse longevity that the Banksy and the Paris-based French art- stencils, murals and paste-ups do not. ist Miss Tic, use stencils for their street It is important to note, however, that art and also for prints. Swoon works even while expanding their practice to with linocut as well as cut-outs (which include limited edition prints, these art- are of course stencils) and pastes these ists have continue to make work on the on building walls, leaving them to fade, street, staying connected to their origi- peel away and degrade over time, but Fig. 7. Poster advertising Jullien’s Concerts nal motivations, influences, and indeed she also exhibits and sells prints made d’Ete at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, in November 1855, 49 x 28.3 cm. their audiences. An audacious and pro- from the same matrices. In an inter- Published by R. S. Francis. The Victoria and vocative work on the street will attract view she acknowledged that the ‘lost’ Albert Museum, no. S.2516-1986.

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tion is rarely made in this context) con- ing the original for incorporation into tribute to the fear of crime by suggest- the new image. Pure Evil’s screenprint ing lawlessness and disorder, but Eine’s Frost on the Thames 1814 (2008) adapts a brightly coloured and neatly painted 19th century wood-engraving with the typography is the antithesis of ‘writ- addition of a giant vampire bunny who ing’ and tagging. His colourful capital strides across the frozen river scatter- letters ultimately derive from the bold ing the artist’s bunny graffiti tags as he and distinctive Victorian fonts used on goes (Fig. 8). The print also echoes even posters for circuses, fair grounds, and earlier broadsides and ballad-sheets theatrical entertainments. One typi- that were used to announce ‘portents cal example—an 1855 letterpress poster and prodigies’11 to a credulous public, advertising a series of concerts at Cov- such as The Three Wonders of this Age ent Garden (Fig. 7)—shared with Eine’s (1636) (presenting a giant, a dwarf and Scary screenprint the use of 3D letter the world’s oldest man), The Prodigious forms in black and white with an atten- Monster, or The Monstrous Tartar (1664) tion-grabbing red ground. Such post- and The true effigies of the German -Gi ers were often produced for dramatic ant (1660).12 ’s famous spectaculars such as the illusionist Ru- character André the Giant (a wrestler) bini’s trademark act, ‘beheading a lady’, could be seen in this tradition, but Fig. 9. Shepard Fairey, Obey Propaganda illustrated with extravagant relish in a Fairey uses the figure not as a curios- Pasting Services (c. 2000), screenprint: poster of c. 1869. Like Rubini’s poster, ity, but rather as an emblem of the ‘Big 61 x 45.8 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, Eine’s print announces a potentially Brother’ society, punctuated by the Or- no. E.364-2006, ©Shepard Fairey. spine-chilling message in cheerful co- wellian message, ‘Obey.’ Fairey’s goal is lours and a jaunty typeface. to parody the subliminal commands of Kerry Roper and D*Face. Eine’s work is not alone in its rap- advertising and the public information The acrobatic skeletons of the me- port with the 19th century popular emanating from government13 (Fig. 9). dieval danse macabre have been revi- printing. Directly or indirectly, many One motif has been almost ubiqui- talized in D*Face’s Superman images, street artists riff on historical print tous throughout the history of popular in which the invincible superhero precedents, in some case appropriat- printed imagery, from the 15th century mutates into a zombie, his flesh eaten to the 21st: the human delusion of do- away to expose ribs, spine, and skull. minion in the face of death. Tradition- Feels So Good (Fig. 11) suggests auto- ally the vanitas and the danse macabre erotic dimension as Superman seems demonstrated that social status—for to take a perverse pleasure in his decay, which read celebrity in a contemporary surveying his corroding flesh with a context—has no power to resist the kind of puzzled pleasure. In Ha Ha Ha, embrace of Death. One 17th-century Not So Superman, his human frailties example, engraved after Antoine Dieu, are graphically revealed, and his super- illustrates the point through a skel- powers mocked. In No More Heroes, Su- eton, elegantly shrouded in ermine- perman flies to the rescue, but his flesh trimmed robes signifying wealth and and his costume trail in tatters. These privilege, who gestures pointedly to images have medieval precedents, but the words ‘dust to dust’ carved on a also recall prints ranging from 1940s memorial stone (Fig. 10). More recently public health posters warning against Jean-Michel Basquiat used skulls al- the spread of VD to CND’s ‘Stop Nu- most as a signature motif in his graffiti clear Suicide’ poster, or the 1972 parody and paintings (he also made a series of of a World War I US Army recruitment lithographs inspired by the illustrations poster, produced at the height of pro- in Gray’s Anatomy, a book he had been tests against the Vietnam war, in which given as a child and which was a power- the beckoning figure of Uncle Sam is ful influence on his subject matter and unmasked as a malevolent gloating Fig. 8. Pure Evil, Frost on the Thames 1814 his mixing of word and image.)14 Skulls skeleton.16 (2008), screenprint, 76 x 56 cm. The Victoria and Albert Museum, no, E.489-2009. Given by and skeletons are used by contempo- D*Face has also brought the vani- the Pure Evil Gallery, ©Pure Evil. rary street artists from The Krah to tas form forward in prints that feature

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Sweet Toof is an assertive set of ‘pearly whites,’ menacing or playful, but eter- nally grinning. They have been painted across building walls and printed on paper. They float disembodied like the Cheshire Cat’s smile, or leer from haunting faces, but the grin might equally be a grimace.15 Piled high (Fig. 12), the teeth make us smile but maybe wince too, with their allusions to the heaped skulls that memorialize 20th century atrocities from the Holocaust to the Rwandan genocide. Precedents for the graphic styles and motifs of contemporary street art abound, but we must resist the temp- tation to force these resemblances into definitive connections, or to see these affinities as direct evidence of- influ ence. There are clear continuities in the concerns of popular culture across the centuries—a desire to level the playing field, to confront death, to speak truth

Fig. 10. After Antoine Dieu, Representation de la Mort (18th century), engraving, 28 x 21 cm. The Victoria and Albert Museum, no. 25247. iconic portraits of celebrities—War- cycle is literally embodied in D*Face’s hol’s Marilyn, the sanctified freedom ‘collaboration’ with Queen Elizabeth II, fighter Che Guevara (whose hero-ised in which her youthful face, as printed image surely inspired Shepard Fairey’s on banknotes, was reworked, leaving noble Obama), John Lennon—but in- the familiar hair and tiara framing a stead of glamour we are shown ‘the grinning skull. In D*Face’s decompos- skull beneath the skin.’ It is an emblem ing Marilyn we have the archetypal of the Faustian pact with fame and his- modern vanitas in which an icon of tory in which these figures enjoy an perfected flesh, seductive youth and Fig. 11. D*Face, Feels So Good (2008), color eternal after-life as the undead, end- beauty, reflected in the mirror of public etching with nine color screenprint, 138.5 x 84 cm. The Victoria and Albert Museum, no. lessly circulated, endlessly consumed, adoration, is shadowed by death. E.589-2009. Given by the Black Rat Press, and ceaselessly merchandised. This The visual signature of British artist ©D*Face.

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to power, to enjoy a bit of mayhem. Some street artists are well-versed in , others are responding to, and building upon, visual archetypes that are deeply embedded in the culture at large. Street art is sourced most im- mediately in popular art forms—com- ics, film, music, urban youth cultures— and only more distantly related to precursors. At the same time, con- temporary artists have five centuries of printed matter available for sources and inspiration. In addition to hoard- ing posters, and vanitas subjects, there is Pop Art, Punk, Surrealism, pysche- delia (and its precursor, Art Nouveau), all of which have made appearances, subverted or overlaid with a new sensi- bility. Lucy McLauchlan’s compositions with elongated faces and sweeping coils of hair and sinuous lines, pre- dominantly in black and white, have a flavour of Aubrey Beardsley’s fin de siècle decadence replayed through the 1960s Art Nouveau revival.17 Russian Constructivist posters and chiaroscuro woodcuts are just two of the influences behind Shepard Fairey’s distinctive, and now much copied, graphic style. Increasingly street artists them- selves work in a number of different arenas, physical and virtual, indoors and out, legitimate and illegal. The use of print as a populist, market-un- friendly device (as in stencils applied to walls, or posters glued to buildings) has been augmented by the use of print as a market-ready device (no glue on the back). Some artists, such as Pure Evil, have taken the next step, and set up as gallerists and promoters in their own Fig. 12. right. Indeed street art has been swiftly Sweet Toof, Pearly Whites (2009), screenprint, 49.5 x 34.4 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, no. E.432-2009, ©Sweet Toof. accommodated by the market, and co- opted by the ‘cool-hunters’ with a prod- uct to sell. Through properly editioned, portable prints, what was once an edgy aesthetic has entered the mainstream, the adoption of print market practices: printmaking, which has always had the and auction sales of what, in market providing a material asset for the col- power to protest and disturb as well to parlance, is termed ‘urban art’ have pro- lector, and an exhibitable object for the entertain. liferated. It could be argued that, for all museum. Nevertheless the anger, the its confrontational energy, subversive wit, and the playful joie de vivre that intent and counter-cultural origins, first found expression on the streets re- Gill Saunders is Senior , Word & Image street art has been domesticated by main a natural fit with the traditions of Department, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

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Notes: 1. Illustrated in English Caricature 1620 to the Present, exhib. cat., Victoria & Albert Museum, 1984, Pl.II (Collection of the Library of Con- gress, Prints and Photographs Division) 2. Ecce Homo. Illustrated in English Caricature 1620 to the Present, exhib. cat., Victoria & Albert Museum, 1984, Pl.6 (Collection of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division) 3. Bruce Ferguson, ‘Wordsmith: An Interview with Jenny Holzer,’ in Jenny Holzer: Signs, exh. cat., Des Moines Art Centre, 1986, p.113. 4. Jo Anna Isaak, Feminism and Contempo- rary Art, The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Laughter, London/New York: Routledge, 1996, p.33 5. Quoted in “London’s new street artists” by Francesca Gavin and Ossian Ward, Time Out, vam.ac.uk/item/O1137438/poster-your-heart- Michel Basquiat’, Print Quarterly, March 2009, posted Jan 29, 2008; http://www.timeout.com/ is-a-weapon/ Vol.XXVI, Number 1, pp.28-37 film/features/show-feature/4152/ 10. “Paper Faces, Paper Cities,” op. cit. 15. V&A: E.. For image see http://www.sartorial- 6. A small selection of printed matter produced 11. Malcolm Jones, The Print in Early Modern art.com/Sweet_Toof_PearlyWhites_print2008. by PESTS has recently been donated anony- England: An Historical Oversight, New Haven: html mously to the V&A. Yale University Press, 2010, p.237 16. All three posters are illustrated in Margaret 7. “Francesca Gavin and Ossian Ward, op. cit. 12. All illustrated in Jones, op.cit., plates 243, Timmers, ed., The Power of the Poster, London: 8. “Paper Faces, Paper Cities,” Swoon in con- 242 and 244. Victoria & Albert Museum, 1998, pls.109, 121, versation with Pitchaya Sudbanthad”; http:// 13. V&A: E.364-2006. See http://collections. and 158. www.themorningnews.org/gallery/paper-faces- vam.ac.uk/item/O232799/poster-obey-propa- 17. For examples see http://lucy.beat13.co.uk/ paper-cities ganda-pasting-services/ products/ 9. V&A: E.488:1-2009. See http://collections. 14. See Olivier Berggruen, ‘The Prints of Jean-

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A Matrix You Can Move In: Prints and Installation Art Charles Schultz

Fig. 1. John Hitchcock, detail of They’re Moving Their Feet—But Nobody’s Dancing (2007), large scale, variable size, 24-hour screenprint action at the School of Art and Design, Coyne Gallery, Syracuse University, New York, ©hybridpress.net.

rintstallation” is not a pretty word. artists and collectives, and a smattering position to mechanical reproduction. P Coined as a neologism for “print- of literature dissecting a multitude of In contrast to the innate multiplicity of based installation art,” the term arose emerging formats and styles. Joining a prints, installation art defiantly reiter- among printmakers and has been em- very recent art phenomenon (installa- ates the traditional concept of a work braced in academic circles, though as tion art was described as having a “re- that exists in just one location; it is of- evidenced by Sarah Kirk Hanley’s es- cent pedigree” and “relative youth” as ten site-specific and ephemeral, bound say, “The Lexicon of Tomorrow: Print- late as 1994) to techniques of mechani- as much by place as by time. The print, based Installation” on the Art21 blog, cal reproduction that date back to the on the other hand, enjoys the protec- it is beginning to circulate in non-aca- late 14th century in Europe (and as far tion of the multiple: one copy may get demic art journalism as well.1 However back as the 7th century in China,)2 the crumpled or burnt, but its brethren can clunky the term, the phenomenon it form is both innovative and grounded still travel the world. Installations are seeks to describe is becoming a vital—if in art historical precedents. designed to emphasize a singular expe- difficult to define precisely—aspect of In some ways installation art—with rience: be–here–now. Prints offer the contemporary art, replete with dedi- its emphasis on direct, enveloping ex- gift of the archive: a window into some cated blogs, a growing number of active perience—developed in purposeful op- other place, some other time.

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At the same time, however, the of Pop Art.) It also featured an environ- sion, but “a thing layered in groups, a development of installation art was ment, created collaboratively by Ham- community of like-minded things past- driven by the concerns with social con- ilton, John McHale, and John Voelcker, ed or sewed together…”6 In early works, text and ephemerality that motivated that was physically constructed of pop- he disrupted the book’s flow by cutting a variety of 20th century print forms, cultural images recycled from maga- out segments in the shape of squares from the artist’s book to street posters. zines and films. McHale, a self-declared and circles. He alternated paper pages The early 20th century utopian ideal, Constructivist, described this work as with pieces of colored transparent plas- articulated by groups like the Russian “a complex of sense experience that tic and often bound the work in ring Constructivists, of fully integrating is so organized, or disorganized, as to binders so the viewer/reader would art and life necessarily embraced the provoke an acute awareness of our sen- be able to take the book apart and re- world of mass-produced images. By the sory function in an environmental sit- arrange the pages. “Artist books,” says 1950s advances in technology and the uation.”5 Hamilton and his colleagues Marshall Weber (founder of Booklyn, discourse around avant-garde art prac- recognized the conditioning influence an artist book production house and tices had merged in the phenomenon of printed and projected imagery and gallery), “are about controlling the to- of “the spectacle” identified by Guy they went a step beyond the Situation- tality of your experience in an environ- Debord. ists by using those spectacular images ment created by a book. They’re meant Debord’s spectacle was a conse- to create a physical space. Though the to engage more than your eyes. Your quence of mechanically (re)produced Bauhaus had promoted interdisciplin- whole body gets involved.” Roth’s Co- images (photography, film, etc.) -com ary collaborations decades earlier, pley Book (1965) (Fig. 2) was not bound ing to dominate social trends and in- “This is Tomorrow” was one of the first at the spine, but stapled in the center fluence artistic practices. In the 1957 exhibitions structured to challenge so that anyone wishing to engage it Situationist manifesto, Debord sought conventional modes of both art cre- would have to remove the staple and to disrupt the overwhelming author- ation and art reception. separate the book into loose-leaf pages. ity of this burgeoning mass media: “we Concurrent with Debord and Ham- Like Hamilton’s environment in “This must try to construct situations, that is ilton’s investigations of image recep- is Tomorrow”, the Copley Book required to say, collective ambiances, ensembles tion and space, Dieter Roth was con- viewers/readers to make their own de- of impressions determining the qual- ducting similar experiments but at the cisions about how to engage the images ity of a moment… The construction of hand-held scale of the book. For Roth, and the physical experience. Instead a situation begins on the ruins of the the book was not a narrative progres- of passively absorbing information, modern spectacle.”3 As scholar Tom McDonough notes, these situations relied on “the practice of arranging the environment that conditions us”—they did not require anything to be physical- ly built.4 Nonetheless, they contained an essential germ of installation art: the desire to redirect human attention through interventions in the environ- ment. A year earlier, the exhibition “This is Tomorrow” at London’s Whitecha- pel Gallery explored these same issues through a merger of integrative design and a large-scale use of printed matter. Conceived by the writer and architect Theo Crosby, “This is Tomorrow” was a collaboration between artists, ar- chitects, designers, and theorists, or- ganized into twelve creative teams. It included Richard Hamilton’s famous collage, Just What Is It That Makes To- Fig. 2. Dieter Roth, page from the Copley Book (1965), 112 loose pages of various sizes. day’s Homes So Different, So Appealing Published by the William and Noma Copley Foundation, Chicago. © Dieter Roth Estate, (commonly described as the first piece courtesy Hauser & Wirth.

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is site-specific: as critic Michael- Ar cher has observed, “what a work looks like and what it means is dependent on the configuration of the space it’s in. In other words, the same objects displayed in the same way in another location would constitute a different work.”7 Certain artists—most notably Daniel Buren—have made this reality a fundamental subject of their work. But site-specificity necessarily entails exclusivity; prints, with their inherent multiplicity and portability, are non- exclusive and difficult to make site-spe- cific. Buren, however, devised a strategy for print-based DIY installations that both responded to the site and could go anywhere. Each member of the edi- tion Framed/Exploded/Defaced, (1979) Fig. 3. Nancy Spero, Maypole Take No Prisoners II (2008), steel, silk, wood, nylon monofilament, was a unique color variant of Buren’s hand print on aluminum, installation view at Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London, 2008, ©The Estate signature stripes, divided into 25 small of Nancy Spero, courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York. frames, and accompanied by a precise set of instructions for installation: for the audience was invited to contribute in circulation for decades, but it was in any given wall the 25 parts had to be creatively to the artwork’s conceptual Nancy Spero’s epic multipanel pieces placed in a grid stretched evenly over resolution. of the late seventies and early eighties the full extent of the wall; any parts All these precursors of installation that hands-on printmaking and instal- that met an impediment (window, art attempt to negotiate—in some lation structures achieved a kind of for- door, radiator) had to be removed for way—between printed images on the mal merger. In works such as Torture of the duration of the installation. If the one hand, and physical experiences Women (1976) and First Language (1981) prints were not displayed as instructed on the other, and to break down the Spero used letterpress plates to hand- the piece was neither complete nor au- distinction between ‘art experiences’ print images on paper that scrolled thentic. and regular life. Happenings—or as around the gallery walls in the manner For many artists in the 21st century, Jim Dine called them, “painter’s the- of a Greco-Roman frieze. Like a book print is simply one option on the menu atres”—sought immediacy of experi- writ large, Spero’s work required an ac- of strategies and materials, and those ence through multi-media perfor- tive engagement from viewers—it was who define themselves as printmak- mance works that were immune to the not enough to stand still and observe, ers often see installations as one op- distortions of value inherent in sale- the viewer had to move through the tion on the menu of structures. The able objects. But even here, printmak- story. (Fig. 3) critical arena of overlap is the social: ing played a part: their connection to In addition to printing directly on printed matter is a way to engage with the market made them part of real life, paper, Spero adhered cut-out texts the world and to distribute power. The but with overtones of cheapness and and figures to the paper, evoking the print, as Buren discovered, has the ephemerality. Dine’s first lithography heterogenous collage aesthetic of ear- potential to adapt to a variety of sur- series, Car Crash (1959-62) was based on lier avant-garde movements. In the late roundings. It wouldn’t have taken a he had made as props for his eighties Spero began to print her im- great leap of imagination to turn Roth’s 1960 Happening, The Car Crash. Olden- ages directly onto walls, making works Copley Book into an installation, and burg’s first editioned print, Legs (1961) that were both site-specific and ephem- more recent artists have run with that was a bijou version of the objects he eral. Rebirth of Venus (1989) was printed idea. “The exhibition in a book” called made for The Street, a Happening that directly onto the curving walls of a sky- Resourced was released in 2010 by the was effectively an installation in which lit cupola at the Schirn Kunsthalle dur- multinational artist Just performances could take place. ing Prospect 89 and, like much of her Seeds, a socially conscious group of These conceptual affinities between later work, was later painted over. printmakers and designers who work installation art and printed matter were To some extent, of course, all art in a panoply of styles. Resourced con-

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tains 26 artist prints, executed using a the templates are created is not par- range of techniques on a variety of pa- ticularly relevant to the content of the pers. The book is bound with steel bolts installations they produce. A handful and can be unbound and mounted on of contemporary artists, however, have walls, as the collective did last summer applied the ethos of site-specificity to in a concert hall in Montreal. the production of printed matter, em- Rob Swainston, co-founder of the phasizing the social role and cultural collaborative studio Prints of Dark- baggage of particular locations and ness, builds modular installations that processes. are designed to accommodate any site: The German artist Thomas Kilpper as Swainston explains, “the individ- is best known for enormous ual panels are designed in such a way matrices into the floors of abandoned that they can be installed in larger or buildings and then printing them. smaller formats. There are a number of What distinguishes Kilpper’s work, linkage points built into the drawings apart from its sheer scale, is the ex- that allow for easy addition or subtrac- plicit elucidation of social and political Fig. 5. tion.”8 The work is not designed for any histories in his sprawling imagery. His Thomas Kilpper, State of Control (2009), particular location, but can respond to first major project,The Ring (2000), was linocuts on paper, exterior façade of former Stasi headquarters, Berlin. the specificities of any site. Swainston executed on the tenth floor of Orbit calls this “non-site/site-specificity” (no House in Southwark, London, where relation to Robert Smithson’s concept Kilpper carved a 400 square meter later temporarily famous, and con- of the “non-site”.) woodcut into the mahogany parquet cludes with newspaper images from the Swainston, like Spero and Buren, floor. The visual narrative begins with Falklands war, a reference to the Min- employs prints as pre-fabricated ele- the octagonal Surrey Chapel, which oc- istry of Defence’s secret printing office, ments that can be deployed in different cupied the site of Orbit House in the situated in Orbit House. Kilpper hung ways in response to the physical prop- 18th century; it continues with images the enormous print produced from the erties of specific sites. How and where of boxing, for which the location was floor on the building’s exterior, while smaller excerpts were hung inside and the reception for the work took place on the floor that Kilpper carved. Kilpper’s State of Control (2009) (Fig. 4) was even more impressive and disturbing: its matrix was the lino- leum floor of the former East- Ger man Ministry of State Security (Stasi) headquarters in Berlin. At 1,600 square meters, State of Control is the largest linocut ever made—a third of an acre of image-driven history, detailing state projects of surveillance and repression from Nazi Germany to the present day. Again, Kilpper covered the façade of the building with the prints and hung them individually from the ceiling in the reception hall. Kilpper’s work extends, in intriguing and dramatic ways, both the physical impact of the print and its social and procedural accessibility. The ‘how’ and ‘where’ of print production are often frustratingly invisible to viewers—in Fig. 4. Thomas Kilpper, State of Control (2009), carved linoleum floor of the former Stasi Kilpper’s work these things are not headquarters, Berlin. only evident but are the basis of the

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the art work and that—however many parts it contains—the artwork entered constitutes a “single unity.” Borofsky’s concatenations certainly created an environment that engulfed the view- er, but he was less adamant about the work’s unity: buyers could take home the whole installation, but they were just as welcome to purchase a print on its own. Kiki Smith’s various adventures in print presentation similarly run afoul of Bishop’s precise definition of instal- lation art: in Peabody (Animal Draw- ings) (1996) Smith covered an expanse of gallery floor with layered prints on top of one another. Though the indi- vidual prints comprised a single whole, viewers could no more “enter” into the space of the work than one can “enter” Fig. 6. Regina Silveira, Irruption (2005), laser-cut adhesive vinyl, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, a carpet. Smith’s 2010 exhibition at the ©Regina Silveira. Brooklyn Museum, Kiki Smith: Sojourn was billed as a “site-specific installa- work’s content. American artist John 80s (nearly all of which incorporated tion,” but each component was a fully Hitchcock also focuses on the activity prints of some sort,) suggested that that realized, independent work of art. of making prints as a locus of content, an idiosyncratic display of materials is And what are we to make of Regina working in a participatory manner precisely what defines a work of instal- Silveira’s print-based works? Over the that echoes early Happenings. In 2007, lation art. Clair Bishop, who authored last four decades Silveira has experi- Hitchcock collaborated with students an authoritative text on installation mented with silkscreen, lithography, from the of Syracuse Uni- art,10 proposed two key stipulations, offset, photocopying, and blueprint, versity to create They’re Moving Their that the audience “physically enter” but she is best known for her installa- Feet—But Nobody’s Dancing, a “screen print action” in which everyone made images.9 Other interactive installa- tions, such as Ritual Device (2006), in- corporated games to be played—ring toss, dart throwing—with prizes to be won. During the most recent Venice , Hitchcock joined forces with The Dirty Print Makers of America to produce Epicentro/Epicenter: Retrac- ing the Plains (2011), an installation in which prints were given away. Projects such as Kilpper’s and Hitch- cock’s take prints out of the frame and operate in the socially interactive and environmentally scaled way we asso- ciate with “installations,” but are they “Installation Art”? What distinguishes an exhibition of eccentrically installed prints from a work of installation art? Jonathan Borofsky’s sprawling multi- media installations of the 1970s and Fig. 7 John Hitchcock, Epicentro Retracing the Plains (2011), Venice, Italy, ©hybridpress.net.

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Fig. 6. Orit Hofshi, If the Tread is an Echo (2009), woodcut, ink drawing, and stone tusche rubbing on carved pine wood panels and handmade paper, 136 x 287 x 36 inches. tions of black laser-cut vinyl adhesive. in exact ways. Bishop’s definition is of his striped posters on billboards and For Irruption (2005 and 2006) (Fig. 6) useful for distinguishing many instal- advertisements across Paris. Such street Silveira applied thousands of black vi- lation works from general exhibitions, art strategies continued in Paris in the nyl footprints to a gallery space at the but is less helpful when dealing with 1980s with artist groups such as Frères Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. The printed components that often are ca- Ripoulin, and more recently in cities following year she adhered the same pable of leading double lives, the same throughout the world, as stencils and black footprints to the exterior of the component behaving one way in one pre-printed images have become the Taipei Arts Museum during the 6th place and another way in another place. media of choice for artists choosing to Taipei Biennial. In Bishop’s terms, the The increasing presence of “street work on the surfaces of city walls. work in Houston would be an installa- art” (or at least street artists) in muse- In recent years wheat-pasting artists tion while the one in Taipei would not, ums and galleries [see Street Art article, such as Swoon and JR have been invited though the artist considers them both this issue] is another manifestation of off the street and into the museum, manifestations of the same piece. print’s fluidity. When the Situationists where they have received accolades for Other well-known print-installa- pasted posters and slogans over adver- their print-based installations. In an tions, such as Xu Bing’s Book from the tisements, they called the practice de- event for the 2009 Abu Dhabi Art Fair, Sky (1987-1991), Nicola Lopez’ three- tournment (which translates roughly as JR completely covered the walls, ceiling, dimensional printed jungles, or Gu- “hijacking”) and championed the activi- and floor of a long corridor with photo- nilla Klingberg’s window dressings, ty as a form of protest through which art graphic portraits of local people. More are equally problematic. As always, the becomes active rebellion. In the spring recently Swoon installed The Ice Queen problem lies not with the art, but with of 1968 Daniel Buren followed suit with (2011) at LA MOCA’s “Art in the Streets” our post-facto attempts to parse work Affichages Sauvages, pasting some 200 exhibition. Roughly fifteen feet tall,The

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just glimpses of the imagery, and the Ice Queen was a gigantic tent-shaped Notes: jack-o-lantern whose intricate paper dark liquid basins reflect the imag- 1. The first documented use of the term (that I cuts appeared as projections on the ery in turn.12 could find) was for an exhibition in 2007 titled enveloping fabric. This move from the “Painting and Prinstallation” at the Green Door Gallery in Kansas City, MO. The exhibition was street to the museum has been lament- his is an installation about print- making itself. It reformulates the organized in conjunction with the Southern ed by some commentators as the insti- T Graphics Council (SGC) International Confer- tutionalization of an art form born to historic perception of the image as an ence. The SGC is organizing “a large-scale be radical and subversive, but it is worth index of experience while drawing at- collaborative printstallation” titled “Uncharted tention to its mutation over time and Territories: A Printscape” as part of a larger ex- considering that Swoon spent nearly a hibition that will accompany its 2012 printmak- month creating The Ice Queen—a type across mediums. Work that is inher- ing international conference. Since 2007 the of extensive execution that could never ently self-reflexive, as Convergence is, term has come into greater use in academic circles, most notably at the Savannah College have occurred on the street. necessarily incorporates the aspect of memory as it considers itself in order of Art and Design (printstallation.blogspot.com), Swoon’s work—on or off the the University of Montana-Missoula (printana. street—is characterized by an old-fash- to become a different version of itself. blogspot.com), the Stephen F. Austin State ioned sense of singularity. Though she The image of the cascading rocks re- University (sfaprintmkaing.blogspot,com). mains the same, though each medium Syracuse University printmaking program is working with repeatable elements organized an exhibition entitled “Monumental in the form of printing blocks, each it- gives it a unique character. If the Tread Printstallation” in 2010, and Fanny Retsek, eration proclaims its uniqueness. This is the Echo touched on this concept master printer at the San Jose Institute of Con- temporary Art teaches a course in “Printstal- tension between repeatable devices by exhibiting the prints and matrices together. Convergence goes further by lation” at the Santa Cruz summer workshops. and the absolute specificity of a place, Non-academic blogs and networking websites a moment in time, and an array of hu- demonstrating a threefold transfor- such as Printeresting, Inkteraction, and Hot man labor, runs thread-like through all mation that culminates in a reflection Iron Press have also embraced the neologism that is both literal and symbolic. The and begun documenting artworks that fit into its these diverse endeavors. categorical boundaries. The Israeli artist Orit Hofshi cre- viewer may experience the installation 2. Michael Asher, Installation Art, Eds. Nicolas ates monumental woodblock prints as a narrative, though it’s presented all de Oliveira, Nicola Oxley, Michael Petry, (Lon- don: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1994), 8-9. using large pine boards from construc- at once. Convergence may refer then not only to the intersection of stages ori- 3. Guy Debord, “Toward a Situationist Interna- tion supply stores for her matrices. tional,” in Situationist International Anthology, If the Tread is the Echo (2009) (Fig. 8), ented around processes and material, Ed. and Trans., Ken Knabb, (Berkeley: Bureau created for Philagrafika, was Hofshi’s but also to the metaphysical relation- of Public Secrets, 1981) 24-25. ship between memory and nowness. It 4. McDonough, Tom, Ed. Guy Debord and the first three-dimensional work. Her- in Situationist International: Texts and Docu- tention was “to create an experience suggests that memory is always a func- ments, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), 91. viewers can physically be part of and tion of the present moment, and that 5. ohn McHale, This is Tomorrow, Ed. Theo Crosby, (London: Print Partners, 1956). Pub- [in which they can be] collaborators through memory the past is always present. lished in conjunction with the exhibition “This is in the conceptual outcome.”11 Hofshi Tomorrow” at the Whitechapel Gallery. built a small shed of pine-board matri- Convergence also works as a meta- 6. Dieter Roth, Roth Time: A Dieter Roth Ret- ces, which she attached to a large wall phor for the “printstallation” as a form, rospective, Eds. Bernadette Walter, Christine at once exceptionally contemporary Jenny, Theodora Vischer, (New York: Museum installation of prints and their matri- of Modern Art and Switzerland: Lars Muller ces. Convergence (2011), which will be and thoroughly rooted in both historic Publishers, 2003), 48. Published in conjunction installed in Swarthmore College’s List processes and the ambition of the 20th with the exhibition “Roth Time: A Dieter Roth Retrospective” at the Museum of Modern Art, Gallery this fall, draws deeply upon the century avant-garde to merge art and life. If the print-based installation is an New York. materiality of the printmaking process, 7. Asher, Installation Art, 35. incorporating prints and pine-board art form of the moment, perhaps it is 8. From an email exchange with the artist. matrices as well as containers of dark because this moment is permeated by 9. Alexia Tala, Installations & Experimental the growing power of images and the Printmaking, (London: A & C Black, 2009), 55. ink, representing the passage of the im- 10. Claire Bishop, Installation Art: A Critical age from plate to paper. As Hofshi ex- machines and networks that create and History. (New York: Routledge, 2005). plains: disseminate them. It should be no sur- 11. From an email exchange with the artist. prise that artists feel the need to inves- 12. Ibid. [the] synthesis of these elements goes tigate the reception and production of

beyond process and matter. Paper is images in the physical world, to call our also typically a product of wood. The attention to the occupation of space by imagery of cascading stones [printed images, and to look at both how we got on the paper] is a visible testimony here and where we can go. of the physical carving of the wood. Darkly inked wood panels surrender Charles Schultz is a New York-based .

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Changing Impressions: Wiener Werkstätte Prints and Textiles By Heather Hess

Fig. 6. Josef Hoffmann, Apollo (c. 1910-12), ink on silk, Harvard Art Museums, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Gift of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, BR55.52, photo: Imaging Department, ©President and Fellows of Harvard College.

rintmaking is usually not at the ten products in one day” (Lieber zehn economically accessible, more physi- P center of consideration of the Wie- Tage an einem Gegenstand arbeiten, als cally transportable, and more prolifi- ner Werkstätte. The revered Viennese zehn Gegenstände an einem Tag zu pro- cally visible than the workshop’s more decorative arts workshop is best known duzieren) could be seen as an explicit re- ambitious, but site-specific, achieve- for its rigorous yet luxurious modern- pudiation of printing and multiplicity. ments, these printed images and ob- ism and its pursuit of designed envi- And yet, through its block-printed tex- jects created an understanding of the ronments in which every detail was tiles and widely-distributed lithograph- Wiener Werkstätte quite different from dictated by a single ethos. Indeed, the ic postcards, the Wiener Werkstätte’s the one it enjoyed at home. workshop’s motto: “Better to work ten international reputation was largely Founded in 1903 by the architect Jo- days on one product than to produce determined by printed products. More sef Hoffmann and the artist Kolomon

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Fig. 1 and 2. Otto Lendecke, Fashion (1912), color lithographs, postcards no. 851 and 853. Leonard A. Lauder Collection, Neue Galerie New York.

Moser, the design company drew inspi- unique luxury object. In the Working from the Secession, and who preferred ration from the British Arts and Crafts Program, a 1904 text elucidating the to distinguish themselves through movement of the 19th century and Wiener Werkstätte’s goals, Hoffmann culture and achievement, rather than grew out of the Vienna Secession. Its and Moser used the artfully-designed through ostentatious displays of wealth principals considered design as a tool book as an example of the workshop’s or aristocratic heritage. For such an au- of both aesthetic and social reform. wider approach, proclaiming that the dience, a beautifully bound, intellectu- Necessarily, it faced much the same “book must be a work of art in itself.” ally compelling text would be a power- quandary that had bedeviled Arts and The text drew on the tenets of William fully appealing object. Crafts designers and thinkers such as Morris and John Ruskin, and made an Only a few years later, however, the William Morris: how to produce beau- “appeal to all those who value culture.”1 Wiener Werkstätte message was reach- tiful objects and maintain the dignity It appeared in an illustrated periodical ing a very different audience. In place of of labor, without becoming simply a called Hohe Warte, named for the el- costly hand-bound leather books, the purveyor of luxury goods to the rich. egant, leafy Vienna suburb in which workshop turned its attention to pub- This conflict is manifest in one Hoffmann and other Wiener - Werk lishing ephemeral programs and menus of the first departments established stätte designers built villas for Vienna’s for clients like the Cabaret Fledermaus, by the newly founded workshops in educated elites. These early clients a Viennese nightclub where patrons 1903: bookbinding, an art form that were the kind of wealthy, progressive could also buy Wiener Werkstätte pic- translates a mass-produced text into a Viennese who purchased modern art ture postcards, small lithographs that

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sold for less than the cost of a drink. lowed a standard size (9 x 14 cm). They tive of Austrian Expressionism, with its In 1910 the workshop began producing could be sent through the mail (the ver- emphasis on drawing and lithography.5 printed textiles, and the following year sos marked off space for a brief text, the (Woodcut, which was so important to inaugurated its fashion program. Ten recipient’s address, and postage), col- Expressionism in Germany, found in years after its founding, women across lected in books, or displayed on a wall. Austria its closest reflection in textile America were reading about new Vien- In Vienna, these postcards were pattern printing, rather than in works nese clothing design in Vogue, while printed through the technical exper- on paper.) The New York Times recommended tise of lithography workshops such as Nearly 200 Wiener Werkstätte post- Wiener Werkstätte’s relief-printed tex- Brüder Rosenbaum, Albert Berger, and cards focused on women’s fashion. Pop- tiles for their beauty and gaiety. The the Gesellschaft für graphische Indust- ular images of high-end fashion had ex- distinction between the American view rie.3 But postcards in the collection of isted for decades in various forms. Paul of the Wiener Werkstätte as a source of the Metropolitan Museum of Art bear Poiret the revolutionary Parisian “king accessible, winsome consumer prod- the name of Prang & Co., a Boston- of fashion,” publicized his designs with ucts, and the Viennese view of rigorous based lithographer that mass-produced pochoirs and luxurious print portfolios design reformers, reflects a distinction Christmas greeting cards and postcards. by Georges Lepape and Paul Iribe. But in the objects and images available in The postcard program was clearly en- images of the Werkstätte’s fashions the two locations in the years leading visaged as a vehicle allowing Wiener were neither exclusive nor expensive, up to World War I. Werkstätte designs to travel broadly: with some editions produced in num- In Austria, the Wiener Werkstätte as the recent catalogue raisonné of the bers up to 7,000 and multiple print- was known for its uncompromising postcards notes, some featured Cyrillic ings. Some depict garments women pursuit of the Gesamtkunstwerk, a ‘total or Hungarian text, taking into consid- could actually wear, like those designed work of art’ in which every aspect of eration the linguistic diversity of the by architect Eduard Josef Wimmer- an interior, no matter how humble or Habsburg Empire,4 while in the Prang- Wisgrill (who became the head of the disposable, followed a single aesthetic produced cards at the Met, the text field department) that were produced in the vision. Inspired by Arts and Crafts ide- is left blank. Postcards were created by Wiener Werkstätte’s fashion depart- alism and by the broader push at the a huge number of artists, including Os- ment. Other garments remained paper end of the 19th century to raise the kar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele who promises only, aesthetically pleasing on level of craftsmanship and design in both contributed designs representa- the page but impossible to transform manufactured goods and decorative into three dimensions. arts, Hoffmann and Moser created uni- The influence of Poiret is most visi- fied interiors exemplary of the modern ble in postcards by Otto Lendecke, who approach to design. These spaces em- had worked under the Parisian master. phasized extraordinary craftsmanship, Notorious for the jupe culotte (a split quality materials, and restrained orna- skirt that raised the specter of women mentation intended to reveal refined in pants) and his condemnation of the aesthetic sensibility and good taste. corset, Poiret was the most scandalous This ‘total work of art’ came at a high and influential figure in fashion before cost, however.2 World War I. He visited Vienna in No- The most populist arm of the Wie- vember 1911 and used Wiener Werk- ner Werkstätte’s came into existence stätte textiles in his own creations. in 1907, when it began a sustained en- Poiret introduced Viennese design to a gagement with printmaking through far wider audience than had previously the democratic medium of lithographic been interested in modern Austrian postcards. Between 1907 and 1919, the design, although sales did not always workshop published 925 different mo- follow this increased acclaim. Lend- tifs ranging from Christmas greetings ecke’s designs, while not produced, em- to topographic views. These postcards phasized the Werkstätte’s adherence especially served to publicize the Wie- to the most advanced ideas in fashion. ner Werkstätte’s new ventures, includ- One postcard (Fig. 1) borrows strongly ing the Cabaret Fledermaus and, more from the bold lines of a coat Poiret significantly, the fashion department. made in 1911 using textiles designed by Fig. 3. Mela Koehler, Woman with Sled (1911), Most of the cards—aside from a few color lithograph, postcard no. 400. Leonard A. Raoul Dufy. Lendecke conveys the flu- oversized fashion illustrations—fol- Lauder Collection, Neue Galerie New York. id, draping effect of the fabrics, which

20 Art in Print September – October 2011

skimmed the body, and the coat in Len- advanced clothing of the early 1910s, decke’s postcard is slit high on the body, such as in Poiret’s empire-inspired another feature that characterized dresses, were made for women inhab- Poiret’s work and increased freedom of iting the circumscribed world of bour- movement. These designs revealed the geois social events. Sport, and sports- body in potently unsettling ways, and wear, suggested a world where women critics likened such garments to x-rays: were active participants, not just spec- “I look about at the fashion. I see the tators.11 In Koehler’s illustrations, the x-ray gowns becoming even more x-ray, garments move freely over the body; the x-ray shoes that show the little toes, skirts are shortened to lengths that the slit gowns that reveal les jambs, and would not actually be realized in wom- I ask why?”6 The slouchy ease of move- en’s sportswear until the 1920s; and the ment also alludes to the scandalous no- legs are freed from the tangle of fabric tion of jettisoning the corset (Fig. 2) a that would have encumbered a wearer freedom Poiret famously proclaimed. of reform-dress, which was more suit- In releasing the body from its confines, able to listening to lectures on vegetari- both through soft fabrics that revealed anism than exploring Austria’s Alpine lines of the body and apparently un- landscape. Koehler conveys the energy corseted shapes, Lendecke’s images of youth and a spirit of modernity, embrace advanced approaches to dress- aligning fashion with progressive shifts ing the new twentieth-century woman. in social values. The Wiener Werkstätte fashion Presented to the Viennese public in department was not designing for the the spring of 1911, the fashion depart- matrons of Viennese society, but for ment’s debut collection, designed joint- the next generation of young, active ly by Hoffmann and Wimmer-Wisgrill women. By aligning its fashions with was more pragmatic.12 Wimmer-Wis- the work of Poiret and the fashionable grill’s designs garnered higher praise dress of Paris, the workshop distanced for wearability and appeal, as they itself from the tradition of “reform more closely resembled fashionable dress.” Reform dress had served as a Parisian models than Hoffmann’s de- uniform for a certain type of woman signs, which still followed German (one observer called it the “expression reform-dress tenets.13 While Wimmer- of self-confidence by the intellectual Wisgrill’s dresses were praised for their woman of the middle-class”7) who liveliness, his own postcard illustra- valued ethics over style.8 Dismissed as tions (Fig. 4), present static women “flour sacks” even by women who had standing in blank backgrounds. They worn the clothes, reform dress dis- convey none of the energy of Koehler’s guised the female form in weighty fab- illustrations of this collection, which ric, often wool, that hung heavily from show dresses made for the practical the shoulders.9 needs of everyday life, worn by lively In some of the most forward-look- young women walking their dogs. ing images to appear on a postcard They all wear hats and gloves, con- before World War I, Mela Koehler forming to middle-class standards of created a series of postcards dis- decorum. The silhouettes borrow from playing women engaged in outdoor the straight, Empire-inflected lines of sports: tennis, mountain climbing, Poiret, but remain conservative in their hunting, skiing, and sledding. (Fig. 3) overall shape, a feature Vogue noted Sport played a key role in the transition two years later when it presented Vi- from the aristocratic body of leisure to ennese fashion to American readers, the active, democratic body. One post- deeming them “original without being Fig. 4. card depicts a woman dressed for mo- Eduard Josef Wimmer-Wisgrill, detail freakish.” Vogue praised them in par- from series Fashion (1912), color lithograph, toring, still a novel form of transport postcard no. 863. Leonard A. Lauder Collection, ticular because of the beauty and origi- before World War I.10 Even the most Neue Galerie New York. nality of the textiles, but not because

21 Art in Print September – October 2011

of any innovation in cut, construction, or design.14 One of Koehler’s postcards (Fig. 5) featured a walking costume, in which the main distinction is Josef Hoffmann’s Apollo fabric (Fig. 6), used for the bodice. Vogue’s analysis echoed the initial response of Viennese critics, who also highlighted the “distinctive material” as the outstanding feature of the Werkstätte’s garments.15 To viewers in the 1910s, Wiener Werkstätte textiles constituted a break with conventional design through their bold graphics, strong outlines, and brilliant mix of colors. They became inexorably linked with Poiret and the craze for orientalism, as they entered the market at the same time as some of Poiret’s most scandalous creations (the jupe culotte first appeared on Vien- nese streets in March 1911.) In March 1913, across the Atlantic, Vogue featured Wiener Werkstätte for the first time, highlighting the new Viennese fabrics alongside work by Poiret in an article on the new “cubist,” “futurist,” “mod- ernist,” and “primitivist” fabrics. Vien- nese design struck Vogue as particularly exotic, since supposedly Hoffmann, an eminent and elegant professor, had traveled throughout Austria’s motley lands and spent time amongst Tatar peasants, “where he studied color in its almost primitive form.”16 These textiles were not the products of refined Vien- nese culture, but representatives of the freedoms of far-off, unknown lands. In printing these textiles, the Wiener Werkstätte followed a process that re- sembled the cutting of blocks for wood- cuts more closely than it did industrial- ized textile production. Instead of the seemingly endless expanses of per- fectly identical machine-printed fabric, these textiles revealed their individual Fig. 5. character through minor variations Mela Koehler, Fashion (1911), color lithograph, postcard no. 519A. Leonard A. Lauder Collection, Neue Galerie New York. intrinsic to artisanal production, just like the hand-printed woodcuts of Ex- pressionist artists. The textiles, like the ert Peche, as well as less-known figures pattern might appear on a silk that postcards, drew on the talents of many Ludwig Jungnickel, Maria Likarz, and glided over the body and on heavier lin- designers at the Werkstätte, includ- Mitzi Vogel. Their patterns were print- en fabrics better suited to upholstery.17 ing leading figures such as Hoffmann, ed in various color combinations and This emphasis on hand-facture and Moser, Wimmer-Wisgrill, and Dagob- also onto different fabrics: the same on variation promotes an understand-

22 Art in Print September – October 2011

ing of printed fabric as similar to an had always enjoyed the strong sup- tiles, fashions, and small goods were artists’ print, rather than a functional port of German decorative arts peri- available at Lord & Taylor, Stern Broth- material that for upholstery or a dress. odicals, especially Deutsche Kunst und ers, McHugh & Sons, among others. In fact, both printmaking and the deco- Dekoration and others from the stable Though Wiener Werkstätte goods dis- rative arts served as a popular paradigm of Darmstadt-based publisher Alexan- appeared from American shelves at for discussing this ambivalent attach- der Koch, these specialist periodicals the end of 1915, due to both wartime ment to both mechanical efficiency and reached primarily art professionals difficulties and the declining popular- to handcraft. German sociologist Wer- and those interested in modern de- ity of primitivism and orientalism, they ner Sombart, in a text that questioned sign. Elsewhere, the Wiener Werkstätte returned again in 1922, when the firm the relationship between decorative art faced skepticism about the comfort opened a New York branch on Fifth Av- and culture, asked to which field etch- and practicality of its designs. The Vi- enue. ings belonged, since functionality and ennese decorating journal Das Interieur In Austria, modern design in gen- reproduction no longer were mark- expressed this perception in an imagi- eral and the Wiener Werkstätte in ers of exclusion.18 Vogue did not dis- nary conversation, in which a German particular remained associated with a pute the aesthetic value of the Wiener architect declared modern Viennese detached intellectual approach at odds Werkstätte’s fabrics, marveling in 1914, design to be, among many faults, “too with domestic coziness, despite the “Not only do artists create them, they cold, too Spartan, too ‘functional,’ and many attempts by reform-minded crit- name and sign them, so that one buys a all too theoretical, that is, intellectual ics to highlight the functionality and fabric almost as one buys an etching.”19 […].”21 The printed textiles, however, appropriateness of modern design for These printed textiles attracted the presented a different aspect, and after everyday life.23 Americans, however, attention of Poiret. His interest assured 1913, fashion magazines began promot- viewed Viennese style as particularly that fashionable women who might ing this colorful and playful side to the appropriate for decorating country otherwise not be interested in modern Werkstätte. houses, informal rooms, and children’s design would take note of the Viennese In America, some designers, such as rooms. On walls and furnishings, the style.20 In turn, this lead to greater cov- Dard Hunter at the Roycrofters in up- bright splashes of color anchored by erage in the press by a wider range of state New York, had followed the Wie- black and white, counteracted dull- publications. Although the Werkstätte ner Werkstätte early on through Ger- ness and injected liveliness into design man design periodicals (at least looked (Fig. 7). A writer for The New York Times at the pictures if they did not read the recommended Hoffmann’s textiles for language). By 1912, however, the work- exactly that purpose, recalling the ways shop began to appear in mainstream in which the good intentions of Wil- American publications aimed at mid- liam Morris had been corrupted into dle-class and educated audiences. Pub- lifelessness: “Not long ago it was virtu- lications such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, ous to be ‘artistic’ and sad. The reaction and The New York Times promoted the [by new Viennese art] will make for a Wiener Werkstätte as an original, ex- handsomer world in the long run.”24 In clusive, and unique alternative to Pari- the summer of 1913, The Times dubbed sian styles in fashion, and its textiles as a Vienna “the gayest city in Europe,”25 way to integrate “unusual,” “futuristic,” and the city’s modernist design connot- and “modern things” into conservative ed joyfulness and pleasure to American interiors, fit for middle-class lifestyles. readers. A writer for Arts and Decora- Magazines warned against covering tion, trying to convey the sensation of large areas with the bold patterns, and waking in a Hoffmann-designed bed- instead suggested using them as ac- room, covered in Wiener Werkstätte cent pieces, on pillows, lampshades, or textiles and upholstery, fell back on throws, to inject a “modernistic” note. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Child’s Gar- This use of textiles allowed consumers den of Verses: “The world is so full of a to experiment with the latest fashions number of things,/ I’m sure we should Fig. 7. Josef Hoffmann, Crane Fly (c. 1910-11), on a small scale without committing to all be as happy as kings.”26 ink on silk, Harvard Art Museums, Busch- the Gesamtkunstwerk.22 American magazines had no interest Reisinger Museum, Gift of The Metropolitan At this time, department stores in in the Gesamtkunstwerk, which would Museum of Art, BR55.51, photo: Imaging De- partment, ©President and Fellows of Harvard America also began stocking its goods. be impractical for American consumers College. In New York, Wiener Werkstätte tex- to realize in their own homes. Instead,

23 Art in Print September – October 2011

international exhibitions, such at the he recalled the resistance of Ameri- Kunstschau exhibitions in Vienna in can women to these “unconventional” 1908 and 1909 and the 1911 Espozione textiles, which seemed too modern in Internationale in Rome. 1913.31 In the United States, it was seen as a Wiener Werkstätte block-printed more affordable option to Parisian de- textiles and postcards provide material sign, and its printed textiles in particu- evidence for the firm’s presence in the lar as an economical alternative to the United States before World War I. More fabrics of the Maison Martine, Poiret’s importantly, these portable, reproduc- decorative arts workshop (which had ible, and relatively affordable objects been modeled on the Wiener Werk- reveal the shifting orientation of the stätte.) Before World War I, Wiener company as it sought to expand into Werkstätte silks sold for $2.20 to $2.40 new territories. These modest artefacts a yard, depending on the number of mark a route that leads from the work- printing colors, which was about half shop’s original grand reformist ambi- the $4.50 a yard charged for Poiret Mar- tions, grounded in the intellectual heri- tine silks.29 tage of and Crafts movement, In Europe, however, the Wiener across an ocean and through popular Werkstätte retained its reputation media, to land in the ephemerality and for unaffordable luxury. In Berlin, the playfulness of commercial fashion. Fig. 8. Mizzi Vogel, Canary (c. 1910-11), ink on Werkstätte could be found at the Ho- silk, Harvard Art Museums, Busch-Reisinger henzollern Kunstgewerbehaus, an arts Heather Hess is a New York-based writer. Museum, Gift of The Metropolitan Museum of She was previously Research Assistant for the Art, BR55.71, photo: Imaging Department, and crafts emporium, but also at the German Expressionist Digital Archive Project ©President and Fellows of Harvard College. fashionable department store Her- at the Museum of Modern Art. mann Gerson, a place better known for catering to the caprices of elegant soci- they advised that Viennese textiles be ety with fashion by Poiret and Madame used to pepper an interior “sparingly Paquin than for the products of decora- and discreetly” to avoid reproach of the tive arts workshops. bizarre or eccentric.27 Rather than ex- Today, Wiener Werkstätte textiles pecting American consumers to com- are treated unambiguously as art ob- mission an entire Wiener Werkstätte jects: at the Busch-Reisinger Museum interior, editorial pages and advertise- small swatches of their block-printed ments presented ways of inserting in- textiles are matted and stored in So- dividual objects into existing spaces. lander boxes, preserved as objects of One advertisement published in Vanity visual delight and historical impor- Fair in 1913 exhorted, “It is wonderfully tance, though small tears reveal where interesting what can be done with the they were once sewn into sample books modern things, if only one cares to see for customers could flip through to se- Notes: how they are used.” These “bizarre,” lect functional fabrics for furnishing 1. [Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser], “futuristic,” or “modern things” were or clothing (Fig. 8). These 55 swatches “Arbeitsprogramm der Wiener Werkstätte,” Hohe Warte 1 (1904): 268. not held up as objects of ridicule or were removed in 1955 from a sample 2. (The firm’s most lavish was for things appropriate only for a bohemian book at the Metropolitan Museum of the Palais Stoclet outside Brussels, belonging lifestyle, but as interesting and fashion- Art in exchange for fifty modern Ger- to a Belgian banker.) 3. Elisabeth Schmuttermeier, “From Commer- able objects for the middle-class home. man textiles from the Busch-Reisinger. cial Art to Work of Art,” Postcards of the Wiener In New York, to buy Wiener Werkstätte The Metropolitan still has seven full Werkstätte: A Catalogue Raisonné, eds. Elisa- objects, one could visit a middlebrow sample books, all donated by Rudolf beth Schmuttermeier and Christian Witt-Dör- retailer, such as Joseph P. McHugh’s, Rosenthal, who had selected Wiener ring, exh. cat. (New York: Neue Galerie, 2010), pp. 27-28. which was called, tellingly, the “Popu- Werkstätte textiles for a 1914 exhibi- 4. Detlef Hilmer, “Wiener Werkstätte Postcards: lar Shop.”28 In Vienna, by contrast, the tion in New York (the fabrics were also A Guide,” in Postcards of the Wiener Werk- Wiener Werkstätte sold its goods in its featured in Vogue.)30 In 1948, Rosenthal stätte, pp. 41-42. 5. Starr Figura, German Expressionism: The own showrooms, and presented its de- wrote a book with Helen L. Ratzka, The Graphic Impulse, exh. cat. (New York: Museum signs at exhibitions in museums and at Story of Modern Applied Art, in which of Modern Art, 2011).

24 Art in Print September – October 2011

6. Gaby Deslys, “Mystery,” Women’s Wear, (October 1, 1913): 50. The New York Times, July 27, 1913. Sept. 22, 1913. 15. Gelber, “Die Wiener Werkstätte und ihre 25. James Huneker, “The Gayest City in Europe 7. [Adolf] Vetter, “Reform der Mode,” Wiener Modellschau,” pp. 930. –Not Paris, but Vienna,” The New York Times, Mode 28, no. 19 (July 1, 1915): 592. 16. “Dress Plagiarisms from the Art World,” k 41, April 13, 1913. 8. “Poiret Gastspiel,” Feuilleton-Beilage, Frem- no. 6 (March 15, 1913): 41-2. 26. “The Modernist School of Decoration,” Arts den-Blatt, November 28, 1911, p. 17. 17. The most comprehensive work on the tex- and Decoration (June 1914): 303. 9. See modern art supporter and journalist tiles remains Angela Völker’s Textiles of the 27.“‘Futurist’ Silks,” Vogue (March 15, 1913): Bertha Zuckerkandl, who emphasized the Wiener Werkstätte, 1910-1932 (New York: Riz- 64. Wiener Werkstätte’s turn away from the Ger- zoli, 1994). 28.Anna Tobin D’Ambrosio, “The Distinction of man tradition in “Durch Kunst zu künstlerischer 18. Werner Sombart, Kunstgewerbe und Kultur Being Different,” The Distinction of Being Dif- Mode,” Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung, March 15, (Berlin: Marquardt & Co, 1908), 4. ferent: Joseph P. McHugh and the American 1913, pp. 5. For a witty contemporary account 19. “Fabrics Created, Signed, and Copyright- Arts and Crafts Movement, exh. cat. (Utica, NY: of the goals of reform dress, see the classic ed,” Vogue 43 (April 15, 1914): 48. Munson-Williams Proctor Institute, 1994), 25. text by Max von Boehn, Bekleidungskunst und 20. For a brief sketch of the relationship be- This excellent catalogue focuses broadly on Mode (Munich: Delphin, 1918), 101-05. tween Vienna and Paris, see Heather Hess, McHugh, not the reception of the Wiener Werk- 10. Robert Musil opened “The Man Without “The Lure of Vienna: Paul Poiret and the Wiener stätte in the United States. Qualities,” his great meditation on the wan- Werkstätte,” in Poiret, ed. Harold Koda and An- 29. These figures are the retail costs of Wie- ing years of the Habsburg Empire, with a car drew Bolton, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan ner Werkstätte textiles in the United States in crash, an event that underscored the disorient- Museum of Art, 2007), 39-42. 1914. Prices for the Martine silks from Edith L. ing speed and ceaseless change of modern life. 21. L.H.M. “Wandlungen im Kunstgewerbe: Rosenbaum, “The New Poiret-American Silks,” 11. On the decisive role of sport in transforming Eine belauschtes Gespräch zwischen einen Women’s Wear, February 13, 1914, p. 2; prices women’s dress, see Gilles Lipovetsky, The Em- deutschen und einem österreichiscen Innennar- from the Wiener Werkstätte based on handwrit- pire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy, chitekten,“ Das Interieur 14 (1913): 5. ten information on the tags on samples at the trans. Catherine Porter (Princeton: Princeton 22. “Unusual Furniture,” Harper’s Bazaar (July Metropolitan Museum of Art, which gives prices U.P., 1994), 61-62. 1913): 16; “‘Futurist’ Silks,” Vogue (March 15, in both Austrian crowns and U.S. dollars. 12. See Angela Völker, Wiener Mode und Mo- 1913): 64. 30. “Fabrics Created, Signed, and Copyright- defotografie: Die Modeabteilung der Wiener 23. Elisabeth Schmuttermeier has pointed out ed,” 48. details come from Central Werkstätte, 1911-1932 (Munich: Verlag Schnei- that photographs always show the objects in Catalog records of the Metropolitan Museum of der-Henn, 1984), pp. 19-24. use—such as a vase filled with flowers “Die Art, New York, and curatorial files at the Busch- 13. Marie Gelber, “Die Wiener Werkstätte und Wiener Werkstätte,” in Traum und Wirklichkeit: Reisinger Museum. ihre Modellschau,” Wiener Mode 24 (May 15, Wien 1870 – 1930, exh. cat. (Salzburg: Res- 31. Rudolph Rosenthal and Helena L. Ratzka, 1911): 930. idenz Verlag, 1984), 148. The Story of Modern Applied Art (New York: 14. “Originality and Exclusiveness,” Vogue 24. “Berlin’s Striking Window Decorations,” Harper Brothers, 1948), 58.

J and the Baroque Print throughacques Jan. 22, 2012 Callot risdmuseum.org

Jacques Callot, Razullo and Cucurucu (detail), 1621, Etching. Gift of Henry D. Sharpe

25 Art in Print September – October 2011

The Politics of Geography and Process: Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now By Jay Clarke

he politics of geography and T process intersect across borders and decades in the thoughtful and thought-provoking exhibition on view at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) “Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now.” These intersections are enriched by the confluences between “Impres- sions” and the magisterial “German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse,” which was concurrently on view in the expansive sixth floor galleries [see John Ganz’s review, Art in Print, July–August 2011]. The stark visual power of Charles Nkosi’s woodcut Submission to Death (1976) (Fig. 1) with its jagged lines and its use of Christian iconography to comment on contemporary inequity, is echoed in the German Expressionism show by Max Beckmann’s Martyrdom from the lithographic series Hell (Fig. 2) of 1919. In this work Beckmann depicts the Spartacist/Communist leader Rosa Luxemburg being tortured for her po- litical beliefs just prior to her murder, a message akin to Nkosi’s woodcut, which was part of the series Black Cru- cifixion, in which a black Christ suffers. Although the simultaneity of these two exhibitions was largely serendipitous, both tackle political unrest, social activ- ism, and the pull of particular matrices. The works, however, were created in starkly different geopolitical realities: German and Austrian Expressionists were free to create what they wanted— that is until Hitler came to power— while during apartheid printmakers in South Africa, black and white, created under entirely different, racially-de- termined constraints. The goal of “Im- pressions” is to reveal how printmaking Fig. 1. Charles Nkosi, Submission to Death from Black Crucifixion (1976), one from a series of served as a medium of artistic expres- thirteen linocuts, 39 x 24.7 cm. Published by the artist, Rorke’s Drift, KwaZulu-Natal, gift of the sion and a catalyst for change during Associates of the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books, 2007, The Museum of Modern Art.

26 Art in Print September – October 2011

prints could be classified as ephemera. In the first section, the visitor con- fronts a screenprinted poster dissemi- nated by the United Democratic Front (1984) and an offset sticker created for the Save the Press Campaign (1989). Both objects were made, not by indi- vidual artists, but by collaboratives, and for purposes other than hanging on the wall of a museum (even if they do so beautifully). Although the con- temporary galleries at MoMA have re- cently hosted works such as the Gue- rilla Girls’ postcards, it is a welcome and rare treat to see the UDF poster considered here as both an aesthetic object and a socio-political statement. Further on in this same room powerful linocuts—a technique considered to have special resonance in South Africa by Azaria Mbatha (1965) and Vuyile C. Fig 2. Max Beckmann, The Martyrdom (plate 4) from Hell (Die Hölle) (1919), one from a portfolio of eleven lithographs, composition (irreg.): 54.7 x 75.2 cm. Published by J. B. Neumann, Berlin. Edi- Voyiya (2005) address moments of col- tion of 75. Larry Aldrich Fund, ©2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. lective and personal anxiety in the face of apartheid and its aftermath. and after the years of apartheid rule. a project of this scale, and chose to The intaglio section exposes a more As the introductory wall text states, the include both well-known artists and subliminal connection between ma- show “features prints, posters, books, those working outside the mainstream trices and meanings that derives from and wall stencils created over the last international art world, should be ap- the perception of European importa- five decades that demonstrate the- ex plauded. Projects like “Impressions” tion. Unlike the linocut, which in this ceptional reach, range, and impact of point to MoMA’s slow and steady effort context is connected with supposedly printmaking during and after a period to dismantle its reputation as a bastion indigenous forms of production, inta- of enormous political upheaval.” Com- of high Modernism and to incorporate glio techniques have historically held prising nearly eighty works by thirty broader definitions of global indig- a more mainstream—one could say el- different artists or collectives, the exhi- enous modernisms. evated—reputation. The painter-print- bition is elegantly installed in the Paul The prints in the exhibition are bro- maker tradition has been a force since J. Sachs Prints and Illustrated Books ken out by medium, which on first view the eighteenth century. Considered the Galleries. (Fig. 3) seems divisionist and overly “printy.” thinking person’s process, etching has The exhibition’s prominent posi- It is, however, the most politically rel- long been allied with both intellect and tion at MoMA certainly confers art evant organizational strategy. There the sketchy first thoughts of artists in world recognition on the complexity are five discrete sections: posters (offset somewhat the manner of handwriting. and diversity of recent South African lithography and screenprint), linocut, Seemingly contradicting this trope is printmaking. While a strong record of intaglio, photo-based works, and a final intaglio’s history as a democratic, eas- textual scholarship exists on this mate- post-apartheid section of mixed tech- ily distributed medium. Artists from rial (such as books by Philippa Hobbs, niques [see book review, Art in Print, James Gillray to Francisco Goya to Elizabeth Rankin, and Judy Seidman), May–June 2011]. Although the general Otto Dix used etching to satirize the no parallels can be seen in terms of public may not “get” the rubric of di- powerful or to decry government-in- their display in the United States. Un- vision by process, the approach does flected atrocities; in South Africa- in til this year, no major survey of South demonstrate the interconnectedness taglio was employed by Kentridge for African prints had been organized in of matrix and meaning; of form, forma- the disembodied heads in Casspirs Full America for over three decades (with tion, and content. Not surprisingly, giv- of Love (1989) (Fig. 4) and by Diane Vic- the notable exception of William Ken- en the context of contemporary South tor for her horrific depictions of apart- tridge’s work). The fact that curator Africa, much of this content is politi- heid’s enduring legacy (2001-2003). All Judith B. Hecker and MoMA took on cal and an impressive number of these five artists—past and present—show

27 Art in Print September – October 2011

Edmunds’s large, abstract linocut The Same but Different (2000) and Claudette Schreuders’s color lithographs related to extant (2003). But if the selection had been primarily aesthetic at the expense of political, the critical voices arguing against the show’s pur- ported essentialism would have been far more vitriolic. Did this exhibition have to be predominantly political? No, but in doing so, it teaches American audiences about a defining chapter in South African history, one with chilling echoes of our own past. After all, as the artist Willie Cole said recently, “Ameri-

Fig. 3. Installation view of Impressions from South Africa. Photograph by Jason Mandella. ca had its own apartheid.”

Jay A. Clarke is Manton Curator of Prints, economic climate, they have become Drawings, and Photographs at the Sterling works of beauty and horror, alluring and Francine Clark Art Institute and Lecturer in and repulsing at the same time. Etch- necessities due to the oppressive cost the Graduate Program in the at ing’s geopolitical reception and the al- of mounting major loan shows. They Williams College. lusion to both erudition and activism do, however, have their advantages: be- exemplify the intersections of matrix cause they are less expensive to mount, and meaning. Intaglio processes have permanent collection shows, and their own history in South Africa, both works on paper shows in particular, indigenous and inflected by colonial- tend to be more daring. They can take ism, issues this layout brings to the fore bolder curatorial risks than big budget for further consideration. shows, which often have many constit- Not surprisingly, some reviewers uencies to please. As it happens, Hecker have been critical of this project. One began researching the project and trav- critic writing for Hyperallergic.com eling to South Africa for her first of complained that the organizing rubric many acquisition campaigns in 2004, of process and politics was “too safe,” long before this fiscally necessitated “not daring but rather informative,” trend came into view. Once the boycott “too tidy,” going on to suggest, “the ex- against importing goods (including art) hibition does the story justice at the ex- from South Africa came to a close with pense of the art.” A writer for the maga- the end of apartheid, MoMA began zine Art South Africa argued against buying South African art again in many the show’s essentialism, ghettoization, departments. Given the favorable price national rhetoric, and its subordina- point for works on paper, the Depart- tion of art to political messages. These ment of Prints and Illustrated Books criticisms have their validity. It is easy seized this new opportunity with vigor to find fault with what is not here; but and built a collection that currently what is here represents a big leap for numbers around 190 works. Hecker MoMA and for any American art mu- has been able to mount a challenging seum. show, one with an activist perspective The exhibition is drawn entirely but without encyclopedic ambitions. from MoMA’s permanent collection, The selection and presentation of Fig 4. William Kentridge, Casspirs Full of Love itself a sign of economic and curatorial this exhibition foreground the ugly (1989), drypoint and engraving with roulette, realities both positive and negative. Ex- realities of apartheid and the still ugly plate 148.8 x 81.3 cm. Published by the artist, hibitions that focus on the permanent realities of living in its shadow. There Johannesburg, in conjunction with David Krut Fine Art, London. Edition of 30. Marnie Pills- collection are often seen as second- are a handful of exceptions that privi- bury Fund and Roxanne H. Frank Fund, 2007, class citizens, but, given the current lege “art for art’s sake,” such as Paul The Museum of Modern Art.

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NEW BOOKS manship, Salomon was something identity and position, and can be read of a female Jules Pfeiffer, although as a rudimentary exercise for autobio- her ambitions ran to the epic. (This graphical writing. (It is made angry, and 1,325-frame magnum opus was made horribly sad, only by the knowledge before Salomon was sent to Auschwitz, that its author would be murdered by a where she died.) It Is Almost That’s most stranger in 1982.) Before long, we are in recent entries include an excerpt from the lean, forceful hands of Louise Bour- a 2011 photo and prose piece by Bhanu geois, whose 1947 He Disappeared Into and Rohini Kapil that offers an ellipti- Complete Silence, a suite of nine etch- cal reflection on the ravages of ongo- ings each paired with a short text, is a ing conflict between India and - Paki macabre, extremely funny and, again, stan. Jane Hammond’s Fallen (Fig. 1), a wonderfully laconic series of barbed commemoration in paper leaves, each meditations on the ways of men, and of inscribed with a dead soldier’s name, women. of American servicemen and women With Bourgeois, a passage of wry hu- who have lost their lives in Iraq, is on- mor takes hold. The incomparable Dor- going. Some of the book’s contributors othy Iannone’s Trixie, The Connoisseur are well known—Louise Bourgeois, (1975-78) is a picaresque graphic tale most notably—and some are not. Most of puberty, first love and professional of the works were made on paper, but ambition; its illustrations and text are there are also reproductions of paint- both exuberantly explicit and unapolo- It is Almost That: ings on canvas, by Sue Williams, and of getically naïve. The grimly entertain- A Collection of Image+Text Work a 6,080-square-foot inlaid cork floor, ing series of collage/text pairings in by Women Artists & Writers Edited by Lisa Pearson by Ann Hamilton—a carpet of text that Cozette de Charmoy’s The True of Life 292 pp, $45 runs in several directions, like the pat- of Sweeney Todd (1973), a dark-horse Los Angeles: Siglio Press, 2011. tern of a Persian rug, and draws from as entry, are largely assembled from Vic- Distributed by D.A.P., New York. many historical dialects. torian etchings, much like Max Ernst’s For all its heterogeneity, there is a Femmes Cent Têtes. While not as grue- kind of logic at work in this volume, some as the drama to which its title re- its pull subtle but strong. Not exactly fers, de Charmoy’s picture essay is fully It Is Almost That a continuous narrative, it is more than as surreal as the connection with Ernst By Nancy Princenthal an assembly of disconnected chapters. implies. It opens with three memoir fragments Violence of rather less metaphori- by Adrian Piper from 1978-80 in which cal nature follows, beginning with Sue earning to read art, as Lawrence run-in text is superimposed over pho- Williams’s bitterly ironic reflections, in L Weiner long ago exhorted, is not tographs. The decorousness and equa- the form of annotated figurative paint- a simple process. Where the textual nimity of Piper’s reminiscences are ings, on the physical and emotional meets the visual, demands outnum- belied by the daily humiliations she re- abuse of women. Fiona Banner’s Nam ber easy pleasures. It Is Almost That is ports having suffered in childhood and (1997), another nearly unreadable ava- rich in both challenge and satisfaction. adolescence; her rage is revealed mainly lanche of prose (presented here as an This collection of “twenty-six visionary in the tightly packed, unrelenting cata- extract), is a consecutive digest, de- image+text works by women artists and ract of prose—in the refusal to yield livered in blocks of unbroken text, of writers,” in the words of its publisher even a breath of white space on the every moment of action in six classic and editor, Lisa Pearson of Siglio Press, page. Two other works from the 1970s Vietnam War movies, including Full is, as she promises, not a traditional an- follow, including a piece by Theresa Metal Jacket, The Deer Hunter and Apoc- thology. It is not arranged chronologi- Hak Kyung Cha that gives this book alypse Now. Hammond’s Fallen follows; cally, nor alphabetically, nor by theme its title. Even more dispassionate than the autumnal leaves, which are remark- or format. Concluding the book is its Piper’s work, Cha’s It Is Almost That ably realistic, are shown first singly, earliest entry, a section of Charlotte Sa- (1977) (Fig. 2) is composed of title cards then in pairs and finally in a jumbled lomon’s remarkable autobiographical used for a slide presentation. The terse heap, an efficient way of expressing the graphic novel, Life? Or Theater? A Song white-on-black text fragments seem to seemingly unstoppable proliferation of Play (1940-42). Mordant, psychologi- be isolated bits of language instruction, dead bodies in the United States’s lat- cally astute and supple in her drafts- with an emphasis on words for subject est military engagements. This entry

29 Art in Print September – October 2011

who use tracings of their bodies as tem- plates on which to inscribe sometimes harrowing daily challenges, and advice for overcoming them. There is no best way to read this book, and the affinities I’ve suggested between adjacent works are probably not those that other readers would find. But one thingIt Is Almost That urges forcefully is alertness not only to how image meets text in artists’ page- works, but also to how sequence meets sheet—how the rhythm of reading a book can be folded in to the experience of looking at a single page, and vice versa. It stages conversations across ra- cial, ethnic, geographical and historical boundaries that feel natural. The ab- Fig. 1. From Fallen by Jane Hammond, in It Is Almost That: A Collection of Image+Text Work by sence of men feels similarly unforced; Women Artists & Writers, Siglio 2011, ©Jane Hammond. these are, simply, the kinds of discus- sions women have among themselves. Cumulatively, the collected works’ is succeeded by a spirited tour though with her mother during a brief visit impression is of questions still open the front pages of daily British newspa- home; one axis charts agitation, which for debate, of the last word being left pers, conducted by Suzanne Treister in is plotted across time per given topic unsaid. (Perhaps it is no coincidence the form of text-and-image drawings (each chosen in the hope, mostly vain, that the book ends with an unfinished configured like alchemy charts—or, an of avoiding conflict). Between Hiller’s work.) The embrace of the conditional equally strong resemblance, like pinball work and Antin’s are a group of Body helps explain some striking design machines (Alchemy, 2007). Maps (2001-06) made by the Bamba- choices. This publication has no cover, A segue into deeper historical mem- nani Women’s Group, a collective of so the spine exposes its eighteen sewn ory is led off by Carrie Mae Weems’s HIV-positive South African women elegiac 1991-92 photo-text essay on the Sea Islands, a former slave-trading community off the Carolina coast. Molly Springfield’s Translation (2006- 2008) (Fig. 3) is a hand-drawn render- ing of the opening chapter of a heav- ily underlined used copy of Proust’s Swann’s Way. In What Remains (2006), Helen Kim’s photo-text essay about a series of lunchtime meetings with her mother, a few scant detail of the older woman’s Korean background and life as an immigrant are fitfully revealed to her daughter (and to us). The world of mothers, as object and subject, is extended in Susan Hiller’s 1977-79 photo-text document of her pregnancy, which presents her steadily swelling abdomen as a cross between a grainy, distant hill and a blurry UFO.

Eleanor Antin’s hilarious Domestic Fig. 2. From It Is Almost That (detail) by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, in It Is Almost That: A Collec- Peace (1971-72) graphs conversations tion of Image+Text Work by Women Artists & Writers, Siglio 2011, ©Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.

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signatures, each numbered, and two pages must be turned, starting with a blank white top sheet, to discover its ti- tle and authors. The mechanics of book production are thus laid bare. Exposed as well, maybe more significantly, is the book’s seemingly provisional state. (In this light, the fact that all contents are printed in black and white lends it the feeling of a low-cost dummy, although print and paper quality are perfectly re- spectable.) In other words, It Is Almost That scrupulously avoids definitive claims, just as its title announces. An- other signature or two might be add- ed—surely we are invited to enjoy the term’s double meaning—without un- balancing the proceedings. And maybe, some day, a fancy cover—although probably not.

Fig. 3. From Translation by Molly Springfield, in It Is Almost That: A Collection of Image+Text Nancy Princenthal is New York-based critic who Work by Women Artists & Writers, Siglio 2011, ©Molly Springfield. writes extensively on artists’ books and prints.

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31 Art in Print September – October 2011

NEW BOOKS Gauguin—ex-stockbroker, ex-family sparked by the Princeton University man, and inveterate poseur—leftFrance ’s acquisition of one of the for Tahiti, noisily seeking escape from artist’s hand-printed Noa Noa proofs, “everything that is artificial and -con l’Univers est crée. The catalogue repro- ventional.” For two years he painted duces the 31 objects that appeared in sun-saturated pictures of the idealized, the exhibition, including woodblocks, unspoiled island paradise he had failed drawings, and variant impressions of to find (the island having already been the prints. But the real action here lies decimated and debauched by a cen- in the catalogue essays: Calvin Brown tury of European contact.) Returning painstakingly examines the physical to Paris in August 1893 he took pains evidence—the multiform proofs and to present his travels as a transforma- editions and the carved blocks them- tive spiritual quest, and to present his selves—while Alastair Wright ana- pictures—which largely baffled hisBelle lyzes Gauguin’s visual and conceptual Epoque audience—as rooted in the sources and what their profusion sug- mystical authority of the “primitive.” gests about the artist’s intentions. Be- Less familiar is the largely fictional ginning with what might seem rather Gauguin’s Paradise Remembered: account that he wrote of his adven- unpromising material (l’Univers est The Noa Noa Prints By Alastair Wright and Calvin Brown tures, Noa Noa (Fragrant Scent), and the crée, they acknowledge, “hovers at the 136 pp, 6 b/w, 87 color illus., $35 set of ten woodcuts he made to accom- edge of illegibility”), they build a case Princeton: Princeton University Art pany it. Though the book was never for the importance of the Noa Noa se- Museum, 2010. published as intended, the woodcuts ries not simply as visual invention, but Distributed by Yale University Press. were presented in a private exhibition as the key to a new and subtle reading in Gauguin’s studio in December 1894. of Gauguin. Noa Noa, they argue, does He showed multiple impressions of not simply exploit a medium, it is an each, printed by himself in the manner exploration of media—of reproduction Gauguin’s of monotypes: painting color on the Paradise Remembered block, rubbing the paper to the block with his hand. Within Symbolist cir- By Susan Tallman cles, the Noa Noa prints were instantly recognized as important: “Gauguin’s current effort will tomorrow provoke t is not uncommon to hear people a complete revolution in the art of en- I say about Paul Gauguin, as they do graving,” Charles Morice wrote in Le about Edvard Munch, that his prints Soir. are more important than his paintings. In many ways, however, the Noa This argument is usually predicated on Noa prints are unprepossessing things, the prints’ visual adventurousness and modest in size (about 8 x 14 inches unfettered experimentalism, qualities each) and murky in demeanor. They frequently subsumed under the head- mark the artist’s first foray into relief ings of ‘authenticity’ and ‘originality.’ printing and only the second time he Certainly many of Gauguin’s wood- tried making prints at all. He worked cuts and monoprints constitute a more without a press, proper tools, or tech- radical departure from Western picto- nical expertise. His blocks were com- rial norms than do his paintings, but a mercially prepared endgrain boxwood, new examination of Gauguin’s first, ex- intended for the neat high-contrast of perimental woodcut series argues that reproductive wood engraving (already the real radicality of Gauguin’s prints an outmoded medium in the 1890s), lies not in their ‘originality’, but in the but Gauguin chose to hack at them artist’s recognition that originality and with carving tools and scratch their authenticity were, in fact, unattainable. surfaces with needles and sandpaper. Gauguin’s Paradise Remembered: The Paul Gauguin, Te Nave Nave Fenua (Delight- The first part of the story is familiar ful Land) (1894), woodcut printed by the artist, to the point of being tiresome: in 1891 Noa Noa Prints started as a case study, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

32 Art in Print September – October 2011

(Delightful Land). The central image had appeared in earlier paintings and drawings by Gauguin—a naked wom- an standing in a garden being spoken to by a flying lizard. The Edenic over- tones of the Tahitian paradise that surrounds her are hard to miss, but Gauguin’s original Eve was neither Le- vantine nor Polynesian—her figure and posture was borrowed from a photo- graph of an Indonesian Buddhist relief, which Gauguin had acquired in Paris at the 1889 Exposition Universelle and brought with him to Tahiti. In his 1890 painting Eve exotique he had given the figure his mother’s face (again taken from a photograph), though by the Paul Gauguin, l’Univers est crée (The Universe is Created) (1894), woodcut printed by the artist, 1892 painting Te Nave Nave Fenua her The Art Institute of Chicago. face had been replaced by that of his 13-year-old Tahitian mistress. In yet an- and representation as markers of loss, To make sense of Princeton’s impres- other iteration, Gauguin adds a soup- absence, and the impossibility of un- sion, one must look at its sister im- çon of Seurat, rendering Eve in colored compromised experience. pressions; to make sense of those im- dots. L’Univers est crée, is represented here pressions, it helps to know something Given Gauguin’s posturing, one in seven different forms: the original about the project as a whole—the other can empathize with the exasperation woodblock; four wildly different proofs images and the text; to make sense of of Camille Pissarro who complained printed by Gauguin; an impression the project as a whole, it has to be ex- that Gauguin was “always poaching on from the more professional though less amined in the context of Gauguin’s someone’s land; nowadays, he’s pillag- nuanced edition printed by Louis Roy; other work and the myriad sources he ing the savages of Oceania.” It is appar- and one from the final edition that cobbled together to concoct his sup- ent that paintings supposedly depict- was printed, some thirty years later, posed atavistic reality. ing Gauguin’s personal experiences in by the artist’s son Pola Gauguin with This last point is brought home in Tahiti were derived from photographs a delicacy and clarity that may or may the discussion of Te Nave Nave Fenua seen in Paris; that his insights into Ta- not align with Gauguin’s own aims. In Pola’s impression, we can see distinctly the male torso and female figure to the left, the waves crashing on the beach, the large fish and small walking figure glued together like an aquatic centaur, the looming cloud of human and ani- mal heads in the upper right. In Gauguin’s own impressions, under-inked and over-painted, these entities recede to various degrees into smoky atmospherics. In Princeton’s im- pression little can be identified beyond the fish, the waves, and a faint shadow of the woman on the beach; in a ver- sion from the Art Institute of Chicago even the woman disappears (though in Chicago’s other impression every element is visible, picked out in colors Paul Gauguin, l’Univers est crée (The Universe is Created) (1894), woodcut printed by the artist, hand-painted on the block.) Princeton University Art Museum.

33 Art in Print September – October 2011

hitian cosmology were lifted from an- other author; that his notebooks were not repositories of invention, but cu- rated collections of images, words, and ideas, some of which were his, many of which were not. Wright brings these facts to light not to expose Gauguin as a fraud, but to position him as a complex and self-aware artist. The key evidence is Gauguin’s own repeated variant printing of the Noa Noa blocks, and his decision to show them as a group at his 1894 event—an action that looks like a purposeful dem- onstration of the idea that there was no one ‘original’, no single true version of the experience or thought depicted. As Wright explains, Gauguin was not Paul Gauguin, l’Univers est crée (The Universe is Created) (1894), woodcut printed by Louis simply mucking about with a self-con- Roy, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. sciously “primitive” process: “the struc- ture of repetition intrinsic to print- making techniques, the way one’s sense of an original falls away in the iteration of image after identical image, allowed him to reflect on the impossibility of having any authentic experience in his dreamed-of Polynesian idyll.” Wright acknowledges that Gauguin plagiarized and “was guilty at times of gross dissimulation,” but he sees the repurposed figures, styles and faces, the overt pursuit of repetition, as enacting an iconography of loss: “what is mourn- ed most consistently in Gauguin’s work of the 1890s is the Tahitian idyll of his imagination.” His display of reproduc- tion signaled his lost Tahitian dream, and his recognition “that the dream it- self was made of reproductions.” Paul Gauguin, l’Univers est crée (The Universe is Created) (1894), woodcut printed by Pola Gauguin, 1921, Princeton University Art Museum. This is an argument we are used to hearing applied to conceptually-ori- ented artists of the 20th century– Du- similar games of costume play and “ap- seems to have been not-quite-true, but champ, Hamilton, Levine, etc. Applied propriation,” but framed in different writing of himself in the third person, to Gauguin, it could be seen as an terms.) he seems to concur with the authors’ anachronistic apologia—a Postmodern Working with old-fashioned art his- conclusion: “He traces a drawing, then justification for pre-modern preten- torical forensics, the authors portray he traces this tracing, and so on till the sions—were it not so very carefully an artist who went to the ends of the moment when, like the ostrich, with rooted in facts and artifacts, in diaries, earth in search of authenticity, only his head in the sand, he decides that it newspaper clippings, letters; in close to discover it was not to be had, and does not resemble the original any lon- observation of the prints and carved who then chose to enact this discovery ger. Then!! he signs.” woodblocks, drawings and paintings. through an art of borrowing, quota- (Of course, painter-printmakers from tion, reiteration and variation. Much of Rembrandt to Manet had engaged in what Gauguin wrote in the first person

34 Art in Print September – October 2011

Contributors to this Issue

Jay Clarke Jay A. Clarke is Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute and Lecturer in the Graduate Program in the History of Art at Williams College. She is the curator, most recently, of The Strange World of Albrecht Dürer (2010-11). From 1997 to 2009 she served as a curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she curated Becoming Edvard Munch: Influence, Anxiety, and Myth(catalogue, Yale University Press, 2009). She is currently editing a book of essays on the Manton Collection of 18th- and 19th-century British drawings, prints, and paintings, to be published in May 2012 (The Clark and Yale University Press).

Heather Hess Heather Hess finds herself being drawn ever more tightly into the world of prints. She is currently working for a private print collection in New York and previously was Research Assistant for the German Expressionist Digital Archive Project at the Museum of Modern Art.

Nancy Princenthal Nancy Princenthal is New York-based critic who writes extensively on artists’ books and prints. She has been a contributing editor for Art in America and Art on Paper, wrote a regular column on artists’ books for The Print Collector’s Newsletter, and has contributed regularly to Artforum, Parkett, The New York Times, The Village Voice, ARTnews, and Vogue. She has taught at Princeton University, Yale University, Rhode Island School of Design, Parsons School of Design, and the School of .

Gill Saunders Gill Saunders is Senior Curator, Word & Image Department, Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Her publications include The Nude: A New Perspective (1989), Apocalyptic Wallpaper (Wexner Center, Columbus, Ohio, 1997), and Wallpaper in Interior Decoration (2003). Prints Now: Directions and Definitions(V&A, 2006; with Rosie Miles.) She was a major contributor to Impressions of the 20th Century, ed. Margaret Timmers (2002).

Charles Schultz Charles Schultz is a New York-based art critic. He has been writing about art since moving to New York in 2007. Schultz currently contributes to the Brooklyn Rail, Modern Painters, Art in America, and Artslant. (Photo courtesy of Elk Studios)

Susan Tallman Susan Tallman is Editor-in-Chief of Art in Print. She has written extensively about prints, issues of multiplicity and authen- ticity, and other aspects of contemporary art. Her publications include The Collections of Barbara Bloom, 2008 (with Barbara Bloom and Dave Hickey) and The Contemporary Print from PrePop to Postmodern, 1996. She currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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