Materiality and the Early European Print • Conclave Prints
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November – December 2012 Volume 2, Number 4 Materiality and the Early European Print • Conclave Prints • a 16th-Century Coffret à Estampe • Remaking Dürer Dürer’s Changeable Rhinoceros • Engravings Lost in Translation • Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge • Reviews • News ROBERT NANTEUIL (1623–1678), GILLES ROUSSELET (1610–1686), and ANTON WÜRTH (b. 1957) Portrait of Louis XIV Surrounded by an Allegorical Composition 1667 together with N - Predella III 2012 Petitjean/Wickert (Nanteuil) 139 A first state (of four); Meyer (Rousselet) 285 first state (of three); Würth third state (of three) (from our new catalogue Neue Lagerliste 130: Rare Prints) The exhibition ANTON WÜRTH: DAS ORNAMENT will be shown at Pocket Utopia, 191 Henry Street, New York City, from November 2 through December 9, 2012. 23 East 73rd Street New York, NY 10021 212-772-7330 www.cgboerner.com November – December 2012 In This Issue Volume 2, Number 4 Editor-in-Chief Susan Tallman 2 Susan Tallman On the Past Associate Publisher Evelyn Lincoln 4 Julie Bernatz Publishing, Secrecy and Curiosity in a German Conclave Print Managing Editor Annkathrin Murray Séverine Lepape 9 When Assemblage Makes Sense: Associate Editor An Example of a Coffret à Estampe Amelia Ishmael Design Director Angela Campbell & Andrew Raftery 15 Skip Langer Remaking Dürer: Investigating the Master Engravings by Masterful Engraving Design Associate Raymond Hayen Jesse Feiman 22 The Matrix and the Meaning Web Associate in Dürer’s Rhinoceros Kristina Felix Ben Thomas 28 Management Associate John Evelyn’s Project of Translation Ashley Clark Advertising Manager Book Reviews Pilar Sanchez Armin Kunz 35 An Archeology of the Iconic World: Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe Allison Rudnick 40 Conversations from the Print Studio: A Master Printer in Collaboration with Ten Artists Susan Tallman 42 Master Prints Close-Up What is a Print? Selections from the Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Review Charles Schultz 44 Afterimage: The Prints of Bruce Conner News of the Print World 46 Contributors 55 Membership Subscription Form 56 Cover Image: Multiple impressions of Andrew Raftery’s engraving after Dürer’s St. Paul (2012). Photo: Forest Kelley. This Page: Jean d’Ypres, detail of Crucifixion (Paris, late 15th century), woodcut, hand-colored with stencils. British Museum, London. ©Trustees of the British Museum. Art in Print 3500 N. Lake Shore Drive Suite 10A Chicago, IL 60657-1927 This issue of Art in Print was www.artinprint.org published with the generous support of [email protected] the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. No part of this periodical may be published without the written consent of the publisher. On the Past By Susan Tallman Hartley’s observation, “the past half-century on, however, people who han- In his review of Susan Dackerman’s L P is a foreign country: they do things dle works of art on a daily basis have become Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early differently there,” is familiar enough, but increasingly attuned to how much the func- Modern Europe Armin Kunz summarizes what follows that trenchant opening line is tion of any given ‘exactly repeatable picto- the lessons of that ground-breaking exhi- often overlooked: the finding of a battered rial statement’ depends on the specific mol- bition: printed images—as Ivins argued— red collar-box (an item long defunct by ecules of the specific impression. Several changed the way Europeans conceptualized 1953, when Hartley’s novel was published.) writers in this issue of Art in Print point out the world, enabling the kind of observation- The box is filled with oddments—dry sea problems implicit in Ivins’ bold adverb, and based enquiry that underlies modern sci- urchins, rusty magnets, photographic nega- argue in favor of a more flexible or nuanced ence, technology and epistemology. One tives, stumps of sealing wax, a diary. The view: a ‘more-or-less repeatable pictorial of the revelations is that this change did detailed listing shifts the emphasis a bit: statement.’ not happen through disembodied cerebral they do things differently there. As the nar- Jesse Feiman uses the textbook example exercise, but through the active produc- rator handles these bits and bobs, “some- of Albrecht Dürer’s Rhinoceros to challenge tion and manipulation of paper things, thing came and went between us: the inti- Ivins’ paradigm; printed in at least three many of which demanded bodily engage- mate pleasure of recognition.”1 Hartley’s different cities over the course of more than ment—turning, lifting, folding, cutting and collar-box is a vehicle for time-travel, but a century, Dürer’s woodblock gave birth to pasting. This sense of the print as a thing in the world is brought home forcefully by Séverine Lepape’s study of an early 16th- century coffret à estampe, one of a group of mysterious small boxes of similar shape and construction, with religious prints pasted into their lids, most of which harbor a secret compartment. We don’t know who owned them or what they were meant to hold. We don’t know if the prints were chosen by the buyer or the manufacturer. But through careful comparative analysis, Lepape builds a picture of how medieval piety and incipi- ent mass-production interacted at the cusp of the modern world. This issue of Art in Print was made pos- Ferdinando Gregori after Frans van Mieris, detail of A Young Woman Crying on a Balcony (1760), sible through the generous support of the etching and engraving, 22.1 cm x 16.8 cm. ©Trustees of the British Museum. Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and with the help of a number of scholars who kindly it is fundamentally different from Marcel pictorial statements that range from pre- shared their time and expertise. We owe Proust’s bit of cake: the collar-box is a sur- cisely informative to moodily atmospher- special thanks to Nadine Orenstein, Jay vivor, the freshly-baked madeleine is just an ic. Ben Thomas looks at the difficulties Clarke, Suzanne Karr Schmidt and Paul echo. encountered by the English reformer and Coldwell. Finally, I must acknowledge a debt This issue of Art in Print is given over connoisseur John Evelyn in his attempts of gratitude to Suzanne Karr Schmidt and to just such survivors and the power they to re-present the continental aesthetics of Lia Markey, whose fascinating panel on the wield to evoke a world of things differently Roland Fréart de Chambray through verbal “Materiality of Early Modern Prints” at the done. For this volume, we invited a range of and pictorial translations. 2010 College Art Association Conference scholars to consider early European prints In the labs of Ivins’ own institution, the alerted me to the breadth of vital research not just as pictures, but as objects in time Metropolitan Museum of Art, conservator taking place around what one might call and space, with specific uses, histories and Angela Campbell and artist Andrew Raftery the social anthropology of the early printed physical biographies.2 set out to answer a basic question about image. In the mid-20th century, William Ivins Albrecht Dürer’s Meisterstiche engravings— The past is indeed a foreign country, but changed the way we think about prints with works that are so familiar, and whose visual some people have visas. his emphasis on their function as ‘exactly content has been so thoroughly analyzed, repeatable pictorial statements.’ Prints, that it is startling to realize that we have no Ivins argued, revolutionized the world by idea how many were made, what percent- Susan Tallman is the Editor-in-Chief of allowing the error-free dispersal of picto- age have been lost, or how quickly the plates Art in Print. rial information. Writing in the slipstream wore down. In the absence of documenta- between Walter Benjamin and Marshall tion, Campbell and Raftery conducted an Notes: McLuhan, Ivins focused on how images investigation by way of re-creation: replicat- 1. L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between, New York: New work rather than on what he saw as the nit- ing a Dürer engraving using the same mate- York Review Books, 1953, reprint 2002: 17. picking of traditional connoisseurship, with 2. Note: Ad Stijnman and Anja Grebe’s essay on the rials and tools (in so far as possible), and earliest complete copperplate printing manual has its hierarchies of individual impressions. A printing the plate until it becomes unviable. been postponed to a later issue of Art in Print. 2 Art in Print November – December 2012 Fig. 1. Christoph Weigel (publisher), detail of Der Grund-Riß des Conclave und die Beschreibung aller Solennitaeten: welche in Rom nach Absterben eines Pabstes, und beÿ der Erwehlung seines Nachfolgers vorzugehen pflegen (c. 1700-1720), engraving, 38.2 x 47.5 cm. Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library. Art in Print November – December 2012 3 Publishing, Secrecy and Curiosity in a German Conclave Print By Evelyn Lincoln he point of the conclave prints that cir- curiosity of the many tourists who came so much curiosity remain obscure. Tculated at the death of a pope was to to Rome to marvel at its antiquities, and Single-sheet prints of papal conclaves, reveal what was, by definition, the secret pilgrims hungry for a glimpse of ancient once both popular and plentiful, are now and mysterious ritual surrounding the elec- rites such as these. The prints bristled with curiosities and rarely exhibited, although tion of a new one. The word conclave, from impenetrability, from the inscrutable fig- they were printed up to the 19th century. the Latin cum clave, “with a key,” denoted ures of identically robed cardinals, to the They are difficult to parse, and blend differ- secrecy in its very name.1 These carefully halberd-carrying militias guarding them.