Odilon Redon • Rodolphe Bresdin • German Expressionism: the Graphic Impulse • Nicola López Christopher Cozier • Drawing
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July – August 2011 Volume 1, Number 2 Odilon Redon • Rodolphe Bresdin • German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse • Nicola López Christopher Cozier • Drawing and its Double • Jane Kent and Richard Ford • Impressions from South Africa July – August 2011 In This Issue Volume 1, Number 2 Editor-in-Chief Susan Tallman 1 Susan Tallman On Substance Managing Editor Catharine Bindman 2 Julie Bernatz Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams (1840–1916) Reviews Editor Jessica Taylor Caponigro Susan Tallman 7 Dreaming in Company: Associate Editor Redon and Bresdin Annkathrin Murray Andrew Raftery 9 Journal Design Drawing and its Double: Julie Bernatz Selections from the Istituto Naziole per la Grafica, Rome Creative Direction Chris Palmatier Susan Tallman 16 Jane Kent and Richard Ford Go Skating Annual Subscriptions We have three membership levels to John Ganz 21 choose from. Subscribe via Paypal on Sturm and Drang on 53rd Street our website or by post. See the last page in this issue to print the Kristyna Comer 27 Subscription Membership Form. Christopher Cozier and Printmaking: Investigating the In-Between Basic PDF Journal (6 issues) Charles Schultz 32 $50.00 Nicola López: Structural Detours Professional Book Reviews 34 PDF Journal (6 issues) The Prints of Terry Frost + 6 online ads Impressions from South Africa + 1 ad in the PDF Journal 1965 to Now: Prints from the + Directory listing Museum of Modern Art $120.00 Contributors 39 Institutional PDF Journal (6 issues) + 12 Online ads Subscription + 3 ads in the PDF Journal Membership Form 40 + Directory listing $250.00 Art in Print Cover Image: 3500 N. Lake Shore Drive, Suite 10A Jane Kent, Skating, 2011, screenprint, Chicago, IL 60657-1927 one from the set of eleven. www.artinprint.org info @ artinprint.org This Page: Rodolphe Bresdin, detail of The Good Samaritan, 1861, lithograph. No part of this periodical may be published without the written consent of the publisher. Art in Print July – August 2011 On Substance By Susan Tallman year ago I was chatting with Jane the other writers here) he reminds us A Kent about a project she was work- that the seemingly immaterial func- ing on, an innovative construction of tioning of “the image” and the clunky text, image, and physical stuffs. It was specifics of that image’s housing are clever and profound, it had a beautiful not separable. The study of prints logi- story by Richard Ford, it queried the cally links physical facts to visual ef- rich relationship between images and fects, to conceptual impacts, to social words, but it was difficult to see who engagements, and back again. This can would publish anything about it. It was be seen in Christopher Cozier’s rubber too small, too intimate, too odd an en- stamps, and 18th century engravings, deavor for mainstream art magazines, and 21st century prints from South Af- but too ambitious and meaningful to rica. (This chain is also at play in paint- be squeezed into a blog-post; Art on ing, of course, but seems more easily— Paper no longer existed and The Print or in any case more often—ignored Collector’s Newsletter was long gone. there.) We tutted and tsked and opined that In Prints and Visual Communica- someone should start a new journal. tion, William Ivins taught us to think We talked about all the great art and all about “syntax”—the way in which any John F. Peto, Office Board for Christian Faser, 1881, screenshot of a digital image of the smart critics and all the quirky, fas- visual message is limited, structured, a photo-mechanical reproduction of an oil cinating, brilliant facets of pictures-in- distorted, by the terms of its making. painting of printed matter. the-world that such a journal could tap This was a weighty insight that had into. By the end of the conversation, we far-reaching implications for art his- had it pretty well mapped-out, this job tory and for cultural analysis at large, for someone else to do. but it was the result of a career spent As it turns out, we were right about observing detail in a manner that was everything except the “someone else.” precise, possibly even petty. Ivins had Art in Print is the overdue child of that a particular gripe against engraving conversation. I mention this in part for having duped the cultured elite to acknowledge a debt (hopefully dis- into accepting a rigid language of dots charged to some extent by the article and hatches as a substitute for the ef- about Kent’s project in the current is- florescence of visible creation. Writing sue) and in part because the quandary in 1950, Ivins believed that with photo- of the too-small, too-odd, too-ambi- mechanical reproduction, we had at last tious artwork outlines a particular gap been liberated into a syntax-free world in contemporary discussions of art and of transparent visual communication, a culture—namely, the inclination to benevolent WYSWYG era. From where look at the too-small in pursuit of the we sit, that seems charmingly naïve. big picture. We have the historical distance to no- In this issue of Art in Print, artist tice that Winckelmann looked at an Andrew Raftery writes of examining engraving and saw the Laocoön where engraved plates through his Optivisor Ivins saw dots and hatches; Ivins looked magnifying binocular headband, which at photomechanical reproduction and may be the ultimate print geek acces- saw Rembrandt where we see a half- sory. Despite the headgear, Raftery is tone screen. And us? Some of us look at not oblivious to the larger analyses of pixels and see paintings. The rest of us Susan Tallman is the Editor-in-Chief of the way images work, but (along with whip out our Optivisors. Art in Print. 1 Art in Print July – August 2011 Fig. 3. Odilon Redon, L’Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l’infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity), 1882, lithograph, 25.9 x 19.6 cm, © BNF. 2 Art in Print July – August 2011 Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams (1840–1916) By Catharine Bindman dilon Redon: Prince du Rêve,” O the massive show at the Grand Palais, is at its heart a print exhibi- tion. Despite the presence of some 170 paintings, pastels, and charcoal drawings, it is the one hundred or so prints here (most on loan from the Bibliothèque Nationale) that dominate the proceedings. This is not surpris- ing—Redon was primarily a graphic artist; he not only exploited the practi- cal reproductive potential of print but also found that the rigors of black and white encapsulated his dark visions with unique intensity. At the Grand Palais, pride of place is given to Redon’s lithographic al- bums, ten of which (he only made twelve) are presented in their entirety and in the order designated by the art- ist. (Among the documents displayed here is the artist’s livre de raison, in which he noted the titles and dates of his works). It was in these albums that Redon’s idiosyncratic fantasy imag- ery, so distinct from both the artistic Impressionism that he despised and the modish literary realism of writers like Emile Zola, evolved its most un- compromised guise. From 1879, when he published his first album, Dans le Rêve,1 Redon consciously set about es- tablishing his reputation through the relatively dispersible medium of print. He may have been encouraged by the positive critical reaction to Henri Fan- tin-Latour’s sophisticated lithographic experiments of the mid-1870s (in fact, he relied on Fantin-Latour’s workshop, Lemercier & Cie, the largest in Paris, to edition his lithographs until early Odilon Redon, l’Oeuf (the Egg), 1885, lithograph, 29.3 x 22.5 cm, © BNF. 1887). But he saw lithography in the first instance as a medium for repro- Dans le Rêve, a series of ten litho- as he had hoped. The small edition not ducing the many charcoal drawings he graphs on chine appliqué, published by only represented a realistic assessment had lying around, none of which had subscription in only twenty-five copies, of the limited audience for this material, met with much success at that point. made Redon’s name in literary circles, it also served to enhance the exclusivity 3 Art in Print July – August 2011 tional forms of representation or the cyclope souriant et hideux,8 is especially experiences of modern life that preoc- notable in this context. This is no scien- cupied so many of Redon’s contempo- tific record but a disturbing monument raries. to an extravagantly visionary sensibility. It is hardly surprising, given their Redon’s capacity for self-promo- mutual predilection for macabre fan- tion was apparently as boundless as tasy, that Redon’s second album was his imagination. Many of the albums dedicated to Edgar Allen Poe, whose shown here are homages to well-known work had been introduced to France in literary and artistic figures such as Poe, the 1860s through Baudelaire’s transla- Goya, and Flaubert, and point to the tion. À Edgar Poe of 1882, comprising artist’s self-conscious awareness of his six plates, allowed Redon to exploit place in history. They also clearly reflect the American writer’s popularity in the specific tastes and interests of the France. Redon’s own often curious cap- numerous patrons and critics whose tions were meant to be read sequen- attentions Redon tirelessly sought to tially like a sort of poem, contributing attract throughout his career. It was no to the mysterious effect of the whole. coincidence that his album Homage à The images were evidently designed as Goya (1885) became the best-known of interpretations of Poe’s literary themes his works; his friend Joris-Karl Huys- rather than as a direct illustration of mans published an article about it in them.