Odilon Redon • Rodolphe Bresdin • German Expressionism: the Graphic Impulse • Nicola López Christopher Cozier • Drawing

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.

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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.

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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 exhibition. 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 surprising—Redon was primarily a graphic artist; he not only exploited the practical 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 albums, ten of which (he only made twelve) are presented in their entirety and in the order designated by the artist. (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 imagery, 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

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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. (The signature eyeball reappears Félix Fénéon’s journal “La Revue In- Fig. 1. Odilon Redon, Le Joueur (the Gambler), 1879, lithograph on chine appliqué, in the exceptional first plate (Plate 1) dépendante” in February 1885 and as- 27 x 19.3 cm, © BNF. (Fig. 3) in the guise of a hot-air balloon: sisted the artist with a strategic dona- L’oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige tion of the album to the poet Stephane of Redon’s albums within the small com- vers l’infini.)3 Mallarmé the same year. This was fol- munity of connoisseurs for whom they Indeed, Redon strenuously rejected lowed in 1889 by the gift of the newly were intended. The images in Dans le the word “illustration” to describe the published album À Gustave Flaubert and Rêve unfold like scenes in an unsettling prints in his albums. “A word needs later an inscribed copy of Dans le Rêve. dream, and introduce some of the char- to be found: I can only think of trans- It worked: Mallarmé was entranced by acteristic motifs of Redon’s art: the Al- mission, interpretation, but even they the albums and became a significant ice-in-Wonderlandish quality of bizarre- are not quite right to describe what patron and supporter. Redon made ly juxtaposed scales and subjects like the happens when my reading flows into many such donations to individuals figure in Le Joueur2 (Plate 5) ((Fig. 1) seen my arrangement of black and white.”4 and institutions: copies of the Flau- carrying a disproportionately large die Nowhere perhaps is this more appar- across a shadowy, sparsely wooded land- ent than in Redon’s third album, Les scape, or the tiny human couple in the Origines of 1883, surely one of his most foreground of Vision (Plate 8), dwarfed singular achievements. This visual in- by the vast eyeball floating between two terpretation of the theory of evolution giant columns. There are lots of disem- emphasizes, above all, the artist’s fasci- bodied heads here too (another distinc- nation with deformity and distortion in tive feature of later work), among them both human and animal forms. The im- the winged version in Gnome (Plate 6) ages and cryptic captions suggest rather (Fig. 2) and the delicately featured and than describe in any scientific manner, horridly alert specimen on a footed dish the strangeness and chaos of primeval (Sur la Coupe, Plate 10). These prints life up to and including the emergence reveal an informed and passionate re- of mankind. Some of Redon’s hybrid lationship to the masters, among them creatures are, like the siren in Plate Dürer, Rembrandt, and Goya, some- 55 and the satyrs in Plates 56 and 6,7 times through their subject matter, drawn from classical rather than natu- sometimes merely in the refinement of ral sources, and most incorporate some technical style. At the same time, how- element of the grotesque. The grinning ever, they are avant-garde, even proto- head in Plate 3, (Fig. 4) dominated by a

Surrealist in their details, relentlessly single giant eyeball and titled Le polype Fig 2. Odilon Redon, Gnome, lithograph on championing imagination over tradi- difforme flottait sur les rivages, sorte de chine appliqué, 27 x 19.3 cm.

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bert album were given to Edmond de Goncourt and Emile Zola in 1889, for example, and four lithographs to the Rijksmuseum as late as 1909. In the mid- 1880s Redon also began to supplement the albums with single prints, about fifty in all, that allowed him to sell to collectors who could not afford albums or who preferred individual sheets for framing and display; this also reduced the risk of albums being broken up. This unusually comprehensive exhibition makes clear how Redon’s initial interest in lithography as simply a reproductive tool evolved into an understanding of the medium in its own right as a vehicle for his prodigious artistic creativity. In fact, it was Redon who extended to lithography the notion of the “original print”—a signed and num- bered sheet within a limited edition, and largely hand produced, a concept long associated with intaglio prints. However, he disliked working directly on the lithographic stone, preferring to draw on specially prepared transfer paper which was passed to the printer, who then transferred the design to the stone. As he wrote to André Mellerio in August 1898: “Transfer paper is excellent for improvisation. I like it very much for it responds better than stone … which scarcely allows for the adventurous dar- ings of my fancy. The paper yields, the Fig. 4. Odilon Redon, Le polype difforme flottait sur les rivages, sorte de cyclope stone holds.”9 Ted Gott has described souriant et hideux (The Misshapen Polyp Floated on the Shores, a Sort of Smiling and Redon’s working process in which revi- Hideous Cyclops), Plate 3 from the portfolio Les Origines, 1883, lithograph on chine appliqué, sions made by the artist on a trial proof 21.3 x 19.9 cm. would then be applied to the stone in the workshop.10 He also made correc- After 1890, as the curators note, and at the Museum of Modern Art in tions to the stone himself with a variety “painting and pastel gradually invaded Tokyo in 1989, and the period in-be- of lithographic crayons and scrapers. [Redon’s] somber dream world.” And tween was punctuated by record sales The final prints were made mostly on indeed, in the second part of the ex- of Redon’s work to Japanese collec- chine appliqué; the lithographic image hibition, sequestered on a lower floor tors. Of course, since the bubble burst was applied to the thin China paper that of the gallery, black-and-white rumi- at the end of the eighties, the market was mounted under pressure to a back- nations are summarily abandoned in for these works has been in significant ing sheet of thick white wove stock. This favor of an Oz-like territory of vivid decline.) There is an entire room full accounts for the distinctively flat, white Technicolor. (Redon’s flower paintings of pastels of flowers in vases that sug- appearance of most of the prints—one and pastels enjoyed a burst of promi- gest a slightly gaga Sunday painter at that aroused suspicion among certain nence in the art market of the 1970s work (whither creepiness?)—and are visiting print specialists to the exhibi- and 80s, when they were discovered by best passed over at considerable speed. tion, one of whom even suggested that the same Japanese collectors who were But even the gloomiest print specialist the sheets might have been pressed and busy pursuing Chagall and Renoir. might find some joy in Redon’s glorious bleached by the Bibilothèque Nationale There were retrospectives at the Mu- and colorful late designs (1900–1901) (sacré bleu!). seum of Modern Art Kamakura in 1973 for the fifteen decorative panels in the

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of their radical engagement with the forms and appearances of the modern world. And his resistance to social and political concerns probably marginal- ized him further, at least in terms of a wider public audience. Among scholars and serious collectors of works on paper, Redon’s artistic importance, however, has never been questioned. There have been numerous museum and gallery exhibitions of his work over the past century, including a 1994 retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago (also subtitled “The Prince of Dreams”); the Museum of Modern Art’s “Beyond the Visible: The Art of Odilon Redon” in 2005, which show- cased 140 paintings, drawings, and prints from the Ian Woodner Family Collection, and a 2007 show, “Odilon Redon: Wie im Traum /As in a Dream” at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt. But as the exhibition at the Grand Palais es- tablishes, however distracting the artist’s pleasing decorative schemes and vivid colors can be, it is ultimately the dismembered heads, floating eyeballs, and nasty hybrid beasts of his mono- chrome kingdom that long hover in the memory. These are the crowning achievement of the prince of dreams.

Notes: 1. Dreaming 2. The Gambler, plate V. 3. The eye, like a strange balloon rises toward infinity. 4. Odilon Redon: Prince du Rêve: L’Expo, Édi- tions de la Rmn-Grand Palais, Paris, 2011, p. 61. Odilon Redon, La fleur du marecage, une tête humaine et triste (Flower of the swamp, 5. La sirène sortit des flots, vêtue de dards a head human and sad), 1885, lithograph from the portfolio, Homage à Goya, 1885, (The siren emerges from the waters, clothed in 27.5 x 20.5 cm, © BNF. thorns). 6. Le satyre au cynique sourire (The satyr with dining room of the Château de Domecy he was not a popular printmaker in the the cynical smile). 7. Il y eut des luttes et de vaines victories (There that close the exhibition. mode of Daumier, but an artist com- were struggles and victories in vain). If black-and-white seems, for the fortably settled in the French tradition 8. (The deformed polyp floated on the shores, a most part, to have been a more effec- of the deluxe edition. The lithographs sort of smiling and hideous Cyclops.) tive vehicle for Redon’s sinister reveries in which his powerful Symbolist imag- 9. Odilon Redon: Prince du Rêve: L’Expo., p. 154. 10. The Enchanted Stone: The Graphic Worlds than color, lithography also served him ery emerged were always both exclu- of Odilon Redon, National Gallery of Victoria, well strategically. Indeed, Redon’s ef- sive and expensive; his primary audi- 1990, pp. 27–36. fective exploitation of prints has a great ence was the sophisticated literary and deal to do with the odd insider-outsid- artistic circle of the “Decadents,” and it er status he enjoyed in his lifetime and was they who supported his career. Al- Catharine Bindman is an art critic and editor (specializing in museum catalogues). She was that has attached to his reputation ever though Redon was almost the same age deputy editor at Art on Paper magazine and since. As the exhibition underscores, as Monet and Cézanne, he shared none lives in New York.

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Dreaming in Company: Redon and Bresdin By Susan Tallman

rtists, even as radically original an ied drawing, etching, and lithography Boston exhibition includes a very early A artist as Odilon Redon, do not (Bresdin did not paint). Most impor- etching by Redon, Fear (1866), in the spring fully formed from the earth. tantly, Redon learned to put “the vis- densely gothic mode of Bresdin. But They have origins, influences, muses, ible at the service of the invisible.” The Redon went on to develop quite a dif- teachers. It has long been acknowl- edged that the agar-agar that nurtured Redon’s peculiar talents was his ap- prenticeship with the etcher Rodolphe Bresdin (1822-1885). And yet, for all of the grand exhibitions and ambitious volumes that have been devoted to Redon, Bresdin’s work remains largely invisible. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is attempting to rectify that im- balance with the exhibition “Two Mas- ters of Fantasy: Bresdin and Redon,” on view through the end of the year. In so far as Bresdin features in modern awareness at all, it is as the eccentric hermit-like artist who confirmed Redon’s innate tendency toward the subjective and the fantastic. This image is in large part the work of the writer Champfleury, whose character Chien- Callou was based on Bresdin. Chien- Callou was the ultimate Bohemian— utopian, Romantic, careless of social norms, inspired by what went on inside his head, without need of salon or academy to make his singular, soulful mark on the world. But for Bresdin —as for most people—this outsider status was at best a mixed blessing. His art was daringly original in many ways, but his lack of academic training cost him dear. He was prolific, but few things sold well; he was a darling of the avant- garde, but the respect was tinged with condescension for the ‘other.’ Always in need of money, Bresdin took students to help make ends meet, and his relationship with Redon in the 1860s seems to have been elaborated by the two of them into something self- Rodolphe Bresdin (French, 1822–1885), The Good Samaritan, Printer: Lemercier et Cie, (French, consciously like a medieval apprentice 19th century), 1861, pen lithograph, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Bequest of W. G. Russell Allen, and master. In his studio, Redon stud- Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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with his oddly graceless figures, as if he scholar David Becker, who died last No- did not see them as a weakness. vember, and who was one of Bresdin’s Bresdin’s most famous print—the rare champions. (The exhibition, begun only one commonly reproduced—is by Becker and MFA print curator Clif- The Good Samaritan (1861), which pres- ford Ackley, was completed by Ackley ents the viewer with an almost impen- and Sue Welsh Reed). Becker’s interest etrable thicket of leaf and root and in Bresdin had been encouraged by the branch, in the middle of which a camel artist Leonard Baskin, who collected and two travelers are barely visible. his work. Bresdin’s work seems per- Théodore de Banville described it in petually to have meant more to artists 1861 as “the patient and furious work of than to the art-buying public, perhaps a genius who desires to embrace every- because artists are already in the habit thing… In an eternal Hymn, Fauna and of looking long and hard and in person. Flora are united, where does the animal The Boston exhibit suggests it’s a habit begin and the vegetation cease?”1 the rest of us would do well to adopt. Contrast this with Redon’s posthu- mous portrait of Bresdin, The Reader (1892), with its generalized forms, its Notes: indeterminate space, its lines solely in 1. Théodore de Banville in the “Revue Fantai- Odilon Redon, Le Liseur (The Reader), 1892, siste,” 1861, cited in Stephen Eisenman, The lithograph, 31.2 x 23.7 cm (image), Museum the service of tone. One could look at Temptation of Saint Redon. Chicago: University of Fine Arts, Boston, Katherine E. Bullard Fund the Bresdin for days and continue to of Chicago Press, 1992, p. 53. in memory of Francis Bullard, Photograph find new elements in the undergrowth. © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The drama of Redon’s image can be taken in at a glance. There are many ferent mature style, trading etching for reasons why Redon has been more suc- lithography, abandoning his master’s cessful than Bresdin, both during their hyperaccuity of detail; preferring to lifetimes and in the century since, but blur and generalize, to lose specificity perhaps the most important is this. in black shadow and bleached light. Redon’s genius was for the instantly Bresdin’s sensibility was dark: he grasped visual conundrum: the eyeball made prints of Death visiting bathers balloon, the head with wings. Bresdin’s in lakes, hunters in the woods, knights lay in the density of his images. As on horseback, mothers and children, Clifford Ackley points out, “it’s all the St. Anthony in the desert. The Comedy strange creatures in the shrubbery that of Death (1854) shows the grim reaper make it work.” having a party with himself in his mani- Bresdin’s refusal to prioritize the fold guises. One of the revelations of ostensible subject matter (Jew, Sa- this exhibition is actually the number maritan, camel) over the background of landscapes and other ostensibly be- (palm frond, thistle, cumulonimbus) is nign subjects. Even these, however, what makes his work look so modern. are charged with strange animism: the Even more than Redon, Bresdin ap- foliage appears mobile and volitional, pears eerily predictive of late-sixties while the people look like cardboard psychedelia—the insect at the top of cutouts. There is, in fact, something The Butterfly and the Pond (1868) could amateurish about Bresdin’s figure easily have featured on a poster for the drawing; the anatomy is often odd Fillmore. But in one sense, Bresdin’s and the gestures stiff. Redon may not work is deeply old-fashioned: it has to have been a great anatomical draughts- be looked at long and hard and in per- man either, but he developed a style son to achieve its effect. Its profound Rodolphe Bresdin (French, 1822–1885), in which it was irrelevant—specifying weirdness does not come through in The Lake in the Mountains, about 1861, only certain points of form and allow- reproduction, whereas Redon’s does. etching printed on cream chine collée, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Arthur and ing the rest to drop away into generali- “Two Masters of Fantasy” is dedicat- Charlotte Vershbow Fund, Photograph © ties of tone. Bresdin forged right ahead ed to the memory of print curator and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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Fig. 1. Ghisi Composite: Giorgio Ghisi (1520–1582), Il Giudizio universale after Michelangelo, 1549, 10 matrices and an additional portrait of Michelangelo, burin on copper, 1220 x 1070 mm (entire composition), Rome, Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Inv. 201/1-11.

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Drawing and its Double By Andrew Raftery

mong the very first items of European art to American audienc- printmakers. Impressions from these A accessioned by the Museum of Art es, modern impressions of old plates plates were kept in stock and could be Rhode Island School of Design (found- had a significant place in America’s ordered. The Calcografia maintained ed in 1877 along with the school where fledgling cultural institutions. plates in printing condition: popular I teach) was a set of etchings by Salva- RISD’s early acquisition of Rosa’s plates were steel-faced to ensure lon- tor Rosa. Although the artist made the etchings is a small, if telling, episode ger printing life and plates deemed plates in the 17th century, the impres- in the long history of the Calcografia, obscene by Papal censors received ap- sions are from the 1870s, printed in now part of Rome’s Istituto Nationale propriate fig leaves. reddish-brown ink on 19th century paper la Grafica. This collection of 23,400 This pattern of collecting and print- per. These prints were made at the Cal- printing matrices was assembled over ing continued into the 20th century. cografia in Rome, the world’s largest centuries from a variety of sources. Impressions from the most popular repository of printing matrices. Subse- Pope Clement XII founded the Cal- plates were made as late as the 1970s quent curators have collected impres- cografia in 1738 with a cache of 9000 when it was decided to cease printing sions made closer to the artist’s lifetime plates from the famed Roman print and protect the matrices from further and our Calcografia Rosas are now cat- publisher De Rossi. The 19th century wear. Most importantly, the matrices of alogued as restrikes, but they continue added collections of matrices by indi- important artists such as Giorgio Mo- to tell an important story about the vidual artists, including plates by Rosa, randi and Carlo Carra were added to early aspirations of collecting institu- Volpato, Canova and Piranesi. In addi- the holdings. In 1986, some 700 plates tions in the United States. Just as casts tion, new plates reproducing famous produced by the Stamperia Romero in of Classical and Renaissance sculpture works of art and architecture were Rome were donated, documenting the were assembled to bring masterpieces commissioned from leading Italian activity of some of Italy’s most progres-

Fig. 1a. Ghisi Composite: Giorgio Ghisi (1520–1582), detail of Il Giudizio universale after Michelangelo, 1549, 10 matrices and an additional portrait of Michelangelo. Burin on copper, 1220 x 1070 mm (entire composition). Rome, Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Inv. 201/1-11.

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Fig. 2a. Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, detail of Il Genio della Pittura.

Drawing Center, curators Brett Litt- man, Ginevra Mariani and Antonella Renzitti took the plates out of the edu- cation cases and put them on the walls in a move that was simply radical. For an engraver, walking into an Fig. 2. Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Il Genio della Pittura, 1648, exhibition solely devoted to intaglio etching on copper, 14 3/4 x 9 15/16 inches (378 x 252 mm), courtesy plates is an exhilarating experience. of Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Rome, VIC 369. After all, the plate is the actual object I make when I work on a print. Though sive artists from 1961 to its closing in Memorable examples include the en- a handful of plates may get shown in the 80s. The Istituto continues to com- graved silver roundel in the Metro- historical exhibitions or at print fairs, mission and publish new print projects politan Museum of Art’s 2003 Goltzius their surfaces are often obscured by in its studio while its scholarly mission show and the heavily gouged plates dried ink, tarnish, or varnishes, or they embraces cutting edge technical and in Yale University Art Gallery’s 2009 are disfigured by cancellation marks historical research. exhibition Pull of Experiment: Postwar or submerged in deep glass cases. The In the first exhibition of its kind, American Printmaking. Having worked Calcografia plates are beautifully clean this Spring the Istituto joined with The on displays including plates for the and many of them have not been steel Drawing Center in New York to mount RISD Museum’s 2009 exhibition on plated to prevent wear. They were “Drawing and Its Double,” an exhibi- engraving, The Brilliant Line (which mounted in acrylic and hung on the tion of 58 intaglio printing plates made traveled to Northwestern University’s wall, making it possible to take in the between 1528 to 1988 that prompts a Block Museum), I know how compel- entire object as well as the details. To reconsideration of matrices as art, ling visitors find the actual plates when see the tool marks of the masters was and as objects of value to 21st century they are struggling to understand a rare privilege. I had many questions scholars, artists and general viewers. what they are looking at in the prints. about depth of line, layering of marks, Printing matrices are an occasional In these cases matrices were used to spacing and effects of wear as I exam- feature of historical print exhibitions. explain the objects on display. At the ined the plates with the Optivisor I

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as those by Umberto Mastroianni and also etched, though this was only dis- Nino Franchina. covered in the mid-1960s during an Plates for famous prints by Frederico inventory of Piranesi’s plates. The im- Barocci, Pietro Testa, Rosa and Giovan- age, La caduta di Feronte, was finally ni Benedetto Castiglione chronicled catalogued and a few impressions were high points in the development of Ital- printed. It is in the florid rococo style ian etching in the 16th and 17th centu- of the Grotteschi and like that series is ries, but also made the point that some- dated c. 1748. The scratchy lines were times paper trumps plates, if the paper bitten to many levels and there seems was pulled early on and the plate had a to be some damage that happened in hard life. The feathery touches in Cas- the acid bath, but it is a marvelous, tiglione’s plate for Il Genio della Pitura rhythmic image in which figure, earth, (1648) (Fig. 2, 2a) are still evident, but architecture, water, foliage and clouds in other examples, such as the Barocci swirl in harmony. Apparently, it was not Annunciation of 1584/88, the lines are published in Piranesi’s lifetime, perhaps worn and perhaps retouched, suggest- because the artist did not consider it ing that the image would be better publishable. Turning from this plate to studied in a fine, early impression than the next in the exhibition, we watch an in the plate itself. The surprise stars artist at the point of failure leap from of this section were by lesser-known the muddiness of the unpublished plate Fig. 3. Arnold Van Westerhout, Nuova raccolta artists. Arnold van Westerhout’s flow- to the brilliant transparency of Carceri di varie e diverse sorti di fiori, 1631, etching er studies after Jacques Bailly (1631) XV (Fig. 5). First worked on in 1749-50 on copper, 11 11/16 x 8 inches (299 x 206 mm), (Fig. 3), offered graceful mixed - bou and reworked by 1761, the Carceri plate courtesy of Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Rome, VIC 1469/8. quets rendered in etching, the forms was a revelation for me, having studied delicately outlined and shaded with- impressions of the two states of the out cross hatching. Pure engraving was print over many years. Because the lat- always carry when I look at prints. The reserved for the exquisite calligraphy er revisions were etched more deeply, Drawing Center, thoughtfully, had surrounding the plants. Another high- they cut through the original lines. On magnifiers on hand for visitors who light was an allegorical frontispiece for were not so well equipped. a book of artistic anatomy attributed The exhibition opened with the to François Andriot after a sketch by plates for Giorgio Ghisi’s magnificent Charles Errard and dated 1691 (Fig. 4). engraving (c. 1548) after Michelangelo’s This image depicts a sculptural group Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. of three skeletons around a draped re- (Fig. 1) Distributed over 10 irregular lief of flayed bodies. It is rendered with shaped plates, the entire assemblage incredibly precise burin work. Its near is over a meter wide. Fine impressions pristine state of preservation allowed of the complete set are extremely rare. one to study the multiple engraved lev- This popular print was issued many els that differentiate areas of shadow, times and the plates were probably middle tone and light. well worn by the time they entered the Piranesi was, of course, a central Calcografia. Perhaps it is only when figure. [See Messing About With Master- viewed as a group of plates that the pieces: New Work by Giambattista Pira- image has such a strong impact. The nesi.] A double-sided plate illustrated oversize scale of the multiple matrices the two sides of his character: the com- gives some idea of the grandeur of Mi- paratively staid Piazza di Monte Cavallo chelangelo’s invention, while the puz- showed him as the master of the Ro- zle-like interlocking shapes imply the man view. Staged biting created deep seams of the giornata (day’s work) in atmospheric space and Piranesi’s tech- the fresco. It is an imposing sculptural nique of etching linear textures into his Fig. 4. François Andriot (attr.), Anatomia per object, with a physical presence that is exceptionally wide lines to make them uso et intelligenza del disegno after Charles hold ink is evident in the foreground Errand, c. 1691, burin on copper, 12 13/16 x 9 only rivaled by some of the experimen- 3/8 inches (325 x 238 mm), courtesy of Istituto tal shaped plates from the 1970s, such forms. The backside of the plate was Nazionale per la Grafica, Rome, VIC 1164/2.

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and legs. One can imagine wiping the plate and leaving extra tone on the skirt to make it stand out against the extremely delicate marks describing the distant hills and sky.1 Looking from Palazzi to the masterpieces of Giorgio Morandi, it was clear that Morandi’s approach to plate making harks back to the work of the earlier artists in the exhibition. Cal- culated spacing, layering and width of lines were the secret to his carefully controlled range of values. Everything was etched in the plates, requiring a clean wipe for the ideal impression. Morandi cherished the freshness of the lines made on the first ground and the unity results from a plate placed in the acid bath just once. This relationship of graphic clarity to Morandi’s etching technique is most striking in Paesag- gio sul Savenna (1929) (Fig. 7). The acid Fig. 5. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Capriccio con pilastro ornato con mascheroni, pl. XV delle cut extremely clean channels which all Carceri, 1749/50-1761, etching and burin on copper, 16 1/2 x 22 inches (416 x 558 mm), courtesy seem to go to the same depth. of Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Rome, VIC 1400/363. The final section of the exhibition, consisting of Italian prints from paper the earlier work is less apparent. The tension between a calligraphic, 1966 to 1988, revealed works that are On the plate the two states seem to ex- ultimately flat configuration and- pro almost unknown to American view- ist simultaneously. found volumetric rendering is especial- The 19th century witnessed both ly evident when seen on the steel-plat- the pinnacle of virtuoso reproduced copper in the exhibition. The image tive engraving and its swan song. The is absolutely holographic from certain most stunning example of this genre points of view. is Giovanni Folo’s plate after Antonio Plates such as Folo’s achieve their Canova’s sculpture Ercole e Lica (Fig. 6), optimum effect when printed with a completed before the engraver’s death vigorously clean wipe so that the bright in 1836. Canova carefully supervised white of the paper sparkles within the the production of prints after his lattice of black ink. All the information sculptures, directing draftsmen such is contained in the plate, and the print- as Giovanni Tognoli, who made the er’s job was to let it shine. By contrast, drawing for this engraving. Emphasiz- plates by Filippo Palazzi, who repre- ing the importance of silhouette in his sents Italy’s version of the 19th century sculptural compositions, Canova chose Etching Revival, reveal how much cer- an ideal vantage point for translation tain etchings of the later 19th century from three into two dimensions. The relied on plate tone, retroussage and contour is not indicated by an outline other interpretive printing techniques or even by a dark background, as in to fill out the tone and atmosphere the French engraver Charles Cléement only suggested by the rather open web Bervic’s 1809 engraving of the Laocoön. of etched marks. Palazzi’s La pastorella Fig. 6. Giovanni Folo, Preparatory drawing by Instead the image is articulated by a (1880) is a good example of a plate made Giovanni Tognoli, Eracle e Lyca, after Antonio complex system of curving lines, dots in anticipation of such printing. The Canova, post 1841, etching and burin on steelified copper, 24 7/8 x 18 3/4 inches (631 x and dashes that, even in the darkest skirt of the standing figure is barely ar- 476 mm), courtesy of Istituto Nazionale per la areas, maintains an open middle tone. ticulated in relation to the upper body Grafica, Rome, VIC 1287.

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could probably be made by examining a series of state proofs, but by going to the primary source, the objects Blake saw as he was working, Sung makes a compelling argument that Blake’s pas- sion for the physical act of engraving, the trade that he had learned as an apprentice and that supported him throughout his life, was equal to the intensity he brought to his more cel- ebrated work with experimental techniques. From my point of view as a printmaker, it is very interesting to study a plate and observe the autographic qualities of each engraver’s work. This in- dividuality exists on an almost micro- scopic level involving relative evenness of spacing, smoothness of lines and the commencement and termination of marks. Looking at a plate can help to distinguish between engraving and etching, something that can be very confusing when looking at impressions of mixed method prints. In examining engraved plates I try to determine the sequence of cuts in passages of layered hatching. It is often possible to see Fig. 7. Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta con vaso, lumino e piatto (verso), 1929, etching and aqua- where the engraver has re-entered a tint on copper, 249 x 258 mm, courtesy of Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Rome, VIC 1799/30r. line with the burin because the groove appears somewhat rough in the plate even when it prints as a smooth line on ers. The vigorous working of many Ghisi’s shaped plates for the Last Judg- the paper. Exacting measurements can of these plates through deep biting, ment. even determine the profile of a cut to cutting, shaping and inlay brought to “Drawing and its Double” dem- find out whether the engraver used a mind prints made under the influence onstrates how much can be learned square or lozenge shaped burin. of Stanley William Hayter and Atelier by looking at a matrix that cannot be If the opportunity to examine these 17 in France, the United States and the learned by looking at a fine impres- plates was so unusual for a seasoned UK, but the Italian prints are less reli- sion of the plate. Recent art historical practitioner, it must have been ex- ant on burin engraving for their tech- exploration of the matrix includes Mei- tremely novel for the general public. nique or Surrealism for their imagery. Ying Sung’s study, William Blake and the The images on most of the plates were Aquisgrana (1971) by Nino Franchina Art of Engraving.2 Sung examines all of not obvious from a conventional view- consists of two interlocking spiky Blake’s extant plates (with special ating distance and close looking was forms made of welded steel. The matrix tention to The Book of Job, 1826) look- clearly required. I observed visitors us- has remarkable sculptural presence as ing at their backs for hammer marks ing the magnifiers provided and quick- does the plate for Guido Strazza’s 1988 that show where the front surface had ly becoming engrossed in the details Studio relativa a Roma, which contrasts to be made flush after copper had been of each artist’s handwork. Engravings etched and drypointed lines represent- removed to make a correction. Com- by Andriot, Volpato, Folo and Poretti ing shadow and movement with solid parison with plates by Blake’s contem- dazzled the eye with the superhuman planes created by zinc inlay. Emphasi- poraries shows that Blake corrected precision and intricacy of their marks. zing the sculptural qualities inherent in with great freedom, demonstrating an Even more compelling was the visceral all intaglio plates, these works brought extraordinary creative flexibility within immediacy evoked by the etched lines the exhibition full circle by relating to his exacting medium. The same point in plates by Piranesi, Carra, and the

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trast with solid forms, are inked as for only the Salvator Rosas at the RISD printing in order to make the images Museum, but also the many hundreds more visible. At the same time, viewers, of impressions I had seen from these reflected in the plates, become part of matrices over the years in museums, the images as they look. Clearly, though private collections and on the market. they refer to prints through their mate- Being in the presence of the plate, the rials and technique, here the plates are site of production, made me power- the primary objects. fully aware of the point at which each The historical plates have a more individual print started its path in the equivocal status. They are striking for world. their physical presence, their tactile, highly wrought qualities as objects. Many of them are strongly sculptural Notes: 1. James McNeill Whistler is a prime exam- and all of them have subtle qualities ple of an artist who used selective wiping and of relief. They employ drawing skills plate tone to augment effects suggested by the in their making, but they are not quite etched lines in his plates. The artist wiped many the same as drawings. Their makers of the etchings in the Venice Set, first exhibited in 1880, to leave thin layers of ink on parts of understood them as three-dimensional the non-image surface of the plate, emphasiz- utilitarian objects, manipulating both ing effects of atmosphere and light. Professional images and three-dimensionality in re- printers in Europe and America picked up on these techniques during the final quarter of the verse in order to impress images onto 19th century and well into the 20th, extensively surfaces. If they are not quite drawings, employing retroussage which involves heating Fig. 8. Paolo Canevari, Burning Skull, from the the plate after it has been wiped and going over Decalogo series, 2008, etched copper and dry- it has to be said they are also not quite sculptures. Even though the makers the lines with a rag to pull out some ink and soft- point, nickel-plated, 55 x 35 x 3/4 inches (138 en the edges. E. S. Lumsden’s book, The Art x 88 x 2 cm), courtesy of the artist and Gallery may have spent months and even years of Etching, offers an excellent compendium of Christian Stein, Milan. working on the metal, the primary ob- Etching Revival platemaking and printing tech- ject was always the graphic work on niques. 2. Mei-Ying Sung’s study, William Blake and paper. For the platemaker to lose sight the Art of Engraving. London: Pickering & Chat- deeply-bitten expressive gestures in of this goal would be disastrous, result- to Ltd, 2009. plates of the 60s and 70s by Afro Ba- ing in a piece of decorated metalwork saldella and Giulio Turcato. rather than a print. The most profound question raised Matrices, and by extension the Andrew Raftery is an engraver and print by “Drawing and its Double” is whether prints they produce, have a unique and scholar. As Professor of Printmaking at Rhode Island School of Design, he often collaborates a matrix is actually a work of art and curious identity in relation to other with the RISD Museum on exhibitions and if so, what kind of work is it? In addi- classes of art objects. The matrix and educational programs, recently as consulting tion to the historical material, the ex- every print pulled from it constitute curator for “The Brilliant Line: The Journey of the Early Modern Engraver” at the RISD Mu- hibition also included Decalogo (2008) the entire work of art. This is true even seum and the Block Museum at Northwestern (Fig. 8) an installation of ten large when they are permanently dispersed University. etched plates by Paolo Canevari, (com- or some elements in the series are lost. missioned by the Istituto and produced (Sculptor Jonathan Bonner touched on at the Calcografia with the assistance this idea in a recent project in which he of master printer Antonio Sannino), had a professional lettering specialist which supplies one answer to this ques- engrave palindromes on copperplates. tion. Canevari etched and drypointed The plates were printed in an edition highly charged images—a skull, cross, of one and the plate and proof were the Collosseum, The Bible and Mein framed together, uniting the plate and Kampf, most engulfed in flames—onto the print as a single entity.) Every plate ten large (almost 3 x 5 feet) polished in the Drawing Center exhibition is in- copperplates. The plates received a re- timately linked to the impressions it has flective nickel plating and were bent at made, perhaps occasionally numbering the edges and mounted so they stood in the thousands, often over many cen- out from the wall. The incised lines, turies. It was only after looking at the depicting whirls of smoke that con- plates on view that I remembered not

15 Art in Print July – August 2011

Jane Kent and Richard Ford Go Skating By Susan Tallman

he relationship of language to T painting is an infinite relation,” wrote Michel Foucault.1 significantly upping the ratiometric ante of the 1:1000 cliché. Foucault was exploring the fundamental unsuitability of language (linear, syntactic, modular) to the description of visual experience (a varied field of simultaneous stimulations). But the same difficulty arises going the other direction: matching image to language is an enterprise squeezed between the per- ils of redundancy on the one hand and irrelevance on the other. And yet it is a habitual human activity: we make pictures of stories, movies of novels, videos of bad pop songs. We seem to have an unending need to augment the fleshless voice of text with something to wrap our eyes around. Devout Christians find no irony in paintings of Moses con- demning graven images; an iconic Islam indulges in elaborate calligraphic orna- ment. Hipsters have the Graphic Novel; connoisseurs have the livre d’artiste. Despite the fusty aroma of pre-war Paris and poetry-for-pleasure (so different from the militant pragmatism of “the artist’s book”,) the livre d’artiste is a surprisingly vital form, perhaps especially so now that text is both so ubiqui- tous and so insubstantial, a billion fields of transitory charged particles blooming behind plastic shields. At its best, the livre d’artiste is meticulous in its physical production, provocative in its structure, and profound in its content. The painter and printmaker Jane Kent has been making livres d’artistes for almost twenty years and she has just finished her third, which says something about the com- Jane Kent and Richard Ford, Skating, 2011, screenprint, title page from the set of eleven prints. plexities inherent in the form. These are slow projects, in part because of the logistics (each involved multiple printers As a student at Philadelphia College wald, the second-generation chairman and multi-stage fabrication consider- of Art (now The University of the Arts), of Sears Roebuck, had amassed one of ations) and in part because of the ‘infi- Kent had spent time in Lessing J. Ros- the world’s great print collections, and nite relationship’ described by Foucault. enwald’s Alverthorpe Gallery.2 Rosen- he was particularly interested in illus-

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undressing in nearby building. It’s a like an abstract pattern of dots and mild compulsion; he stops watching squiggles, but when the eight sheets are after a few days. “Undoubtedly I was put together they resolve into a loosely thrilled by the secrecy of watching out hand-drawn copy of an 18th century en- of the darkness,” the narrator writes, graving of orchid hunting. though the next paragraph begins, Orlean’s original book tells the story “Nothing more happened.” He later of John Laroche, a real orchid poacher discovers that the woman in question in pursuit of the elusive Ghost Orchid, was —contrary to the way his mind had but the sections used here are not nar- solved the optical ambiguities—old rative, they are floating meditations on and Chinese. It is an odd and ambigu- obsession. One telling passage reads, “I ous fable about vision and frustration. was starting to believe that the reason Kent says, “I read it and read it and read it matters to care passionately about it. And then I started to draw. Over and something is that it whittles the world over and over. I drew for two years.“ down to a more manageable size.” A She was searching for what she calls few weeks after Kent first met with “the join”—the point where some es- Orlean she received an early morning sential quality of the text finds its phone call from a journalist friend in parallel in the visual world. “I came to Rome asking if it was true that a plane Jane Kent and Richard Ford, Skating, 2011, think about the private act of reading had just struck the World Trade Center screenprint and letterpress, from the set of and the private act of seeing.” She drew a few blocks away. Walking to the win- eleven prints. repeated, searching eyes, and the mask- dow, she saw the shadow of the second like faces of coin-operated binoculars. plane pass over the street. Exiled with trated books. “It is hard to convey the Most of the images reside on the edge her husband (painter David Storey) and atmosphere,” said Kent. “Sterling silver of abstraction, where concentric circles their young son from their loft, and cigarette cases filled with Camel unfil- as easily suggest an active eyeball as a then returning to the dust-covered, tered next to sterling silver magnify- passive breast. The text was designed empty-skied reality of post-9/11 lower ing glasses for studying the prints. You by Leslie Miller of Grenfell Press after Manhattan, Kent immersed herself in were instructed to wash your hands be- the images were competed, and was cause you were encouraged to handle letterpress-printed over the aquatints. the works.” These works included para- The reader is caught up in a kind of digmatic livres d’artistes such as Henri Droste-effect recursion: in order to Matisse’s Jazz (1947), and Kent was read a text about the act of looking one smitten with “the idea that so much in- must look at a page that is looking back tensity, ambition and content could be at the reader reading a text about the made into a book-like format.” act of looking. In 1996 she began work on Privacy The second book relied on a very dif- (1999),3 a set of aquatint etchings un- ferent source: nine paragraphs excerpt- derlying a short story by Richard Ford. ed from Susan Orlean’s book The Orchid Kent and Ford met when both were Thief, (which was also the jumping off teaching at Princeton, and they struck point for the Spike Jonze movie Adap- up a friendship around books—books tation,) reconfigured to have no begin- read, but also books seen, held, un- ning and no end. The prints of Privacy folded. Ford and his wife were early col- are unbound, but must be read in se- lectors of Kent’s work, and he knew her quence to make sense; The Orchid Thief work well. He did not ask to be involved Reimagined5 is more like a deck of cards. with the visual production in any way. The medium this time was screenprint: Kent says, “we never talked about the slap-flat swathes of color that form or- project beyond agreeing to do it.“4 ganic puddles, droopy labella and lithe The story is written in the voice of a vines and meander across the surfaces frustrated writer who begins regularly of the eight prints. In the box, the prints Jane Kent and Richard Ford, Skating, 2011, watching, through the window of his are separated by sheets of glassine inter- screenprint and letterpress, from the set of apartment, an unidentifiable woman leaving that are printed with what looks eleven prints.

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drypoint, another is drypoint and mezzotint. Some are horizontal, some are vertical, each is a different size. Some are chockablock with text, two have none at all. Shuffling through them suggests an almost cavalier pursuit of variety. A large horizontal engraving of looping omega shapes—what might be described as obsessive-compulsory figures—is followed by a much smaller page of text backed by a shapeless blob of carton brown. Further on, a horizontal sheet sports a baby blue squiggle and a looming black keel that together frame two spare lines of text; the next page is vertical with words packed in a tight column. As almost always with Kent, the images are abstract but not

Jane Kent and Richard Ford, Skating, 2011, screenprint and letterpress, abstract enough to be experienced sim- from the set of eleven prints. ply for the optical kick. An off-kilter slab of bright blue, listing slightly to work. She bought an orchid plant and of weight and momentum from inner the right and punctured by two ver- set it on the bed of the etching press edge to outer edge and back, which tical slits, suggests a quizzical robot in her studio. For the first time in her when done perfectly returns you to ex- head when viewed on its own. But if life, she drew from observation, month actly where you started. It’s a demon- instead of moving through the pages after month after month. The finished stration of mastery by going nowhere. sequentially like a book, you lay them project reflects the ambivalent attrac- Kent skated for two winters in Bryant out simultaneously like a multi-part tion of things in the world: everything Park “just to get in the spirit of the painting, the blue slab comes into fo- comes together but everything also piece… I pretended that this would be cus as a cousin of those fold-it-yourself comes apart. somehow helpful—lines on ice.” one-piece cartons, with their clever to- The newest “book” is Skating—again The parallels between blades on pological strategies for converting two based on a story by Richard Ford—and ice and burins on metal did generate dimensions into three. is the most ambitious yet.6 The story is two engravings for the book, but play- Seen like this, the stacks of blobby an argument, or rather a catalogue of ing with the title as metaphor was not rectangles and tab-like protrusions arguments between a man and a wom- enough to sustain the whole. Ford’s that form most of the images acquire a an caught up in the twitching tail end story is intriguingly non-visual: the ac- second identity as structural elements of an extra-marital affair. 43 paragraphs tors don’t act, they say. We don’t know of some unidentifiable DIY container. begin “They argued …”. The first and where they are or what they look like, Each contains a visual key to its posi- the penultimate begin “They argued or where they put their hands as they tion in the whole structure: the loopy about love.” “argued over the Merritt Parkway and engraving and the brown blob that Kent began her deliberations with the Wilbur Cross, and whether they seemed so unrelated are connected by customary thoroughness. She re- were two names for the same parkway.” the presence of squirrely blue rectan- searched diagrams of compulsory fig- The Orchid Thief is a story about things, gles in their upper corners. Seen one at ures—the patterns cut into ice by fig- Privacy was a story about looking, but a time, this connection would be easy ure skaters in the original form of the Skating is a story about words. Visu- to miss, but laid out on the wall it is ob- sport. (Now called “moves in the field,” ally, it is a desert, but structurally it is vious that those two blue rectangles are this element of competition fell out of a clockwork: a complex device made up two quadrants of a single shape that is favor when sports became televised be- of simple parts, beautiful in its clever- shared between the first four prints, like cause it is so boring to watch, but the ness, profound in its accomplishment. a picnic blanket spread out at Four Cor- discipline remains essential.) The most That, for Kent, was the “join.” ners in the American Southwest, and familiar compulsory figure—the one Skating consists of eleven loose that this shape is the bottom of a tee- learned by every fledgling skater—is prints in a large green envelope. Most tering stack of rectangles that occupies the “Figure Eight”, a controlled shift are screenprints, one is engraving and the title page. The title itself cascades

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Left: Jane Kent and Richard Ford, Skating, 2011, eleven loose sheets plus colophon in an envelope folio: letterpress, drypoint, engraving, mezzotint and silkscreen; various sizes individually, altogether 92 x 62 inches, edition of 35, published by The Grenfell Press (New York).

Above: Jane Kent and Richard Ford, Skating, 2011, all eleven prints in envelope folio.

as a child. At 13 she understood nothing of the play, she admits, but she was struck by the moment when an actor came onstage to announce that there is a fire in library, and a small model of the house in which the drama was sup- posedly taking place burst into flames. It was a revelation, she says, to see “the relationship between the real thing and the representation of the real” laid out so plainly. She was interested in “the notion of a model as an index to the downward in single letters, almost but used to “confound, reveal or order original.” In Skating everything self- not quite bounded by the dashed out- meaning.” She acknowledges that the consciously points to something else. line of the uppermost box. Slowly it work’s eccentric structure owes a debt This makes it clever, but it is also sub- becomes apparent that the teetering to Marcel Duchamp’s Green Box (1934), stantial—a material, engaging pleasure, stack is a map to the tower of pages which similarly took the form of a col- that alters how we read. on the wall; the box with the cascad- lection of printed things. The Green Box The physical eccentricity makes the ing letters is a proxy for the title page contains 93 facsimile (lithograph and story, literally, hard to handle: you need of cascading boxes, which is a proxy for pochoir) notes about the creation of a map to figure out the order of things, the wall of cascading prints. The blue Large Glass.7 The replica notes, like the and here (unlike in The Green Box,) “four-corners” rectangle represents original notes, are different sizes and the order of things matters. The chal- the final drypoint (“They argued about shapes, on different papers, the jottings lenge of aligning the tabs and overlaps love. And again. And again.”) This is all in different inks. Duchamp considered prompts the viewer to piece the story very tiresome and unsatisfactory when The Green Box to be an essential part of together. And handling pages, moving explained in words but—illustrating the Large Glass—information without them around, aligning the parts and Foucault’s point—intuitively obvious which his masterpiece was both in- solving the puzzle, engages the mind in in actuality. complete and incomprehensible. She quite a different way than stroking the In this project in particular, Kent also thought back to a production of plastic skin of your Kindle. was interested in how pages can be Edward Albee’s Tiny Alice she had seen As it happens, our march toward

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us to skate over a text, understanding words without consciously noticing what they look like, and the kind that makes us run our finger over the - sur face to understand its molecular character. The mind in motion leans one way and then the other, as if between inner and outer edge of a skate blade. Tilt your head and a figure eight going nowhere is an infinite relation. ∞

Notes: 1. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things , p. 9. 2. Rosenwald succeeded his father as Chair- man so Sears, but he only kept the position for 6 years in the 1930s. He devoted the rest of his life to his collection. His books and manuscript collection is now at the Library of Congress, his art collection—more than 22,000 drawings and prints —is at the National Gallery. 3. Jane Kent and Richard Ford, Privacy, 1999. A limited edition book with seven etchings by Kent accompanying Ford’s short story. Printed on Somerset in an edition of 35. Bound by hand. All copies signed by the author and artist. 32 pages. Published by Grenfell Press. http://www. grenfellpress.com/books/jane-kent-richard- ford-privacy.html. Jane Kent and Richard Ford, Skating, 2011, engraving, drypoint and screenprint, 4. All quotes from Jane Kent are from conversa- from the set of eleven prints. tions and emails with the artist. 5. Jane Kent and Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief Re–Imagined, 2003. 16 loose screenprints, with printed glassine interleaving, in tray ever more elaborate forms of the virtu- acknowledges each ventricle as an in- case. 15 x 10 inches each. Edition of 35. When al—in information access, in financial dividual shape. The grief occasioned by assembled the book becomes a 35 x 45 inch instruments, in art—is being buffeted the rise of the e-book arises from just image with text. Co–published by The Grenfell by an increasing assertion of the power this sense of loss—the demise of aware- Press (New York) and the Rhode Island School of Design (Providence). http://www.grenfell- of the actual, the concrete, the slow and ness of a particular typeface, particular press.com/books/jane-kent-susan-orlean-the- repetitive. A number of recent books, paper, the dog-eared corner, the weight orchid-thief.html. including Matthew B. Crawford’s Shop in the hand of The Great Gatsby ver- 6. Jane Kent and Richard Ford, Skating, 2011. Eleven loose sheets plus colophon in an enve- Class as Soul Craft and Sherry Turkle’s sus Anna Karenina. Book people from lope folio: letterpress, drypoint, engraving, mez- Evocative Objects: Things we Think With, Walter Benjamin to Richard Prince zotint and silkscreen. Various sizes individually, have argued cogently that there are have gone quite gooey over this sort of altogether 92 x 62 inches. Edition of 35. Pub- forms of knowledge and insight that thing, perhaps because books combine lished by The Grenfell Press (New York). 7. The contents of The Green Box are usually are attainable only through time-hon- so powerfully the abstract plenitude described as “facsimiles,” a term that is vague in ored, time-consuming physical interac- of the text (your Great Gatsby has the the extreme, but is the original description given tions with the material world. same words as my Great Gatsby) and the by Duchamp, who also made the claim that they reproduced as accurately as possible each as- This is not to deny that abstraction concrete singularity of the object (mine pect of each member of this miscellany. For an as a conceptual device is fundamental has the cocktail and the crazy flying car intriguing evaluation of how accurate this claim to human reason. Unpacking a general on the cover and is torn on the penulti- is, see Rhonda Roland Shearer and Stephen principle from its unique housing— mate page.) Jay Gould, “The Bride Stripped Bare: Marcel Duchamp’s 1934 ‘Facsimiles’ Yield Surprises,” recognizing that one dog’s heart works The livre d’artiste, with its crazily Tout Fait, Vol. 1 Issue 1, December 1999. http:// much like another dog’s heart—allows inefficient squandering of skills and www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_1/News/Green- us to connect and categorize in impor- resources (ten years for 35 copies!), is BoxNote.html. tant ways. But in the process we lose a defiant assertion of the value of that something: the intimate awareness of combination. Skating demands two Susan Tallman is the Editor-in-Chief of the specific, a mode of attention that types of attention: the kind that allows Art in Print.

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Fig. 1. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Winter Moonlit Night (Wintermondnacht), 1919, woodcut, composition 30.5 x 29.5 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, purchase 1949, © Ingeborg and Dr. Wolfgang Henze-Ketterer, Wichtrach, Bern.

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Sturm and Drang on 53rd Street By John Ganz

erman Expressionism: The Graphic G Impulse is a showcase for The Museum of Modern Art’s extensive collection of German graphic art from the first decades of the 20th century. Containing some 250 works by more than fifty artists, it is exhaustive and ambitious, balancing iconic woodcuts with intaglio prints, drawings, posters, paintings, illustrated books and magazines; augmenting the familiar jagged distortions of die Brücke’s brand of Ex- pressionism with the gentler utopias of the Blaue Reiter group and the bitter postwar ‘realism’ of Neue Sachlichkeit. This is a show rooted in German history, and before stepping into its galleries, it is worth recalling where Germany was at the beginning of the 20th century. Thirty years earlier it was not yet a nation (the Prussian component of what would become Germany was described by Friedrich Freiherr von Schrötte as not a “country with an army, but an army with a country.”) United by Otto von Bismarck and led by the repulsive Hohenzollern family through a series of calculated wars against its neighbors, Germany entered the new century as a very punchy and insecure empire. Between 1904 and 1907, as Ernst Kirchner—whose works dominate the first gallery—was seeking inspiration in the African art of Dres- den’s ethnological museum, imperial Germany was initiating the century’s first genocide, decimating the Herero in South-West Africa. A decade later, it was at the center of the war that was supposed to end all wars. Fig. 2. Erich Heckel, Portrait of a Man (Männerbildnis), 1919, woodcut, composition: 18 3/16 x The industrial, political and social 12 3/4” (46.2 x 32.4 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase, 1950, © 2011 Erich Heckel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Germany. revolutions of the 19th century had created shock-waves all over Europe, but Germany especially writhed and ness excited the bad tempers of Marx culturally, intellectually and socially convulsed as it clung desperately to its and Nietzsche, who spared no venom retarded nation. The loss of Gemein- (often imaginary) past. Its backward- criticizing what they believed to be a schaft, with its connotations of ethical

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of the 20s would come to find it) as exciting. And the formal constraints imposed by woodblock prevent die Brücke depictions of countryside frolics from slipping into sentimental soft-focus. There is an incipient—even adoles- cent—quality to these works, a release of creative and sexual ardor, and (some brooding Teutonic intensity notwith- standing) a celebration of emotional sincerity, directness, and authenticity. Works by members of der Blaue Re- iter, founded in Munich in 1911, make up the next gallery. The endlessly styl- ish animals of Franz Marc (Fig. 3) and the radical inventions of Wassily Kan- dinsky exploited the formal reduc- tionism imposed by woodcut in their search for spiritual connectedness. In Kandinsky’s book Klange (1913), woodcut seems to be have been an engine driving the move to total abstraction. The term “graphic impulse” does not quite fit these works: it seemed to suggest a constant, fitful stream of psycho- logical and emotional acting-out. As I Fig. 3. Franz Marc, Riding School After Ridinger (Reitschule nach Ridinger),1913, woodcut, com- moved through the galleries, I found position 26.9 x 29.8 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, 1940. the prints and drawings telling a story

and aesthetic health and wholeness Impulse make clear that Lukacs’ remark (“the idiocy of rural life”, Marx called was certainly badly reductive and per- it,) and the rise of Gesellschaft (modern, haps even a bit of a libel. Die Brücke, the industrial society with its coldness and group started in 1905 by the Dresden alienation) drove the chattering classes architecture students Fritz Bleyl, Erich to concoct ideological salves. What be- Heckel (Fig. 2), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner gan with idealist philosophers attempt- and Karl Schmidt-Rottluf, which essen- ing to reintegrate man and nature was tially kicked off Expressionism in the spun into a woodsy Romanticism and visual arts, shared in some Wagnerian finally into occult volkisch societies atavism, but did not fit the mold of re- that combined mawkish neo-paganism gressive, myth-worshipping Germanic with racist pseudo-science. Alchemy cults. Although the group would later and medieval medicine enjoyed re- be an amenable enough home for a newed enthusiasm; there were pur- wannabe-Nazi like Emil Nolde, there is plish, autumnal forecasts of the West’s no creepy chauvinism in Heckel’s frisky downfall and degeneration, and (of dancers or Pechstein’s naked picnick- course) tortuously long operas about ers. The desperate search for “totality” dragons, dwarves and magic rings. Af- that characterized Germany’s 19th-center fleeing Hitler’s Berlin for Stalin’s tury cultural politics (and laid the foun- Moscow, Georg Lukacs hissed that Ex- dation for the nightmare of the 20th) pressionism was just another one of the is barely detectable here. The city in Fig. 4. Emil Nolde, Prophet, 1912, woodcut, “diverse bourgeois ideological currents Kirchner’s street scenes isn’t portrayed composition 32.1 x 22.2 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, given anonymously that would later result in fascism...” so much as corrupt and degenerate (as (by exchange), 1956, © Nolde Stiftung, The works on view in The Graphic George Grosz and the Weimar artists Seebüll, Germany.

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Max Beckmann. Self-Portrait in Bowler Hat (Selbstbildnis mit steifem Hut), 1921, published not before 1922, drypoint, plate: 12 11/16 x 9 3/4” (32.3 x 24.8 cm), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Edward M. M. Warburg, © Max Beckmann / 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

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of progressive graphic refinement 1907 woodcut Three Women Conversing rather than impulsiveness. (It’s always with his incisive 1919 masterpiece Win- surprising to me that printmaking is ter Moonlit Night (Fig. 1), for example.) classed with drawing as one of the ve- The expressionists’ printshops became hicles for artistic “spontaneity,” when it some of the great forges of modernist is so singularly dependent on strategic art. planning and heavy equipment.) Woodcut is commonly seen as em- This work may not be impulsive, blematic of German Expressionism, but it is defiantly graphic. This is a vi- but experiments with intaglio are this sion of the world defined by line and exhibition’s greatest revelation. Emil edge. MoMA has been working to make Nolde’s woodblocks Prophet (1912) its exhibitions more interdepartmen- (Fig. 4) and Head of a Woman III (1912) tal [see the Art in Print interview with are famous exemplars of the (increas- Deborah Wye] and The Graphic Im- ingly studied) primitivism of die Brücke, pulse includes a number of paintings. but his etchings of the Hamburg wa- These provide context, but (Kandinsky terfront, Hamburg, Mild Atmosphere excluded) they look rather weak com- (1910), Hamburg, Pier (1910) and Steamer pared to the prints. It is customary to (large, dark) (1910) are more satisfy- think of prints as a kind of accessory ing: the fineness of etched detail and Fig. 5. Jeanne Mammen, Carnival in Berlin to the more serious business of paint- tone that recreates brackish, undulat- N III (Fasching in Berlin N III), c.1930, ing, but in some eras, the situation is ing water broken up by vertical smoke watercolor and pencil on paper, 60 x 47.3 cm, reversed. This is one of them. stacks and moorings, piers, sooty skies The Museum of Modern Art, New York, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Deutsch, 1977, © 2011 The hardening and sharpening of and billowing clouds of steam, offer a Jeanne Mammen, Artists Rights Society (ARS), the Expressionist aesthetic that took subjective sensitivity quite unlike the New York/ VG Bild-Kunst Germany. place in the second decade of the chest-pounding of the other Brücke century was driven almost by “ratio- artists or the star-gazing of Blaue Re- netic lines, while aquatint is exploited nalization,” to use the German soci- iter. These prints record an artist look- for inky chiaroscuros of ghastliness in ologist Max Weber’s term; in order to ing seriously outside his own head, and Flare Illuminates the Monacu-ferme and satisfy growing commercial demand, they ominously foreshadow the barren muddy, blood-sodden fields in Trans- the movement was increasingly orga- landscapes of the First World War. porting the Wounded in Houthulst Forest. nized by a bureaucratic apparatus in That war, which thoroughly regi- After looking closely at Dix’s rendering the form of publishers and dealers such mented and then nearly destroyed of war and its horrors, one wonders as Paul Cassirer, J. B. Neumann, and German society, gave Expressionism what all the fuss over Guernica was Herwath Walden. Print production its keenest edge. This exhibition’s mas- about. became more “professional,” enhanced terpiece is The War, Otto Dix’s 1924 The death of innocence in the Great no doubt by access to the publishers’ portfolio of fifty drypoints, etchings War is brutally evident in Weimar- capital, facilities and materials. After and aquatints. (Fig. 6) As a draughts- era work. The anxiety that resonated the war, the hyperinflation of the Wei- man Dix had no parallel: the vibrant harmlessly in pre-war works like Max mar years offered a concrete motive for line sought so laboriously by his peers Beckmann’s Night (1914) or Erich Heck- the accumulation of prints: they were a seems to have come effortlessly to him. el’s Driving Snow (1914) was replaced by better store of monetary value than the His grotesque, cartoonish distortions full-on collective Post-Traumatic Stress worthless printed currency. The great of the human figure are little scenes Disorder. Dix and George Grosz ooze social theorist and sour-puss Theodor from hell, drawn from memory. The spleen and cynicism. The depiction Adorno saw this as a sell-out brought obvious comparison is to Goya, and not of Weimar nightlife in Jeanne Mam- on by the machinations of capitalism, only because of the subject matter: like men’s drawing Carnival in Berlin III writing that “[w]hat is sociologically to The Disasters of War, Dix’s portfolio is (1930) (Fig. 5) is weirdly anachronistic, be learned from the fate of the Expres- a consummate exploration of intaglio as if the crack epidemic hit during the sionists is the primacy of the bourgeois techniques and their expressive capa- Belle Époque. The woodblock prints profession over the need for expres- bilities. In Wounded Man Fleeing the of Käthe Kollwitz’ series War (1921-23), sion...” As evidenced by the works in combination of drypoint and etching whose deep fields of black are so delib- this exhibition, however, this process on a white field gives the portrait a har- erate and so unlike the wild cutting in did not dilute the strength of the work, rowing, feverish quality. Wounded Man the pre-war prints, are almost unspeak- but fortified it (compare Kirchner’s hazy Fleeing is composed with scratchy, fre- ably bleak. Kollwitz’ images are brought

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back from the abyss by a compassion that is largely absent in other artists, most of whom present the post-war denizens of Berlin as hopelessly con- torted and wretched. Early die Brücke works sidestepped the Wagnerian urge to totality, pre- senting isolated nudes and dancers with very little context. After the war, however, even small prints aspire to be tableaux of an entire society: in Beck- mann’s lithographic series Hell (1919) the street scenes are so densely packed they almost burst from the picture plane, as if the artist was desperate to represent as much of his nightmarish era as possible. The fifty scenes of Dix’s The War strive to give the entire experience of that conflict. Today, socially conscious art is usually focused on very Fig. 6. Otto Dix, Shock Troops Advance under Gas (Sturmtruppe geht unter Gas vor) from particular issues, so the noxious uni- the portfolio The War (Der Krieg), 1924, etching, aquatint, and drypoint, Plate: 7 5/8 x 11 5/16” versality in this show comes as a shock. (19.3 x 28.8 cm), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, 1934, No respectable Weimar print collector © Otto Dix / 2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. could have possibly missed that he too was—at least in part—one of the fat the increasingly subtle form of irony be seduced by der Blaue Reiter artists’ little beasts being caricatured. that is the currency of contemporary earnest belief in the spiritual power of This creative torrent draws to a close cultural life can only treat Expression- art, but we are also a little scornful. Any in the 1920s as the nation emblema- ism as material for pastiche. We may inspiration we take from Kandinsky’s tized by Dix’s worm-riddled skulls, theories on the metaphysical signifi- (Fig. 7) Grosz’s obscenely porcine mili- cance of colors we mute with a gentle tary officers in Gott Mit Uns, and the condescension. The woolly spiritual hollow-eyed wretches of Max Beck- agitation of die Brücke no longer rings mann’s Hell, ran headlong toward even true, nor do we share Weimar artists’ greater horror. The devaluation of the bilious disgust with society as a rotten Reichsmark in 1924 stabilized the Ger- whole. While few people would choose man economy, but also spelled the end to live through the social, economic of the bull market for prints. In the and military catastrophes that engen- decade that followed, the Nazi govern- dered this art, one cannot help but feel ment worked to destroy Expression- it would be nice to be able to believe ism. (Emil Nolde, who was a member of in art the way these artists did (espe- the Nazi party, argued for Expression- cially if it led to compositional break- ism as a distinct Germanic form, but throughs like Kandinsky’s.) But despite his work—like that of his fellows—was the enormous debt we owe to Expres- condemned as “degenerate”.) sionism, despite the visual punch it can Expressionism’s desire to be radi- still deliver, it may be that it is, to para- cally true to subjective experience was phrase Hegel, on the side of its highest obviously incompatible with the Nazi possibilities, a thing of the past. taste for sanitized romantic kitsch, but that very quality also threatens Fig. 7. Otto Dix, Skull (Schädel) from the its contemporary relevance. In the 90 portfolio The War (Der Krieg), 1924, etching, years since the last of these prints was plate: 25.5 x 19.6 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, John Ganz is an artist and writer living in completed, the world has become ever 1934 © Otto Dix/ 2010 Artists Rights Society Brooklyn. more fragmented and convoluted, and (ARS), New York/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

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Christopher Cozier and Printmaking: Investigating the In-Between By Kristyna Comer

Fig. 1. Christopher Cozier, Tropical Night, 2007, installation of 136 drawings, mixed media on paper, 9 x 7 inches each.

rinidadian artist Christopher landscape and symbols of Caribbean Tropical Night, which was recently ex- T Cozier, born in 1959, came of age political history, but also speaks to hibited in the Brooklyn Museum’s “Infi- during his nation’s radical transition other colonial pasts and national tran- nite Island” show (2007) and Tate Liver- to independence. His drawings, prints, sitions, such as that of South Africa, pool’s “Afro-Modern” exhibit (2010). In and installations look at a nation rede- which he visited during his residency at Tropical Night (Fig. 1), Cozier utilizes his fining itself, and consider who has the the Bag Factory, Johannesburg, in 1999. sketchbook travelogue to present lush, power to inscribe notions of statehood With rubber stamps, silkscreen, lino- sepia-toned memoryscapes of Trini- and who is left out. Cozier, who cur- cut, and letterpress, Cozier reiterates a dad’s colonial past, fusing together im- rently lives and works in Port of Spain, visual lexicon that he derives from his ages of violence (guns, a capitol building embraces the conceptual and technical sketchbook drawings of Port of Spain on fire), exile (figures reduced to - asil possibilities of printmaking to explore and travels abroad. A selection of these houette running off the paper’s edge or intertwined pre- and post-colonial postcard-size drawings was arranged swimming across a body of water), com- narratives. His imagery references the in a carefully gridded installation for merce (cash registers, hotel stationery),

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‘out’, ‘duplicate’—but also reflected the country’s political framework. Follow- ing Trinidad’s independence in 1962, Cozier noticed the stamp OHMB (On Her Majesty’s Behalf) was replaced with OTTGS (On Trinidad and Tobago Gov- ernment Service). These early experiences attuned Cozier to the multiple voices and narratives inherent within the printed mark, along with its ability to reflect history and to demonstrate the force of the multiple. Cozier left Port of Spain in 1983 to earn a BFA in painting from the Mary- land Institute College of Art and went on to receive an MFA from Rutgers University in 1988. Since returning to Trinidad in 1989, Cozier has exhibited widely in the Caribbean and abroad. Fig. 2. Christopher Cozier, All That’s Left, 2011, set of eight ten-color screenprints, 9 x 7 inches each. He is the co-director of the art space Alice Yard in Port of Spain, which was along with contemporary consumer no longer represents only the specific included in “Global Africa Project” at products (Converse sneakers, packaging bench Cozier observed in Trinidad, but the Museum of Art and Design in New for Oxford mathematical instruments.) becomes a multitude of benches, allud- York, and is active as a writer and cu- The ink-wash gesture of his mark and ing to everyday labor practices around rator, most recently of “Wrestling with the inclusion of calligraphic stream-of- the globe. In Available at All Leading the Image: Caribbean Interventions” consciousness text produce a diaristic, Stores (2006) (Fig. 5, 6), Cozier invites at the Art Museum of the Americas in personal tone in this monumental col- the viewer to produce the print. After Washington D.C. in 2011. lection of drawings, capturing the en- printing “FEAR” using a custom-made This spring at Axelle Fine Arts in ergy of thought-processes while devel- stamp, the viewer is asked to assemble Brooklyn, I watched Cozier draw, erase, oping an index of visual metonyms that cardboard boxes in the gallery. redraw, and scratch away marks as reappear in other works. Cozier began experimenting with he prepared color separations for his Translating his sketchbook draw- the repeated image at a very young ings into stamps and sculpture, Cozier age. His mother was a civil servant, and recontextualizes these dynamic sketch- her office acted as his first art studio; es to uncover new meanings and reveal he played with the rubber stamps and new relationships. In past works, such office supplies on offer there, engag- as Little Gestures (first shown in 2007), ing in creative reverie and in the sub- (Fig. 3, 4), Cozier converted a drawing of version of standardized symbols. This a simple wooden bench—the kind used interest in print media was developed for manual labor such as shoe-shining more formally at the J. S. Donaldson and yard work—into a rubber stamp, Technical Institute in Trinidad in the which he used to produce printed cards late seventies, where he studied silk- could be installed on floor or wall. As screen for the commercial and graphic with Tropical Night, the piece differs design industry “in the days before in each installation: the printed cards computers.” In both office work and were displayed outside in New Hamp- design, graphic images function as au- shire snow during an exhibition at thoritative marks: government seals Dartmouth College, and on the gallery and bureaucratic stamps of civil service floor at the Chicago Cultural Center and commercial images made for ad- where the binder-clip supports, hidden vertisements and news media. Cozier in the snow at Dartmouth, appear like witnessed how this language expressed Fig. 3. Christopher Cozier, Little Gestures, marching feet. The image of the bench more than innocuous statements—‘in’, 2006, drawing.

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new silkscreen editions, All That’s Left CC Printing allows a kind of repeti- one thing and not finding it, but - say (Fig. 2). Cozier developed a series of tion, a certain kind of ability to seize the ing it’s this to make it valuable to them. eight prints from his sketchbook draw- moment by arranging things and seeing Being a Caribbean person means you’re ings, which include images of his iconic how that works, freezing and repeating always in a negotiated position with an wooden bench; emptied, gated plots of new associative moments. If I got to overwhelming history of altered and land that mark new divisions of terri- print more, I could dig deeper into that imposed meaning on the world you live tory; a sheet of well-known 1950s Ca- concept. But I think for me, yes, the is- in and your very being. lypso music; a Haitian 5-gourde coin sue of vocabulary is very important, as Because of that struggle, I often try depicting worn-down silhouettes of is the rearrangement of symbols to cre- to dig back to what is authentically the four heroes of the revolution; and ate new associative moments. There’s a something I have experienced that I the male silhouette that appears in kind of visual syntax that manifests it- know is definitively me, rather than many of Cozier’s works, which is both self. The history comes in a very tactile creating an avatar or readable, eas- a self-portrait that allows him to insert way for me through the layering in the ily digestible identities based on what himself as an observer, and a reference construction of the image. people’s expectations are. Returning to the everyman who desires to see be- to the office world of the civil servants, yond obstruction and to gain access to KC You mentioned that your first stu- that is what I know. My parents were blocked-off spaces. dio was in your mother’s office, where senior civil servants in a post-indepen- As Cozier collaborated with Axelle you utilized office stamps to produce dent state and early stages of my life in master printer, Luther Davis, I spoke to your first drawings. What was the voice the sixties were spent in that office af- him about his use of printmaking and of these printed marks to you? ter school, sitting at my mother’s desk. the significance of the multiple in his I started playing around with stamps. creative process. CC In a funny kind of way, I’m trying That was my first studio. to get to the heart of what’s me. And When I make my stamps, it is kind KC Christopher, you introduce many that has a practical significance in a of ironic because my stamps make so- variations and iterations of imagery in place like the Caribbean as the Carib- cial critiques and try to analyze the your drawings and print installations, bean is one of those weird places in reality. I’m using the same tools, the suggesting a visual vocabulary in your the world that everybody thinks they same game. My parents stamped forms, work. How does the printmaking pro- know. Inherent in Caribbean-ness is letters, documents, and I’m stamp- cess and its emphasis on construction a kind of notion of availability. In the ing these associative forms. Not many and development engage with your very first encounters of the Americas, people have picked that up, the irony of visual lexicon? people were coming here looking for working with stamps. Stamping is associated with authority and bureaucracy; it’s never associated with creative reverie. It’s a deeply ironic industrial kind of act.

KC Is there something that print can do that a drawing cannot? And the re- verse, what can a drawing offer that a print may deny?

CC Because of my history in design, I believe that accessibility is so important. What a print does, it undermines singularity and the authenticity, get- ting to the aura of Walter Benjamin. Then there is beauty in the multiple. I enjoy making a mark, but there is a real fascination of seeing that mark recreat- ed via this process and then duplicated into multiple. A print allows another life, an alter- Fig. 4. Christopher Cozier, Little Gestures, 2006, custom-made rubber stamp on hand-cut paper. nate life to a gesture. When the gesture

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Stores has traveled to Puerto Rico, to streetcars in Mexico, and to several galleries in Canada. You have also installed your Little Gestures series in a variety of places and climates, placing the clipped prints on the gallery floor or in the snow. How has your collaboration with galleries and curators affected the history of the work?

CC That’s part of the process. How an object can move from one narrative to another and gather new possible meanings and implications…The curator became part of the process to create another sphere of engagement.

KC Did an installation or new iteration ever take on a new meaning or not work? Fig. 6. Christopher Cozier, Available at All Leading Stores, 2006, rubber stamp and cardboard box, 4 x 4 inches. CC Circumstance is very significant in what shapes it. One of the most radical is singular it’s more private. The minute it viewer in a participatory way. They are shifts was the podium piece from the starts to multiply you don’t know where it engaged in the making of the meaning Terrastories installation in Denmark will end up or where it will go, how many and the value of the work. That’s ideal. in 2003 and then when it traveled to locations it can be in simultaneously, the And then with some of the drawings, Haiti in 2004. It became a whole other same thought, the same gesture. That’s I’ve looked for ways to allow people to work. In its failure to be a replica of the really kind of interesting to me. touch, to feel. It becomes a thing for ex- version that existed in Denmark, it be- change. came an enhancement or development, KC Does this potential of the mul- The underlying narrative is perfor- almost a new work itself. tiple relate to your series Available at All mance. I’m extremely wary of the as- The piece was a street piece in Den- Leading Stores? sumed comfort of the passive viewer. mark, but a lot of the materials, wood I’m always trying to get some kind of and wire, were things that people in CC The first version was done in dialogue going. I’m very wary of the au- Haiti people use to build things and ki- Canada. They put up a table, a chair, thoritative processes of display. It’s real- osks. So the problem was that if it was two rubber stamps, two ink pads, and ly more exciting if there’s an element of installed on the streets, people would the boxes were flat. People came to the tactility and participation because the have gone off with it. So it had to move gallery and made their own boxes and person feels like they have something indoors…I had to reinvent the piece, walked away with them. They were at stake. I’m not just coming in here for which was great and exciting. printing. I just made the stage. I don’t the authoritative regime to say to me know how many thousands of people this is important, this is the experience. KC You mentioned that your recent have those boxes. That show toured for Packaging cardboard boxes are com- print edition All That’s Left was inspired over a year in Canada. And they printed mon things that we discard, daily pro- by your Tropical Night drawing series. a thousand for each location. cesses in a consumer reality. I find it How does the print version expand [In this way of working] you already interesting you can get your hands on upon what you started in the drawings? don’t have much control. You become these elements but use them for differ- more of an instigator. There’s a decon- ent purposes. In a way, extending the CC One of the things I’m interested in struction of an authoritarian relation language of printing as well, which is doing is to create multiples to allow the between the artwork and the viewer. happening in the domain of consum- viewers to hold them and to make new The viewer becomes the maker of the erism. I’m always excited when I can arrangements in the sequence of draw- work as well. Not just in its logical way sneak an idea in there. ings. in the printing, but when you engage and then make the work in that mo- KC Going through your print exhibi- KC For these eight prints, is it impor- ment of encounter. I’ve empowered the tion history, Available at All Leading tant to know that one image is a Haitian

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coin? Is that the location of this series, what all this is supposed to mean and object. It will be a bit more intangible. or does it travel with you? Is it specific then when suddenly it becomes dan- and everywhere at the same time? gerous. I had to leave the island to go KC As we preserve or construct what abroad. I find in my work there is a nar- we want in these new spaces, the title CC A little bit of both, yes. In a way, rative of departure. The empty sheet is suggests a tone of grieving. Is that I’m talking about the empty lot, which a kind of territory that has been domi- something you want to introduce? is very specific to Port of Spain where I nated often by Western Euro-American grew up, but of course there are empty narratives. My relationship with the CC Not in a pathos or sentimental lots everywhere. The empty lot with frame is a bit tenuous. Where does it fit whimsical kind of way. This is just the those kinds of gate posts are very typi- within the frame? I’m imagining myself moment I’m operating in. I’m creating cal of a certain colonial space, but you running away and escaping, occupying a beautiful object, a moment of depar- find that same design in India, in parts the frame but then running away. The ture, not a moment of stasis. That’s the of Africa, wherever French or British silhouette is not an actual self in the departing figure, looking in and walk- colonial enterprises have been, though frame, but a shadow, a trace, a reflec- ing out into some other possibility. it’s less important about them being tion, rather than an actualization. It’s It’s not lingering in the past, but it’s a French or British. What’s most impor- not simply about inclusion and exclu- movement forward. tant is what the empty lots means. It sion because an empty field offers pos- It is about the present, the physical means that whatever was there his- sibilities. How do you feel empowered present in which I made these objects torically is gone; it talks about the pre- in the moment? in that studio in that point in time. But dicament of history, the predicament of course we’re always between the past of memory. When these things disap- KC What is the significance of the and the future in each moment. Maybe pear, then what we are left with is this title, All That’s Left? that’s what the print is showing—that sense of conjuring of gone. When you in-between, the declaration of an aware- juxtapose that with the Haitian coin, CC The coin makes a lot of sense ness of the moment because without where the historical figures, the four with the title as it suggests a ghost im- that you’re not in the position to ask. heroes of the revolution, are so worn age with the empty lot erasing history. that they become undecipherable, un- How do we hold onto what’s inside? Is recognizable, then history is reduced there a way to frame it to keep it intact? Kristyna Comer is the Gallery Assistant at to a coin for exchange. So when history There are two reactions: admiration for David Krut Projects in New York City. Before history or a struggle to hold onto it, an joining the gallery, she was an Assistant Printer and memory are reduced to real estate, at the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions in it represents possibilities and a crisis. inability to preserve. Preservation has to New Jersey and was a part-time lecturer in the But it’s a kind of tension between lost exist some other way; it won’t exist in an Printmaking Department at Rutgers University. memory and a tragic moment of opportunity. These elements throw you into a dialogue about memory, history, and the purpose of it.

KC The print series depicts several empty, gated spaces leaving the figure outside, looking above the boundary or fading into the negative space of the drawings. Is this series exploring what’s inside and what’s not allowed inside?

CC For years, I’ve been drawing the figure that leaves the frame. Massacio’s Expulsion from the Garden of Eden has stayed with me simply because it talks about banishment and leaving an ideal world. I’m not interested in the reli- gious, mythological side of it, but how people need mythology. I grew up in a particular time during independence when there were all these promises and Fig. 7. Christopher Cozier, Installation view of Little Gestures, Dartmouth College, 2007.

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Nicola López: Structural Detours By Charles Schultz

Nicola López, Structural Detour installation, (left to right): Structural Detour 16: Big Tubes and Big Bridge Define Space That Ropes Cut Through and Chains Spill Out Of, Structural Detour 13: Fence and Bridges Suspended in Electric Orange and Structural Detour 20: Bridge and Square Fences Embrace Around the Knot and Rope, all 2011, woodcut and mixed media collage, published by Pace Prints, photograph courtesy Pace Prints.

icola López churns rigid industri- size of a door, turned horizontal. Each seems to have sprung to life. N al forms into swirling organic work is an agglomeration of smaller López’s titles compliment the inher- masses in her recent monoprints on prints executed on a wonderfully wide ent sense of action in each piece and view at Pace Prints. Chain link fence, variety of paper—by turns reflective, even begin to create a kind of narra- thick cords of rope, spools of razor transparent, glossy, and matte—cre- tive, as in Structural Detour 17: Chain- wire, ribbed tubing, and steel girders ating a strong sense of texture. López link Claw is swept away by Fence and that resemble the bones of a well-built also blends a daring range of colors, Bridges (2011), or Structural Detour 19: bridge appear thoroughly entangled incorporating natural tones such as Chain-link Claw Grapples with Razor as if engaged in a complex dance or a verdigris and a rust-like ruddy orange Wire (2011). All of the pieces in “Struc- carefully choreographed brawl. To call with eye-popping fluorescents remi- tural Detours” share common ele- them monoprints is an injustice. The niscent of safety signs on construction ments, which become quasi-characters, base material may be monoprints— sites. The precision of the component in what might be read as an anthropo- woodcuts to be precise—but López prints is remarkable though perhaps to morphic industrial saga. combines them in such a way as to be expected from a printmaker as expe- Considering the work this way—not push strongly into the field of mixed rienced as López. She earned an MFA in as narrative-based, but as creaturely— media collage. printmaking from Columbia University draws out a certain reciprocity that Produced in conjunction with Pace in 2004. More compelling is the way lies at the heart of López’s practice. A Prints, Structural Detours is a series of Lopez builds up layers upon layers to feedback loop forms between the ar- ten unique works, each roughly half the create an atmospheric landscape that tefacts of touch created though the

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printmaking process, and Lopez’s vision of technology. The hard metal structures she has chosen to portray do not usually give the impression of being handmade. Here, however, they do. Furthermore, Lopez makes these typi- cally lifeless mechanical forms behave as if they were organic entities, writh- ing and intertwining in spectacular jostles. López forces her prints to buckle, knot up, and spill over the edges, push- ing beyond the limits of her tradition- ally two-dimensional medium. She has already produced exceptional installations, the components of which were also monoprints that climbed over walls and ceiling. The question is where will she move next? Given her penchant for hard forms, and her predilection for building art with her hands, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a López sculpture sometime in the future.

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. Nicola López. Structural Detour 13: Fence and Bridges Suspended in Electric Orange, 2011, woodcut and mixed media collage, published by Pace Prints, photograph courtesy Pace Prints.

Dave Muller

New Etchings Edition Jacob Samuel www.editionjs.com

33 Art in Print July – August 2011

NEW BOOKS raisonné, put together by Dominic date from the last decade of Frost’s life. Kemp, and beautifully produced by the Some of these can most generously be publisher Lund Humphries.1 described as “decorative,” but others The 261 prints Kemp has document- are as good as any of the tumbling, off- ed run from a drypoint landscape made kilter, entrancing works of the previous in 1949 and ends with a scratchy Sun- four decades. When he got ambitious, burst in 2003. But it is the vibrant spi- as with the 25 concentric circles of rals and half-moons of the ‘60s and ‘70s the Orchid Tambourine woodcuts or that occupy most of the catalogue. It the five foot long Timberaine series of was when working with these forms— modulated vertical stripes, the work is bright, flat, and abstract—that prints visually spellbinding. came to seem a natural component of This book does not spend much time what Frost was doing in painting and on conceptual underpinnings: it offers collage. That said, quirky landscape a series of brief statements by Frost’s and figurative etchings crop up here son, the artist Anthony Frost; the and there throughout the catalogue, painter John Hoyland; printers Stan- much like Ellsworth Kelly’s plant ren- ley Jones (Curwen Studio) and Brad Terry Frost Prints: derings. Faine (Coriander Studio); and publish- A Catalogue Raisonné The comparison with Kelly is almost er Charles Booth-Clibborn (Paragon By Dominic Kemp, with contributions by unavoidable. Roughly the same age Press), all of whom pay loving homage John Hoyland, Stanley Jones, Brad Faine (Kelly was born eight years later, but to a seemingly delightful man in under and Charles Booth-Clibborn. they began their studies at the same three pages. Even the author’s eight- 304 pp, 260 color images, £45. time), both artists took their visual page introduction is less concerned Published by Lund Humphries, 2010 experiences of the world and distilled with ideas than with the difficulties of them into essences of color and shape. cataloguing the prints of an artist who But Kelly’s art was always more radical worked spontaneously and distributed —larger, simpler, flatter, bolder. Frost’s his work generously. The Prints of Terry Frost ambitions seem always to have been This is not theory-driven work; there By Susan Tallman more modest, more intimate, more hu- may simply be not much to say. But man in scale. Some pieces can look very there is a lot to see. This is art about Kelly-ish indeed—his 1968 screenprints erry Frost (1915-2003)—Sir Terry of half-circles, for example—but on T Frost after his knighthood in the very next catalogue page we find a 1998—is one of those names that reso- goofily stitched up a print with leather nates in the British art world but never laces, tied with a bow at the top. This is made many waves on the other side of art at play, and unashamedly so, which the pond. A mid-century modernist is its charm. of impeccable connections, Frost be- At its best, Frost’s work has a disin- gan making art while imprisoned with genuous quality of being almost, but Adrian Heath in a German POW camp not quite, predictable. Frost frequently and lived most of his adult life in or near worked with collage, and it may be that St Ives. In between he studied with Vic- the indirection of cutting a shape in tor Pasmore, worked as Barbara Hep- one material to create a design in an- worth’s assistant, and palled around other material that acts as a template with Ben Nicholson and John Hoy- for third material, helped him to avoid land. Frost’s was a distinctively British the facile property that often seems mode of modernism, which embraced to be lurking just round the corner. abstraction but shied from the self-im- Shapes that at first seem blandly- Eu portance that energized American Ab- clidean reveal themselves as awkwardly stract Expressionism and Minimalism. imperfect, the result of some mysteri- Primarily a painter, Frost made prints ous prior event, some logic of creation that did its job and then left the room. throughout his career, and his printed Terry Frost, Self-portrait, 1979, etching, oeuvre is now the subject of a catalogue About half the works in the catalogue 9 3/4 x 7 1/2 inches.

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looking: about color and balance and formal tension and the ways in which those things can be abstracted from the familiar everyday world. What Terry Frost Prints offers—in addition to a great deal of careful documenta- tion, continued through addenda on the website—is a collection of large, beautiful images, one per page, for 261 pages. If this book, with its almost ir- resistibly eye-catching cover, succeeds in attracting a new audience to Frost’s work, it will have done the world a favor. –ST

Notes: 1. Lund Humphries is a division of Ashgate that concentrates mainly on British modern art, but they have a growing specialization in prints— over last ten years they have published catalogues of the prints of Julian Trevelyan (2010), Albert Irvin (2010), John Piper (1987/2010), and of Cyril Power linocuts (2009), and have coproduced Peter Parshalls catalogues. The Unfinished Print (2001) and The Darker Side of Light (2009).

Terry Frost, Orchard Tambourines B, 2002, set of 25 woodcuts, 14 3/4 x 14 3/4 each, 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 inches overall.

BETTY WOODMAN Polka Dot Skirt 2011 color woodcut / litho / chine collé / collage 38½ X 25 inches, edition of 30

Shark’s Ink 550 Blue Mountain Road Lyons, CO 80540 www.sharksink.com

35 Art in Print July – August 2011

NEW BOOKS posters; Bitterkomix magazines and in origin. The print was produced in printed props from Kudzanai Chiurai’s 1965 at Rorke’s Drift (ELC Art and Craft mock elections. Judith B. Hecker, the Centre), an institution established by Assistant Curator of Prints and Illus- Swedish artists on the site of the 1897 trated Books, who organized the show battle in which 4000 Zulu fighters were and wrote the catalogue, has attempted killed by 139 British soldiers (immortal- a difficult thing: framing visual images ized in the film Zulu!). Founded on the in terms of political context and utility Bauhaus ideal of merging art and craft/ while still treating them as “art,” and industry, Rorke’s Drift aimed to provide simultaneously acknowledging the de- black artists with both an outlet and a termining role of technique. living in a country where they were Hecker adopts a peculiar taxonomy excluded from any formal art train- to manage this—her discussion is di- ing. The dynamic, unfussy linocuts vided into the sections Linocut, Politi- produced there, like John Muafengejo’s cal Posters, Intaglio, Photo-processes, Natal Where Art School Is (1974), speak and Post-Apartheid. This is risky. At- to exactly the kind of category-breach- taching the word “politics” to art is al- ing that Hecker claims for South Afri- most as certain to undermine the art as can art. attaching “and crafts”. To do both—to The same is true of some of the call attention to both ‘linocut’ and screenprinted political posters from ‘post-apartheid’—is a double threat. the active resistance movements of the Impressions from South Africa But Hecker sees processes and social 80s, such as You Have Struck a Rock by 1965 to Now: Prints from the utility as interdependent in South Afri- the Medu Art Ensemble, which exploits Museum of Modern Art By Judith B. Hecker can art, and she views prints as an inte- both native lettering styles and Europe- 96 pp, $29.95. grated cultural force that move in and an socialist-realist propaganda models. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2011 out of the high culture domain: “these Through the 70s and 80s, the catalogue works,” she writes, “dispense with no- shows two distinct worlds of response tions of classification that distinguish to Apartheid: documents of objective between contemporary and traditional, struggle (mostly from black artists), The Social Life of fine art and craft, high and low art, the and subjective statements on the expe- South African Prints art world and community arts.” rience of living in a world structurally By Susan Tallman Helpfully, Hecker has set up her predicated on injustice (mostly from book as an essential reference: the white artists). back matter includes a chronology of With the dismantling of Apartheid mpressions From South Africa 1965 South African art, history and politics; in the 1990s, that single overpower- I to Now is a small book that fills a biographies for all participating artists ing subject—the outrage of denying large gap.1 The catalogue companion and collectives; bibliographies for indi- self-determination to three-quarters to the Museum of Modern Art’s exhi- vidual artists and for South African art of the population—gave way to a set of bition of the same name, it is not one in general; even a reproduction of the complicated realities: the proliferation of those drearily familiar and vaguely Freedom Charter, the incendiary 1955 of small betrayals even in the absence voyeuristic printmaking-in-a-distant- document that proclaimed, “South Af- of institutional evil (Diane Victor); the land surveys. Instead it is an examina- rica belongs to all who live in it.” complex recipe books of individual tion of the social role of prints in a tu- The catalogue opens with Azaria identity (Anton Kannemeyer); the ma- multuous time and place as evidenced Mbatha’s linocut, The woman who loved terial realities of lives lived (Zwelethu through the work of 24 artists, 8 artist and was…/innocent from accusation, Mthethwa). South African artists have, collectives, and 22 print-producing which shows a naked woman stand- Hecker writes, abandoned “political organizations that range from inter- ing before a densely packed chorus, certainties to invite unstructured, un- nationally familiar entities like David rendered through insistent white line scripted responses from the viewer.” Krut to community centers in black and dot. The drawing style, composi- William Kentridge is by far the best townships that will ring few bells at tion, costuming, and figures appear known of these artists. Kentridge’s the Armory Show. It includes William stylistically African; the Biblical subject complex, mannered, and self-reflective Kentridge etchings and Congress of matter, narrative conceits, and print exploration of power as an interperson- South African Trade Unions (COSATU) technique are all European/Levantine al event—not simply a political trope—

36 Art in Print July – August 2011

Like the British Museum’s Out of people account for less than 3% of Aus- Australia, Impressions From South Africa tralia’s population, whereas South Afri- looks at the recent print production of a can whites are outnumbered 9 to 1. The largely Anglophone country that has for overarching narrative in the Australia decades existed at the periphery of art book is one of self-consciously juggling world distribution networks and con- the identities “British”, “provincial”, sciousness. Both catalogues efficiently and “indigenous;” South Africa’s art condense a vast and messy subject, of the past half-century, on the other providing nutshell histories of local art hand, is inseparable from the history production along with detailed biogra- of Apartheid and the resistance to it, phies of artists and other key players. its eventual destruction and the heroic Both examine the relationship between attempt at cultural reconciliation that a dominant culture of European de- replaced it. scent, with its historic skills, attitudes Apartheid not only separated white and privileged economic and political from black, it kept South Africa apart position, and a long-oppressed indig- from the rest of world. The interna- enous culture that—over the course of tional boycott of South African goods the time period discussed—becomes and institutions that ran through the increasingly self-assured and influen- 70s and 80s effectively kept South Afri- tial, both politically and culturally. can art in South Africa. But even with- But at a fundamental level, these are out that externally enforced isolation, two quite different stories: indigenous it may not have traveled well: the South

Paul Edmunds, The same but different, 2001, linoleum cut, 71 11/16 × 37 5/8” (182.1 × 95.6 cm), published by the artist, printed by Artist Proof Studio, edition: 10. The Museum of Mod- ern Art, New York, Alexandra Herzan Fund, © 2011 Paul Edmunds. universalized aspects of the South Af- rican experience for an international audience. (He is represented here by etchings from the now-familiar Ubu and Casspirs series, as well as by a spectacular linocut Walking Man (2000). MoMA has been buying Kentridge works since the late 1990s, and its substantial collection was the focus of the 2010 exhibition “Five Themes”2 as well as the inspiration for Hecker’s initial exploration of the broader background of South Africa printmaking. She first traveled to South Africa in 2004, and began acquiring South African prints for the department the following year. (Mbatha’s 1965 print had entered the collection as a gift, but the subsequent boycott of South Africa during Apart- Norman Catherine, Witch Hunt, 1988, one from a series of six drypoints with watercolor additions, 25 × 31 cm, published by the artist, printed by Caversham Press, Balgowan, South Africa, artist’s heid meant that almost nothing was proof apart from edition of 25, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Virginia Cowles Schroth acquired for the following 30 years.) Fund, © 2011 Norman Catherine.

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charming and naïve in its depiction of a suburban bungalow shaking hands with an African round hut, some of the more recent work in Impressions stands as evidence of that handshake’s power: it can be seen when Senzeni Marasela combines linocut, silhouette, and dressmaking patterns in powerful depictions of her schizophrenic mother, or when Paul Edmunds draws on the legacies of Minimalism, process art, and Zulu wire plaiting. The fact that this art is the subject of a substantial exhibition at the Mu- seum of Modern Art, drawn from the museum’s own holdings, is indicative of both the gradual de-centering of the art world and the increasing perme- ability of the printed art/printed matter distinction. These two trends are related, since moving outside the North Sandile Goje, Meeting of Two Cultures, 1993, linoleum cut, 13 3/4 × 19 5/8” (35 × 49.8 cm), Atlantic axis necessarily means accom- published and printed by the artist, Grahamstown, South Africa, edition: 100, The Museum of Mod- modating different roles for printed ern Art, New York, The Ralph E. Shikes Fund, © 2011 Sandile Goje. imagery. Impressions from South Af- rica acts as a reminder that not all great African experience for both white and prints are made with Solander boxes black was almost unfathomably foreign in mind, and that even those that are to most international art audiences. come about through the melding of so- The “international” art movements of cial context, available technologies, and the late 20th century—Pop, Minimal- individual responses to circumstance— ism, Post-modernism—were driven a fact as true for Jasper Johns as for John by concerns that were to some extent Muafengejo. a luxury of living in stable, prosperous places. The dismantling of Apartheid has Notes: allowed South Africa to become—in 1. The last major work on the subject of South African prints was Phillipa Hobbs’ and Elisa- Kwame Anthony Appiah’s term—cos- beth Rankin’s Printmaking in a Transforming mopolitan. The things that concern South Africa (1997), which is encyclopedic (it South African artists today have more lists 785 printmakers!) but 15 years old. Hobbs in common with the things that moti- and Rankin also published Rorke’s Drift: Em- powering Prints. Twenty Years of Printmaking vate artists in Europe, or North Amer- in South Africa (Cape Town: Double Storey ica, or Australia than they did twenty Books, 2003), which Hecker acknowledges as years ago. Comparing the earliest “an enormous scholarly contribution.” 2. “Five Themes” was, Hecker says, “the culmi- works in this book to the most recent, nating opportunity to showcase MoMA’s Ken- it is clear that “South African Art” re- tridge holdings across curatorial departments.” The touring exhibition was organized by Mark mains distinctly South African, but is Kudzanai Chiurai, We Always Have Reason no longer exotically South African. (It Rosenthal, but its iteration at MoMA was aug- to Fear, 2008, one of two lithographed posters, mented by additional collection works, including is also now impossible for the casual sheet: 23 15/16 × 16 15/16” (60.8 × 43 cm), nearly 40 prints that were absent from the rest reader to guess the race of the artist published by the artist, Johannesburg, printed of the tour. See Judy Hecker, William Kentridge: simply by looking at the image.) by Lucas Kutu, edition: 250, The Museum of Trace. Prints from The Museum of Modern Art, Modern Art, New York, acquired through the The Museum of Modern Art, 2010; as well as If Sandile Goje’s 1993 linocut Meet- generosity of the Vascovitz Family, © 2011 William Kentridge: Five Themes, Yale University ing of Two Cultures seems now both Kudzanai Chiurai. Press, 2009.

38 Art in Print July – August 2011

Contributors to this Issue

Catherine Bindman Catherine Bindman is an art critic and editor (specializing in museum catalogues). She was deputy editor at Art on Paper magazine and lives in International Print Center New York New York. Presents a Benefit Print Edition by Enrique Chagoya

Kristyna Comer Kristyna Comer is the Gallery Assistant at David Krut Projects in New York City. Before joining the gallery, she was an Assistant Printer at the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions in New Jersey and was a part-time lecturer in the Printmaking Department at Rutgers University.

John Ganz John Ganz is an artist and writer living in Brooklyn. Return to Goya No. 9, 2010 Intaglio with letterpress. Edition: 50. 14 5/8 x 11 ins. Published by Universal Limited Art Editions Donated by the artist and ULAE Visit www.ipncy.org for more information

Andrew Raftery Andrew Raftery is an engraver and print scholar. As Professor of Printmak- STAY INFORMED ing at Rhode Island School of Design, he often collaborates with the RISD www.artinprint.org offers free access Museum on exhibitions and educational programs, recently as consulting to reviews of new prints, print exhibi- curator for The Brilliant Line: The Journey of the Early Modern Engraver at tions and books; and a calendar of the RISD Museum and the Block Museum at Northwestern University. print exhibitions and events. Members have access to news of the print world and recent releases, updated on an Charles Schultz almost daily basis. Charles Schultz is a New York-based art critic. He has been writing about If you would like to write for us: We art since moving to New York in 2007. Schultz currently contributes to the are happy to consider proposals for Brooklyn Rail, Modern Painters, Art in America, and Artslant. feature articles on subjects related to the history or current state of artists’ (Photo courtesy of Elk Studios) prints, in the broadest meaning of the term. If you are interested in writing reviews of print exhibitions, new Susan Tallman print publications, or books on prints, Susan Tallman is Editor-in-Chief of Art in Print. She has written extensively please contact us with your location and proposed subjects at info@artin- about prints, issues of multiplicity and authenticity, and other aspects of print.org. contemporary art. Her publications include The Collections of Barbara Bloom, 2008 (with Barbara Bloom and Dave Hickey) and The Contemporary If you would like to submit events, Print from PrePop to Postmodern, 1996. She currently teaches at the School artworks, or publications for re- view: Please email us at info@artin- of the Art Institute of Chicago. print.org.

Specic Object Presents Lawrence Weiner’s Published Work from The Jean-Noël Herlin Archive Project

39 Art in Print July – August 2011 Membership Subscription Form

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