dancing with the dark joan snyder prints 1963–2010 dancing with the dark joan snyder prints 1963–2010 Marilyn Symmes with an essay by Faye Hirsch Zimmerli Art museum At rutgers university Prestel | New yOrk copyright page TK Contents 7 Foreword and Acknowledgments Suzanne Delehanty 11 “see what a life” the prints of joan snyder Faye Hirsch 65 private/not private: an illuminated chronology of joan snyder Marilyn Symmes 151 catalogue of the prints Marilyn Symmes with Joan Snyder and Mira Dancy 167 Notes 171 Selected Bibliography 173 Index 176 Zimmerli Art Museum Staff 176 Zimmerli Art Museum Staff 176 Lenders? Frontispiece Altar, 2010. Digital print, color lithograph, chine collé, color etching, color woodcut (printed in the manner of an intaglio) and collograph; 85.7 x 80 cm 3 1 (33 ⁄4 x 31 ⁄2 in.). Collection of the artist (cat. 68) Foreword and Acknowledgments In 1963, an aspiring artist and art student at Rutgers University made her first prints. Nearly five decades later, she has become a nationally recognized artist, a 2007 MacArthur Fellow, and the creator of an admirable body of work, and those early prints, along with many others, have returned to Rutgers. The Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers is proud to present Dancing with the Dark: Joan Snyder Prints 1963-2010, the first monograph and comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the prints of this celebrated artist. While there have been a number of exhibitions and catalogues about her paintings, Snyder’s prints are less well known. This project surveys the extraordinary range of her graphic achievement and her significant contributions to American printmaking. A pioneering feminist artist since the late 1960s, Snyder infuses her works with physical energy and vibrant color to powerfully explore aspects of nature and humanity and to express deeply personal experiences. Some of her prints boldly address the use of language in art and celebrate nature and sexuality, while others are meditations on mortality and mourn those who have died of AIDS and other causes. The seventy prints featured in Dancing with the Dark reveal Snyder’s adventurous, sometimes unorthodox, approach to printmaking. The visual eloquence and vigorously applied techniques in her prints invite engagement with raw emo- tional power. In fact, the book’s and exhibition’s title, Dancing with the Dark, drawn from the title of one of Snyder’s woodcuts, alludes to both her exploration of life’s darker experiences in much of her imagery and her use of dark pigments in numerous prints. Snyder’s links to Rutgers University and the Zimmerli Art Museum are many. She was born in New Jersey, graduated from Douglass College, and holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Rutgers. She has long championed women’s rights and women’s role in the arts, an area of study pioneered at Rutgers. Until the 1970s, Rutgers’ Douglass College, then among the largest women’s colleges in the United States, had no women on its art faculty, and thus no readily available role models for its students. To rectify this situation, Snyder proposed founding the Women Artists Series—an initiative that was met with enthusiastic Fig. 1 Oasis, 2006. Color digital print with support by the director of the Mabel Smith Douglass Library. The series, offering exhibitions four-color screenprint and hand-applied of emerging and established artists, was launched at the library in 1971, with Snyder as its Prismacolor; [image] 45.7 x 50.5 cm first curator. Now called the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series, it continues as a program 7 (18 x 19 ⁄8 in.); [sheet] 52.7 x 56.5 cm 3 1 of the Institute of Women and Art in partnership with the Rutgers University Libraries. (20 ⁄4 x 22 ⁄4 in.). Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, Gift of the Brodsky Center Since its founding in 1966, the Zimmerli has built a notable collection of works on paper. for Innovative Editions (cat. 64.9) The presentation of Dancing with the Dark highlights these deep holdings as well as the 7 printmaking career of a respected American artist. Numbering thanks for her most capable management and dedicated profes- Sarah McNear kindly responded to Symmes’s requests for vital For photography, we especially thank the late Jack Abraham and some 60,000 objects, works on paper represent a major part of sionalism, which resulted in this fine exhibition and publication. information on Snyder’s work. Bryan Whitney. For his counsel regarding publishing matters, we the permanent collection, with particular strengths in modern Marilyn Symmes joins me in also expressing our gratitude On the “home front” Marilyn Symmes’s research benefited extend our great appreciation to Christopher Sweet; and for her and contemporary American prints, French nineteenth-century to the many individuals at Rutgers and from around the country from the dedication of Rutgers graduate students from the splendid presentation and design of this book, we deeply thank prints and rare books, and Russian and Soviet nonconformist art. who have generously contributed to her research and planning for university’s Department of Art History and the Mason Gross Laura Lindgren, graphic designer. In 1983, in order to increase its representation of contemporary this project. From the early stages of this project, the Zimmerli School of the Arts, who contributed significantly to the project’s Zimmerli staff members diligently worked with their character- graphic art, the museum established the Rutgers Archives for has collaborated with Rutgers colleagues Ferris Olin, director of bibliography. We particularly thank Jenevieve DeLosSantos, as istic collegiality on important aspects of Dancing with the Dark, Printmaking Studios (known as RAPS), which documents the the Institute for Women and Art and the cocurator of the Dana well as Alexa Arroyo, Ellen Brueckner, Anna Bushman, Nicole and we gratefully acknowledge them all for their instrumental collaborative relationship between artists and master printers in Women Artists Series; Judith K. Brodsky, founder of the Brodsky DeAugstine, and Reshma Nayyar. Several Rutgers colleagues roles in this project. For their particularly indispensible participa- American printmaking. Snyder has made prints with several distin- Center for Innovative Editions at the Rutgers Mason Gross School generously shared their expertise and eased access to key tion in this major project, we thank Joanna Broughton, director of guished RAPS members: Maurice Sánchez from Derrière L’Étoile of the Arts and cocurator of the Dana Women Artists Series; and resources necessary for researching Joan Snyder’s career: Sara development; Bernadette Clapsis, accountant; Roberto Delgado, Studio in New York; and Eileen M. Foti, Randy Hemminghaus, and Joan Marter, professor in the Department of Art History, to offer Harrington and Joe Consoli, Rutgers art librarians; and Fernanda preparator; Alfredo Franco, curator of education; Christine Anne Q. McKeown from the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions public programs featuring Joan Snyder and her art for campus Perrone, librarian for the University Archives and Special Col- Giviskos, associate curator, nineteenth-century European art; at the Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts. and community audiences. lections. The first stages of this project also benefited from the Leslie Kriff, registrar; Beth McKeown, assistant curator, Morse The study of works on paper at Rutgers and at the Zimmerli The printers who have collaborated with Joan Snyder have enthusiasm and vision of Marti Mayo, Zimmerli interim director Research Center for Graphic Arts; Kiki Michael, assistant registrar; took another leap forward in 1995, when the Zimmerli created the been most helpful in responding to various queries; we would (January 2008–March 2009), and Janet Landay, former interim Margaret Molnar, associate registrar; Bonnie Schubert, educa- David A. and Mildred H. Morse Research Center for Graphic Arts like particularly to thank Andrew Mockler (Jungle Press Editions, development associate. tion and communications assistant; Edward Schwab, manager to further encourage the study of American and European draw- Brooklyn); Maurice Sánchez (Derrière L’Étoile Studio, New York); I extend my special thanks and gratitude to the museums and of operations; and Stacy Smith, manager of publications and ings, photographs, prints, and original illustrations for children’s Bruce Crownover, Joe Freye, Andrew Rubin, Jason Ruhl, with the individuals who facilitated Marilyn Symmes’s study of Joan communications. books. Thousands of students and scholars from Rutgers and Amy Newell, Paula Panczenko, and Timothy Rooney (Tandem Snyder prints in their collections and assisted with loans to this While Rutgers University provides vital overall funding for the beyond have visited the Morse Research Center in the last fifteen Press, Madison, Wisconsin); Bob Townsend (R. E. Townsend exhibition. Our thanks particularly go to Jacqueline M. Atkins, Zimmerli, exhibitions and publications of this scope are dependent years, while more than a half million visitors have enjoyed the Studio, Georgetown, Massachusetts); and our colleagues Randy Sofia Bakis, Karen Barlow, and Robert Metzger from the Allentown upon special support. The Zimmerli Art Museum’s newly formed special exhibitions drawn from collection or—as in the case of this Hemminghaus, Barbara Madsen, and Anne Q. McKeown, with Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; Clifford S. Ackley, Patrick Murphy, Annual Exhibitions Fund is the anchor for projects of this size and retrospective of Joan Snyder’s