annshafer.com
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Consulting
  • The Curator's Choice Podcast
  • The Curator's Choice Episodes
  • Platemark Podcast
  • Platemark Episodes
  • HoP episode transcripts
  • News
  • Projects
  • CV
  • About

Musings on Art, Mostly Printmaking

A lost lady's glove; Max Klinger's obsession

1/5/2021

0 Comments

 

Ann Shafer

When I started in the print department in fall 2005, I got a request to host a Maryland Institute College of Art History of Prints (HoP) class for multiple visits. The professor had taught the class before and had an already established lists of objects. Even being new to the task, I was surprised to realize the breadth of the plan. For each of six visits we pulled out between eighty and one hundred prints starting with Master ES and ending with yesterday. While those classes were a lot of work, they were so rewarding. The immense impact of HoP on hundreds of young artists is due solely to professor Tru Ludwig who is not only a gifted art historian, but also is a practicing printmaker with some badass technical chops. We clicked from the start and taught HoP together fifteen times between 2005 and 2017. In my time in the print room, no other teachers made as powerful a use of the collection.
 
I had never taken a history of prints class (exactly how many colleges offer one?), and with Tru, I had a front row seat to the best teaching I’d ever seen. What does it take to engage twenty-five art students, some of whom think they don’t need to learn anything? It takes a person whose passion is contagious and whose performance is energetic, full of prime historical and technical information, and who encourages students to get up close and personal with the prints themselves. Print nerds know that looking at prints out of their frames is really the only way to get close enough to see what is going on in line quality, tiny details, and textures. The combination of excellent teaching and in-person contact with actual objects is just the best.
 
Tru shines when he starts talking about a time period, movement, or particular artist and gets on a roll. Every semester there was at least one spiel that gave me goosebumps or got me teary-eyed, and more than one that made everyone laugh. After Dürer, Rembrandt, Goya, and everyone in between, and having seen hundreds of prints, we’d finally get to the late-nineteenth century. Most of the material from this period is focused on France, but a sudden detour to Germany introduced Max Klinger and his 1881 portfolio, A Glove (Ein Handschuh), to the class.
 
Klinger (1857–1920) was a bit of an outsider. He created visions from his mind’s eye that presaged twentieth-century thinking about the subconscious and dreams before it was a thing. His work influenced surrealist artists like Salvador Dalí and Giorgio de Chirico, as well as Käthe Kollwitz and Edvard Munch.
 
Of the thirteen portfolios Klinger published during his lifetime, his first is a favorite. It is based on a set of drawings, Fantasies on a Found Glove (Phantasien über einen gefundenen Handschuh), which was exhibited in 1878 at the Berlin Royal Academy of the Arts' annual exhibition. (He was twenty-one years old.) Encouraged by art dealer and engraver Hermann Sagert, Klinger published the set of etchings as a portfolio two years later in 1881.
 
A Glove, Opus VI (Ein Handschuh, Opus VI) features ten etchings and a title page that follows a dream/nightmare sequence of a lost ladies’ glove. First picked up at a skating rink, it becomes an obsession for the central character (Klinger himself) and haunts his waking and sleeping moments. The sexual connotations of such an object are obvious, and Tru’s description had all of us tittering with laughter. The portfolio was always a hit with the class.
 
MoMA’s Heather Hess sums up the portfolio’s narrative nicely: “Klinger meticulously depicts the real and the imaginary with hallucinatory clarity, casting himself as protagonist. At a skating rink in Berlin, Klinger is seen eyeing a beautiful young woman; he swoops down to retrieve her dropped glove. This intimate and potently sexualized object triggers a series of elaborate visions of longing and loss, conveyed through dreamlike distortions of scale and jarring juxtapositions. As desire threatens to engulf Klinger, the fetishized glove takes on a life of its own. It assumes the attributes of Venus, born of sea foam and driving a shell chariot. An outsize version torments him in his sleep, recalling Francisco de Goya's prints. Klinger's grasp on the glove remains elusive, and a fantastic creature finally spirits the object away.” (https://www.moma.org/s/ge/collection_ge/object/object_objid-64063.html)
 
The portfolio’s popularity is clear; after the first publication, it was issued in several subsequent editions, including one posthumously (meaning after Klinger’s death). This is the publication sequence: the first edition was published in 1881 in an edition of twenty-five; a second edition was published a year later as Paraphrase über den Fund eines Handschuhs in an unknown quantity; both a third (1883) and fourth (1892) edition were published in an unknown quantity; the fifth edition was posthumously published in 1924, as Paraphrase über den Fund eines Handschuhs by Verlag von Gertrud Hartmann-Klinger in an edition of approximately one hundred. Knowing all this becomes important when it comes to value and marketability. Obviously, it is preferable to have the earliest set. But would I buy a posthumous set for myself if I came across one? Hell yes.
 
It's such an odd, fantastical sequence, and is all the more remarkable because it dates to the early 1880s, comes out of Germany, and is executed by a twenty-something artist. It makes me wonder about the exact nature of creativity and imagination. I mean, from whence do these kinds of visions come? And who is bold enough to make them into a multiple, collectible set of gorgeous etchings?
 
Tru’s presentation of Ein Handschuh was a highlight every semester. I’d wager that former students (we call them HoPsters) would agree that it was indeed memorable. Any HoPster alums want to chime in?
picture of people at skating rink
picture of people at skating rink
picture of figure dreaming
picture of a sailboat
picture of a glove driving chariot
picture on gloved washed up on beach
picture of sleeping figure dreaming of glove
picture of glove on a stage
picture of a creature flying out of window
picture of cupid and glove
picture of title page
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Ann's art blog

    A small corner of the interwebs to share thoughts on objects I acquired for the Baltimore Museum of Art's collection, research I've done on Stanley William Hayter and Atelier 17,  experiments in intaglio printmaking, and the Baltimore Contemporary Print Fair.

    Archives

    May 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    October 2021
    August 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020

    Categories

    All
    Albrecht Durer
    Alison Saar
    Alternate Realities
    American Modernism
    Amy Cutler
    Amze Emmons
    Andrew Raftery
    An-My Le
    Annalise Gratovich
    Ann Hamilton
    Ann Shafer
    Antoine Masson
    Ants
    Aquatint
    Art
    Art History
    Artist's Books
    Asa Cheffetz
    Astrid Bowlby
    Atelier 17
    Atelier Contrepoint
    Baltimore Museum Of Art
    Baptiste Debombourg
    Bill Thompson
    B.J.O. Nordfeldt
    Carolina Nitsch
    Carrie Mae Weems
    Caspar David Friedrich
    Cassandre
    Catalyst Contemporary
    Charles Demuth
    Charles Gaines
    Charles White
    Chitra Ganesh
    Claude Flight
    Claude Mellan
    Claude Monet
    Clinton Blair King
    Crown Point Press
    CRW Nevinson
    Curator
    Curator's Choice
    Cyril Power
    Damon Arhos
    Damon Davis
    Dario Robleto
    David Avery
    Deb Sokolow
    Denise Tassin
    Derrick Adams
    Desiree Hayter
    Diana Scultori
    Diane Victor
    Diego Velasquez
    Drawing
    Drypoint
    Durer
    Earthworms
    Edgar Allen Poe
    Edouard Manet
    Edward Hopper
    Elisabetta Sirani
    Ellen MacNary
    Engraving
    Enrique Chagoya
    Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
    Etc
    Etching
    Etching Revival
    Evan Lindquist
    Excudit
    Félix Bracquemond
    Felix-Hilaire Buhot
    Fiona Banner
    Force: Upsetting Rape Culture
    Fred Becker
    Full Circle
    Gabor Peterdi
    Gallery Neptune & Brown
    Geertruydt Roghman
    Grosvenor School
    Harry Belafonte
    Hector Saunier
    Hendrick Goltzius
    Horst Janssen
    Intaglio
    Iona Rozeal Brown
    Jacob Hashimoto
    James Barry
    James Siena
    James Stroud
    James Tissot
    Japonisme
    Jed Smalley
    Jim Dine
    John Alexander
    John Baldessari
    John Taylor Arms
    John White Abbott
    Jonathan Novack
    Joscelyn Gardner
    Joseph Hirsch
    Kathe Kollwitz
    Landscape
    Las Meninas
    Leo Katz
    Letterio Calapai
    Lill Tschudi
    Linoleum Cut
    Lithograph
    London
    London Original Print Fair
    Louis Auguste Lepere
    Lovis Corinth
    Ludovic Lepic
    Marchel Duchamp
    Marion MacPhee
    Mark Thomas Gibson
    Martin Lewis
    Martin Mazorra
    Martin Wilner
    Mary Cassatt
    Maurice Sanchez
    Max Beckman
    Max Klinger
    Michael Waugh
    Mixografia
    Monoprint
    Multiples
    Nicola Lopez
    Nicolas Mignard
    Oil
    Oil Painting
    Pace Prints
    Painting
    Parastou Forouhar
    Paul Fusco
    Paulson Fontaine Press
    Peter Blum
    Peter Milton
    Photograph
    Photogravure
    Picturesque
    Piet Mondrian
    Poster
    Press
    Print
    Printmaking
    Rachel Perry
    Raphaelle Peale
    Rashaad Newsome
    Raven Chacon
    Raymond Pettibon
    Reginald Marsh
    Rembrandt
    Richard Diebenkorn
    Richard Long
    Robert Hills
    Roderick Mead
    Romanticism
    Sascha Braunig
    Sculpsit
    Sculpture
    Sebastian Black
    Shahzia Sikander
    Sherrie Levine
    Shu-lin Chen
    Simultaneous Color Printing
    Slavery
    Stanley William Hayter
    Stan Shellabarger
    Steve DiBenedetto
    Sue Fuller
    Susan Harbage Page
    Susan Sheehan Gallery
    Tamarind Institute
    Tandem Press
    Tauba Auerbach
    Terron Sorrells
    The Multiple Store
    The Old Print Shop
    Thomas Thistlewood
    Toshio Sasaki
    Transferware
    Trenton Doyle Hancock
    Trisha Brown
    Tru Ludwig
    Turner
    Ursula Fookes
    Victoria & Albert
    Victoria Burge
    Viscosity
    Vladimir Cybil Charlier
    Walton Ford
    Wangechi Mutu
    Watercolor
    Watercolour
    Werner Drewes
    West Coast Print Fair
    Western Exhibitions
    Whitfield Lovell
    Wildwood Press
    William Kentridge
    William Villalongo
    Wingate Studio
    Woodblock Print
    Woodcut
    Wood Engraving
    Works On Paper
    Yinka Shonibare MBE
    Yukinori Yanagi
    Zilda

    RSS Feed

    GO TO TOP OF PAGE

      Sign up here for alerts.

    Subscribe to Newsletter

What our Platemark listeners are saying

Way up there in the podcast Top Ten, IMHO.  A great series and engaging leaders.
----- M.A.D.

Contact Us

    Subscribe Today!

Submit
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Consulting
  • The Curator's Choice Podcast
  • The Curator's Choice Episodes
  • Platemark Podcast
  • Platemark Episodes
  • HoP episode transcripts
  • News
  • Projects
  • CV
  • About