I wrote recently about jaw-dropping art history moments. For me, there have only been three: Charles Demuth (the church spire behind his house), Edouard Manet (a still life of lilacs in a glass vase), and Velasquez (Las Meninas). Even more rare is getting goosebumps. Today’s post is about possibly my only goosebumpy moment, which has to do with Charles White.

White, an African American artist, was the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 2018–19. Curated by Esther Adler, the show began its run at the Art Institute of Chicago, and finished it at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The BMA has a linoleum cut print by White called Voice of Jericho, 1958. It’s a large print at 39 x 21 inches and shows Harry Belafonte singing. This is a print that I used constantly in the BMA’s studyroom for classes. We would talk about whether the figure was yelling out loud or internally, silently, or if he was singing. And we’d talk and about the portrayal of the sound or silence, which swirls up from the figure to fill more than half the image area. Even if the students were not familiar with Harry Belafonte (he was part of my childhood—one of the first songs I learned on guitar was Jamaica Farewell), the image conveys an immense amount of emotion. And the kids seemed to get it.

I made a point of getting to MoMA to see the Charles White exhibition, which was gorgeous. It was during New York Print Week when print curators, dealers, collectors, artists, and publishers descend on the City for four print fairs and a ton of attending programming. As usual, Tru Ludwig was with me. Tru is an artist who also teaches History of Prints at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Voice of Jericho is a staple in that class. I was surprised not to find the BMA print on the walls of the MoMA exhibition—it turned out it had been in Chicago for the first venue, but not included in the second in NY. But the drawing on which it is based was there. (It is owned by Belafonte and his wife.) I had not seen it before and was struck by its gloriousness. But I came away feeling that the print says it better. The drawing includes more of the singer’s figure set on a dark background that lacks the dynamism of the linoleum cut. But in both images Belafonte’s head is cocked back, his mouth open in song, and his neck tensed in the effort. It has always struck me as a posture of potential energy, as if Belafonte is carefully balancing control of performance and his explosive emotions.

Here comes the goosebumps part, which were accompanied by welling tears. As part of the MoMA installation, there was a monitor looping video of Harry Belafonte performing the song Bald Headed Woman, which opened his television special, Tonight with Belafonte, in 1959. (It also is on Belafonte’s album Swing Dat Hammer and curiously, was covered by the Kinks and The Who.) A link to the television special is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otw0FtXjOKc&t=507s. It’s the first song Belafonte performs, but doesn’t begin until the 4:40 mark. As Tru and I stood there watching, suddenly the whole thing came together. Belafonte’s performance is mesmerizing and when he reaches for a high note, his head cocks back exactly as White portrayed him in the drawing and print. Goosebumps and tears.
 
Charles White (American, 1918–1979)
Voice of Jericho (Folksinger), 1958
Linoleum cut
Sheet: 1003 x 540 mm. (39 1/2 x 21 1/4 in.)
Image: 917 x 458 mm. (36 1/8 x 18 1/16 in.)
Baltimore Museum of Art: Friends of Art Fund, 1999.84
 
Charles White (American, 1918–1979)
Folksinger (Voice of Jericho: Portrait of Harry Belafonte), 1957
Ink and colored ink with white additions
132 x 865 mm. (52 x 34 in.)
Collection Pamela and Harry Belafonte
© The Charles White Archives
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otw0FtXjOKc&t=507s

On a dreary, rainy Sunday amid a global health and economic crisis, showcasing a melancholic artist seems like just the thing. Caspar David Friedrich, a German artist working at the turn of the nineteenth century, is known for his stark, romantic visions of landscape. In a well-known painting, Wanderer above a Sea of Fog, painted around 1817, he captured the lone figure perched on a rocky outcropping above a vast, open landscape. The composition is constructed of various real elements by Friedrich, but nowhere can one stand on these rocks and see this specific view. But he has constructed the painting beautifully. The figure has his back to us as if he has led us to this spot and we have just arrived. The fog enhances the feeling of solitude. No tree is near him to help ground us and frame the picture. The middle ground mountains roll into the man’s chest bringing us to the heart of the matter (see what I did there?). The final set of mountains intersect with the man’s head, which barely rises above them. This is the sublime at its best. Humans are wired to feel expansive and hopeful at seeing a wide-open prospect such as this. (I’m taking a deep breath as I look at it.) With compositional elements converging in the man’s heart and head, this image speaks directly to the Romantic. For me, there is both a melancholic and hopeful feeling. And maybe that’s Friedrich’s magic: that his paintings can’t help but make us feel something.

This painting has stuck with me since Art History 101, although I have never seen it in person. Field trip to Hamburg when this is over and we can travel again?

I have always felt German Romanticism had a parallel movement in British landscapes in watercolor and in oil at this same time. I suspect the driving forces between the developments is similar but not identical. (I am no scholar of German Romanticism—please take this with a grain of salt.) But I love Friedrich’s ink wash drawings and watercolors. They are so reminiscent of those by British artists like John Ruskin, but they also can have a starkness and modernity to them that continues to intrigue me.

Apparently, Friedrich’s output as an artist was little known during his lifetime and he was “discovered” only at the beginning of the twentieth century. One way an artist might try to enhance his stature was to create and publish prints that could be distributed widely. Friedrich made a pair of prints using his woodworker brother, Christian, as the formschneider (the block cutter). Woman with the Raven on the Abyss and Woman with Spider’s Web Between Bare Trees, 1803, were entered in an 1804 exhibition at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden. I’m not sure about their reception, but it is pretty clear that Christian was not a great woodcutter. When asked by Christian if he would produce further works for transfer to woodcut, the artist declined, writing, "ask another artist." And yet, in Woman with Spider’s Web Between Bare Trees, I still appreciate the composition: a lone woman sits between two bare trees (blasted tree, anyone?), while above her in the branches is a large spider web. What a creepy, potent, and weird image.

It seems like just the kind of quirky print one would find in the Garrett Collection at the Baltimore Museum of Art. But alas, it is not in that mammoth collection. For over a decade I kept my eyes open for an impression of the spider’s web print to come on the market (well, I didn’t hunt one down, but it was always in the back of my mind). Feeling certain the museum would never get a hold of a painting or drawing by Friedrich, having one of the prints seemed like a great way to get him into the collection. Plus, the print would have many friends, not the least of which is Dürer’s Melancholia I. Good company, indeed.

Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774–1840)
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer), c. 1817
Oil on canvas
94.8 cm × 74.8 cm. (37.3 × 29.4 in.)
Hamburger Kunsthalle, HK-5161

Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774–1840)
An Owl on a Coffin (Eine Eule auf einem Sarg), 1835–38
Pen and gray ink, brown wash, and graphite
385 x 383 mm
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, 41119

Caspar David Friedrich (Greifswald 1774–1840 Dresden)
Gate in the Garden Wall (Pforte in der Gartenmauer), c. 1828
Watercolor over graphite
122 x 185 mm
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, 41123

Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774–1840)
Sea with Rising Sun—Morning of Creation (Meer mit aufgehender Sonne—Schöpfungsmorgen), c. 1826
Brown wash over graphite
187 x 265 mm
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, 41120

Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774–1840)
Bridge over Brook (Bach mit Brücke), c. 1799
Pen and gray ink and gray wash over graphite
270 x 220 mm
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, 41091

Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774–1840)
Hill at Bruchacker near Dresden (Hügel mit Bruchacker bei Dresden), 1824/25
Oil on canvas
22.2 x 30.4 cm
Hamburger Kunsthalle, HK-1055

Christian Friedrich (German, 1770–1843)
after Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774–1840)
Woman with Spider’s Web Between Bare Trees, 1803
Woodcut
Image: 170 x 120 mm (6 11/16 x 4 5/8 in.)
Sheet: 260 x 193 mm (10 ¼ x 7 5/8 in.)
Art Institute of Chicago: Alfred E. Hamill Collection, 1955.1031
​
Christian Friedrich (German, 1770–1843)
after Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774–1840)
Woman with a Raven, 1803
Woodcut
Image: 170 x 119 mm. (6 11/16 x 4 11/16 in.)
Sheet: 244 x 192 mm. (9 5/8 x 7 9/16 in.)
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Harris Brisbane Dick Fund 1927, 27.11.3
​

Our man Hayter was the spiritual epicenter of Atelier 17, which was an important hub for collaboration and experimentation in printmaking. It was his goal that artists would work together toward new discoveries. He downplayed his role as teacher and mentor, although it is clear the workshop’s success owed a tremendous amount to his personal charisma.

When a new artist arrived at the studio Hayter would put them through their paces before allowing them free access to the equipment. One of the first things was to accomplish a plate of burin studies. Given a copper plate, the nouveau was instructed to make marks without regard to a planned image. This was a chance to become familiar with the technique and process. Hayter encouraged students to free their minds of preconceived imagery and just let the burin go where it might until they had become fully comfortable making marks. Because engraving is a difficult means of making an image—one pushes a diamond-shaped tool through the copper or zinc to create divets that will carry ink—it is important that one is at ease with it prior to investing time and energy in a large print.

Hayter, himself, engraved several of these sorts of studies over the course of his career, perhaps in order to go back to basics once in a while. These studies really were supposed to be a freeform exercise tapping into one’s subconscious. He even advocated for creating engraved lines by feel rather than by sight. These ideas can be linked to Hayter’s interest in the surrealist practice of automatic drawing, in which one’s subconscious should be accessed thus producing stronger work.

Hayter was active at the Atelier until the end of his life in 1988, meaning scores of artists can claim some time with the master. One such artist is the master printer James Stroud, whose print shop, Center Street Studio, operates outside of Boston. In between his BFA and his MFA, Stroud studied with Hayter at the Atelier in Paris from 1980 to 1981. In the progressive states (he stopped and printed the plate periodically as he added more and more to the composition), the plate is filled with swirling lines that intersect over geometric forms in an orderly yet chaotic way. Stroud reported coming across the plate in his studio in 2014, many years after he engraved it. For fun, he printed a handful of impressions and liked the result. Knowing about the BMA’s planned Hayter exhibition, Stroud not only donated a 2014 impression of the final state, but also the set of earlier states he’d kept all these years. Jim is a superb printer (and artist) and his shop is worth checking out: http://www.centerstreetstudio.com/.

James Stroud (American, born 1958)
Burin Studies (state 1-14 and final), 1980
Engraving
Sheet (each): 250 × 205 mm. (9 13/16 × 8 1/16 in.)
Plate (each): 184 × 138 mm. (7 1/4 × 5 7/16 in.)
Baltimore Museum of Art: Gift of the Artist, 2016.140.1–14 and 2014.100
​

I wrote my senior thesis on my second and more abiding love, Charles Demuth (DEE-muth, not deMOOTH). I focused on several groups of his watercolors featuring figures: circus and vaudeville acts, literary illustrations for Henry James and the like, and erotic-ish scenes including sailors dancing, lolling on the beach, jazz clubs, and Turkish baths. I don’t think I have my copy of that paper anymore, which is just as well. Not that the watercolors aren’t great, they are, but that my writing about them was surely riddled with holes. Demuth remains a favorite because not only are the figural watercolors awesome, his still lifes in watercolor are breathtaking and his output in painting is stunning. Two of my favorite paintings are I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold, 1928, and My Egypt, 1927, which I saw nearly every day when I worked at the Whitney right out of college.

I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold is one of Demuth’s eight portraits painted in tribute to various American writers, artists, and performers. None are physical likenesses, but rather they show imagery that evokes the person and their work. This one is a tribute to William Carlos Williams who was a friend, poet, and his physician. (Demuth died at age 51 due to complications from diabetes. He was one of the earliest patients to give himself insulin shots—a brand new treatment.) The title of Demuth’s painting is taken from Williams’ poem that describes the sights and sounds of a firetruck speeding down a New York City Avenue:

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city

It always makes me smile when I happen upon I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was more fortunate to be able to look at My Egypt every day for two plus years at the Whitney Museum of American Art (back when it was in the Breuer building at Madison and 75th Street). Its title gives a pretty substantial hint as to what it’s about: our grain elevators, water towers, and factories stand as monuments to America’s achievements in industry in much the same way the pyramids glorify the pharaohs in ancient Egypt. One could also guess that Demuth is likening the dehumanizing of the labor force in big industry of the 1920s to the slaves that built the pyramids.

In addition to factories and grain elevators, Demuth painted church spires, which often loom up over the viewer. Sometimes it appears that an artist’s imagination has run away with them, that the scene portrayed couldn’t possibly exist in real life, and I frequently wonder how they conceived of such a view. For instance, Thomas Moran’s paintings of Yellowstone National Park look like confections in yellow and pink, but parts of the park really are those same colors. Demuth’s point of view became very clear to me on a visit to the Demuth Museum in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The museum includes the family home and the tobacco shop next door, which are in the middle of downtown. I made a pilgrimage there one January only to discover the museum is shuttered in the winter (should have checked the internet). Disappointed but not daunted, I knew there was a garden behind the building where Demuth had spent much of his young life painting the flowers his mother grew due to his frailty (severe diabetes). I made my way down the tiny passthrough between the buildings and emerged into a lovely, small, brick-lined garden. Then I looked up and my jaw dropped. Looming over the garden courtyard is the giant church steeple of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, which is directly behind the house. It was as if one of his paintings, like The Tower, 1920, came to life, after which his style and acute angles made so much sense. That was one of only three times that my jaw has dropped for art: the first was in a nineteenth-century art class in college when a slide (yes, slide) of a Manet painting of lilacs in a glass vase popped up, the second was while standing in front of Velasquez’s Las Meninas at the Prado.

While Demuth’s paintings are amazing, I have, no surprise, a soft spot for his watercolors. The still lifes are worth checking out. He has such a delicate and deft touch, he’s unafraid of leaving white space, and I love his use of salt and small squares of blotter paper to gain that mottled texture and those sharp edges. I could look at the fruit and flower watercolors all day long.

The figural watercolors are less easy to love, but they are an interesting facet of his work. The illustrations for various works of literature—he seemed particularly keen on Henry James—weren’t commissioned to illustrate published works, rather, they were personal, just for him. The circus performers and vaudeville acts are quirky and fun. And his scenes of sailors partially nude on the beach or in dance halls, where two men dancing with women gaze longingly at each other, or a self-portrait at the Lafayette bathhouse reveal he was an openly gay man partaking in the burgeoning underground gay subculture in post-World War I New York. These erotic works were not for public consumption, but in subsequent years they have offered inspiration to artists working with similar themes.

Only Hayter has eclipsed my deep and abiding love for Demuth. No, actually, I find Demuth’s work more beautiful and personally satisfying. There is just so much more to discover with Hayter.

Charles Demuth (American, 1883–1935)
I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold, 1928
Oil, graphite, ink, gold leaf on paperboard (Upson board)
35 1/2 x 30 in. (90.2 x 76.2 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949, 49.59.1

Charles Demuth (American, 1883–1935)
My Egypt, 1927
Oil, fabricated chalk, and graphite on composition board
35 15/16 x 30 in. (91.3 x 76.2 cm.)
Whitney Museum of American Art: Purchase, with funds from Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, 31.172

Charles Demuth (American, 1883–1935)
The Tower, 1920
Tempera on pasteboard
23 1/4 x 19 1/2 in. (591 x 495 cm.)
The Columbus Museum of Art: Gift of Ferdinand Howald, 1931.146

Charles Demuth (American, 1883–1935)
The Revelation Comes to May Bartram in Her Dressing Room, 1919
Illustration for the short story "The Beast in the Jungle," by Henry James
Watercolor over graphite
Sheet: 203 x 257 mm. (8 x 10 1/8 in.)
Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gift of Frank and Alice Osborn, 1966, 1966-68-6

Charles Demuth (American, 1883–1935)
Eggplant and Tomatoes, 1926
Watercolor over graphite
Sheet: 358 x 509 mm. (14 1/8 x 20 in.)
Museum of Modern Art: The Philip L. Goodwin Collection, 99.1958

Charles Demuth (American, 1883–1935)
Dancing Sailors, 1918
Watercolor over graphite
Sheet: 204 x 257 mm. (8 1/16 x 10 1/8 in.)
Cleveland Museum of Art: Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund, 1980.9
​

Engraving was Hayter’s first love. He wanted to reintroduce it as a tool for what he called “original expression,” which basically means for one’s own work and not for reproducing another artists’ design. There aren’t many artists utilizing engraving today, but Evan Lindquist is one of them. No surprise he has ties to Hayter through his graduate studies at the University of Iowa, where Mauricio Lasansky had founded the printmaking department in the late 1940s (Lasansky worked with Hayter at the New York Atelier 17 in the early 1940s). In recent years, Lindquist has created a series of elegantly engraved portraits of art history’s well-known engravers like Martin Schongauer, Albrecht Dürer, Hendrik Goltzius, William Blake, Hayter, and others. (See his website here: https://evanlindquist.com/seeprints/gallery2.html.) In his engraving, SW Hayter Engraves War, Lindquist portrays Hayter as an intense, powerful figure out of whose burin (his engraving tool) come motifs referring to the Spanish Civil War.
 
That Lindquist portrays this titan of printmaking creating a print in support of victims of a crazy war, and not as a teacher, is telling. Hayter and a group of artists created two portfolios, Solidarité (1938) and Fraternity (1939), that were fundraisers for the child victims of the Spanish Civil War. Hayter’s plate for  Fraternity, which also contains prints by John Buckland Wright, Dalla Husband, Josef Hecht, Wassily Kandinsky, Roderick Mead, Joan Miró, Dolf Reiser, and Luis Vargas, shows a nude male standing in a doorway while an airplane flies overhead. One can’t help but think of Guernica, the small Spanish village that was bombed in April 1937, killing vast numbers of civilian men, women, and children.
 
Occurrences like Guernica motivated many artists to create work in protest, mostly famously Picasso, and Hayter was no different. He was a passionate humanist who used art to express his profound discomfort with the darkness that befell humanity during the first half of the twentieth century. That the symbols and marks of the war are spitting out vigorously from Hayter’s burin in Lindquist’s portrait is a perfect homage.
 
Stanley William Hayter (English, 1901-1988)
Untitled, from the portfolio Fraternity, 1936
Engraving
Sheet: 211 x 161 mm. (8 5/16 x 6 5/16 in.)
Plate: 124 x 73 mm. (4 7/8 x 2 7/8 in.)
Baltimore Museum of Art: Gift of Sidney Hollander, Baltimore, BMA 1996.8.3
 
Evan Lindquist (American, born 1936)
SW Hayter Engraves War, 2015
Engraving
Sheet: 388 x 310 mm. (15 1/4 x 12 3/16 in.)
Plate: 278 x 207 mm. (10 15/16 x 8 1/8 in.)
Baltimore Museum of Art: Purchased as the gift of an Anonymous Donor, BMA 2015.173
​

I had the chance occasionally to acquire objects for the BMA’s collection at auction. It was always exciting, particularly when we won. The museum acquired an impression of this print, B.J.O. Nordfeldt’s The Skyrocket in this manner from Swann Auction Galleries in 2012.

The Skyrocket is my favorite of Nordfeldt’s woodcut compositions, which have a distinctive Japan-esque quality to them. (He also made etchings, which are more reminiscent of Whistler’s Thames series.) Inspired by 19th-century Japanese Ukiyo-e woodcuts, Nordfeldt developed a new method of printing color woodblocks. Instead of carving multiple blocks to carry individual colors in the Japanese manner, Nordfeldt carved images onto a single block, and inked each section with a different color. Sometimes, to keep colors separate on the block, small grooves were carved between each segment that create distinctive white lines in printing. This white-line style became a hallmark of his and other artists’ works made in Provincetown in 1916 and onward. That doesn’t appear to be the case here, and it is a decade before those works, but the design sensibility is definitely present.

You should know that the image I’m showing here is the impression from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. It’s slightly different in its printing, though the colors are similar. For instance, the BMA impression has less of that brown along the bottom. I can’t show the BMA’s impression because it is not included on the online database. Not every object is available on the website and I suspect it will be many years before the online database includes everything. More reasons to make an appointment to see the work in person after the pandemic has eased and museums reopen their doors to the public.
​
B.J.O. Nordfeldt (American, born Sweden, 1878–1955)
The Skyrocket, 1906
Color woodcut on Japan paper
Image: 220 x 285 mm. (8 ¾ x 11 1/4 inches)
Smithsonian American Art Museum: Gift of L. Laszlo Ecker-Racz

I’ve been teaching myself Adobe’s video editing software, Premiere Rush. Today is the debut of my first attempt, a very short video on Stanley William Hayter’s Rue des Plantes, 1926. For our epic research trip to Paris in 2015, Ben Levy, Tru Ludwig, and I had a lot on our to-do list related to the Hayter exhibition. First on the list was to photograph and film the printing of Hayter’s Torso, 1986, at Atelier Contrepoint, which I wrote about in another post. Second was to interview Désirée Hayter on video. Third was to find and photograph as many locations of the Atelier as possible (it moved a bunch of times). And fourth was to find, photograph, and videotape the locations that appear in Hayter’s series Paysages urbains, 1930 (more on that in another post). While doing the last, I added finding the site of Rue des Plantes to the list.

Rue des Plantes is a lovely early drypoint by Hayter depicting a simple street scene in the 14th arrondissement. In it a lone figure carrying her daily market purchases walks toward a building that oddly is situated in the middle of a cobblestone street. Finding the site wasn’t too hard, but finally laying our eyes on it sparked our adrenaline. Ben set up the video equipment intent on taking some B-roll for an eventual video for the exhibition website. With the camera rolling, suddenly an older woman carrying her market purchases wandered into the frame. The three of us must have looked like lunatics gesturing to each other madly but silently so as not to be recorded on the tape. It couldn’t have been more perfect. Finally, I’ve pulled a short video together showing this golden moment, which thrills me still.
 
Stanley William Hayter (English, 1901–1988)
Rue des Plantes, 1926
Drypoint
Sheet: 400 x 328 mm. (15 3/4 x 12 15/16 in.)
Plate: 267 x 208 mm. (10 1/2 x 8 3/16 in.)
Baltimore Museum of Art: Bequest of Ruth Cole Kainen, Chevy Chase, Maryland, BMA 2011.263
​

​I’m a super fan of intaglio printmaking—intaglio refers to printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface and the incised line or sunken area holds the ink—and I always wanted to do a series of shows on techniques, starting with, of course, intaglio. (Sorry folks, lithography would be last; well, maybe screenprinting.) Stanley William Hayter was a great practitioner of intaglio printmaking, as were all of the artists who worked with him at Atelier 17. Many of them established or ran university printmaking departments, including Gabor Peterdi, who taught at Yale from 1960 to 1986. One of Peterdi’s students was Peter Milton, who must stand as one of the great intaglio printmakers of the latter part of the 20th century.
 
The BMA has a handful of Milton’s prints. One of the most spectacular, Interiors IV: Hotel Paradise Café (1987), is mindblowing for students in MICA professor Tru Ludwig's History of Prints classes. Upon its unveiling one would hear choruses of “wow!” along with mutters of “it’s so not fair.” Its intricacies have both inspired and depressed young printmakers. Tru and I are both fans and when we had the opportunity to hear Milton speak at Jane Haslem’s Washington, D.C., gallery, we jumped at the chance to meet him. After the talk we approached and he and Tru bonded over everything from techniques to history to all the esoteric details that appear in his prints. It was also there that I spied one of his drawings for his series The Aspern Papers, which I eventually acquired for the BMA—more on that in another post. During their conversation, Peter told Tru that he considered the copper plates to be the most beautiful things he makes. The lightbulb went off and the next thing we knew, Tru and I were working together with James Archer Abbott, then director of Evergreen Museum and Library, to curate an exhibition of Milton’s plates, prints, and preparatory drawings.
 
Several trips were made to Milton’s New Hampshire studio and home, where we were welcomed by Peter and his lovely wife, Edith. There we got to interview him, see where the magic happens, and select the plates and other works to be included in the show. To my mind, Milton’s Interiors series is his most important. We included five of the seven plates from that series including The Train from Munich (1995), which focuses on Edith’s 1939 departure from Germany as one of 10,000 children sent on a Kindertransport train taking unaccompanied Jewish children to the United Kingdom for the duration of the war. [Edith and her sister lived with a British family for seven years and she eventually published an excellent memoir about that time called Tiger in the Attic (a NYT review is here: https://bit.ly/MiltonTigerinAttic).] The Train from Munich graces the cover of the catalogue produced for the Evergreen show and it is written about in depth therein. The link to the PDF catalogue is here: https://bit.ly/MiltonCatalogue.
 
Working on the show, I think Tru had the most fun job. He was the muscle responsible for polishing the copper plates. This is no easy task and takes patience and perseverance. In the end, we both agree with Peter. The copper plates are stunningly beautiful and reveal things, objects, and moments that are easily missed in the printed versions. It was an honor to work with this titan of printmaking. And, we owe one last thank you to Jim Abbott for letting us make a dream come true.
 

When the museum acquired Chitra Ganesh’s work, I already had the seed of a show growing in my mind. I had been asked to come up with an exhibition drawn from the collection featuring works by artists of color. This is problematic on many levels. I have always believed that separation is sometimes useful, but that integration must be the goal. In any case, the works available for a show of that sort lacked any thematic cohesion. At the same time, I’d had many MICA students inquire about seeing works from the storeroom that reflected a graffiti or comic book sensibility. The collection did not have much to offer. It took time and several acquisitions to bring together an exhibition that focused on the theme of alternate realities—artists looking at real-world problems through visual fantasies, comics, sci-fi. Ganesh’s gorgeous print fit the bill beautifully and was installed along with prints by Trenton Doyle Hancock, Wangechi Mutu, Toshio Sasaki, Enrique Chagoya, William Villalongo, iona rozeal brown, Raymond Pettibon, and Amy Cutler. On Paper: Alternate Realities was on view September 21, 2014–April 12, 2015. It was the most organically diverse show of my career and remains one about which I feel extremely proud.
 
I love a print that looks cool and asks more questions than it answers. Chitra Ganesh’s Away from the Watcher is a colorful combination of screenprint and woodcut that features an enigmatic figure at left (in a scuba or space suit—you decide) who seems to be exhaling an Indian goddess figure, while watching a city on a hill possibly being destroyed. Along the top left is a comic-strip-style thought bubble that reads: “She taught me precious little before she withered and died. Nothing of the little black holes I would dip into. Nothing of telepathy, nor the insides of my eyes. Nothing of…” This image raises many questions: Is somebody inside the scuba/space suit—isn’t it propped up? Is the Indian goddess figure being expelled or inhaled? Are we underwater or in outer space? What do the small winged creatures signify? What calamity has befallen the city at right? The somber melancholy of the text seems at odds with the dynamic depiction of the planet’s fissures, as well as the brilliant color and energetic comic-book style of representation. These alternate moods and narratives clash and connect in a newly constructed vision of the future.
 
Chitra Ganesh (American, born 1975)
Printed and published by Durham Press
Away from the Watcher, 2014
From the series Architects of the Future
Woodblock and screenprint
629 × 797 mm. (24 3/4 × 31 3/8 in.)
Baltimore Museum of Art: Purchased as the gift of an Anonymous Donor, BMA 2014.29
 

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If ever I turned my attention to making art instead of writing about it, I would pull out my watercolors and brushes and head outdoors. It’s hard to imagine a world when that wasn’t possible—but it wasn’t so long ago that the first paints in tubes became commercially available. The first premixed watercolors were introduced to the market in England in the 1760s, but it wasn’t until the 1840s that those little tubes we know today were invented.
 
The proliferation of watercolor landscapes in England in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was due in no small part to the introduction of those premixed watercolor paints. Artists began to experiment with the medium and test the boundaries of what could be accomplished. Soon these works found their way into the annual exhibitions of the English Royal Academy, but they were so marginalized that a group of artists split from the Academy in 1804 to establish the Society of Painters in Water-Colours. The goal of this new Society was to place watercolors on an equal footing with oil paintings, and artists responded by creating large-scale, highly finished watercolors displayed in elaborate gold frames. The Baltimore Museum of Art is fortunate to have an example of one of these presentation watercolors by Britain’s favorite son, Joseph Mallord William Turner.
 
In contrast to the highly finished exhibition watercolors, many artists created more intimate works in the same medium. Artists went outdoors with sketchbooks and paints to test their skills at portraying the landscape. One such work from a sketchbook (notice the crease down the center) is a favorite acquisition. The artist is John White Abbott, a country surgeon and apothecary from Exeter, who as an amateur artist painted for his own enjoyment (the term amateur indicates only that the artist did not earn money making art, but is no indication of a lack of talent). After inheriting an estate from his uncle, he was able to devote himself full time to painting. Abbott probably drew A Path through the Woods first in graphite pencil on the spot, and then returned to his studio to finish the work with gray washes and pen and brown ink. I continue to be amazed at the quality of light through the dappled foliage painted with just gray and brown. In fact, the execution is so masterful that I see this monochromatic scene in full color. In addition, the peacefulness of the scene always transports me to somewhere else. For me, this work is a figurative and literal breath of fresh air.
 
John White Abbott (English, 1763‑1851)
A Path through the Woods, c. 1785‑1795.
Pen and brown and gray ink with brush and gray ink over graphite
Sheet: 256 x 335 mm. (10 1/16 x 13 3/16 in.)
Baltimore Museum of Art: Purchased as the gift of Rhoda Oakley, Baltimore, BMA 2008.9
 
Joseph Mallord William Turner (English, 1775‑1851)
Grenoble Bridge, c. 1824.
Transparent and opaque watercolor with scraping over traces of graphite
Sheet: 530 x 718 mm. (20 7/8 x 28 1/4 in.)
Baltimore Museum of Art: Purchased with exchange funds from Nelson and Juanita Greif Gutman Collection, BMA 1968.28

File this one under it's not always about prints and printmaking. In the fall/winter of 2013-14, the BMA showed the work of photographer An-My Lê (pronounced Ann-Mee Lay). It was an honor to work with her and, as often happens, the museum acquired one of the photographs from the show. When it came time to select objects to talk about on video for the BMA Voices initiative, this one was a no-brainer. It's got it all. Here's the link to the short video we made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fuT0JHVXmE.

In the brochure for the exhibition, I concluded in this manner: In their quiet, unassuming way, Lê's sublime landscapes remind us that war is complex and contradictory. Alongside the brutality of combat, there is also the thrill of danger and adventure. Where there is enormous loss, there is also honor. Where there is heated protest, there is also heartfelt patriotism. By calling attention to the global reach of the U.S. military, Lê's photographs point out how martial power is balanced by humanitarian assistance and support of scientific research. Any discussion of the military will be polarizing, but Lê is able to find equilibrium between opposing points of view. While her photographs appeal to conservatives who see her work as pro-military, they also speak to liberals who read her work as anti-war. In drawing back the curtain to reveal the inner workings of the military as a giant facet of the global economy, Lê's photographs encourage us to think about its many complexities.

An-My Lê (American, born Vietnam, 1960)
Target Practice, USS Peleliu, 2005
Inkjet print, pigment-based
Sheet: 1016 x 1435 mm. (40 x 56 1/2 in.)
Baltimore Museum of Art: Women's Committee Acquisitions Endowment for Contemporary Prints and Photographs, BMA 2014.5

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File this post under nothing lasts forever, even on the interwebs. For the BMA's 100th birthday, staff produced 100 blog entries on favorite collection objects. Some were videotaped pieces featuring curators, conservators, and other staff speaking on camera; other entries were written posts. I went to look for my written pieces on artbma.org and couldn't find them anywhere (thankfully, the videos are still on YouTube). Thanks to Laura Albans, I have recovered the text for my entry on Dürer's Knight Death and the Devil, portions of which I share here.

The best part of working in a large collection of prints, drawings, and photographs is the range of material. I used to always say that you could come up with almost any theme and find an entire exhibition on it drawn out of the solander boxes. Since my interests tend toward the 20th and 21st centuries, it may surprise some of you, then, that Albrecht Dürer’s Knight, Death and the Devil is one of my favorite prints of all time. Not only is it a glorious example of engraving, but also it carries a universal message to stand by the courage of your convictions.

Albrecht Dürer was a German printmaker, draftsman, painter, observer of nature, and humanist. In 1513 and 1514 he created a trio of engravings that have come to be called his master prints. In addition to Knight, Death and the Devil, the trio includes St. Jerome in His Study and Melencolia I. Most scholars agree that the former represents the active life, while the two others represent the intellectual life and the contemplative life respectively.

While the three prints together are spectacular, I’m most drawn to Knight, Death and the Devil. The image is a visual feast. It features a righteous German knight resplendent in armor, a horse straight out of Renaissance Italy, a wonderful and faithful companion Fido the dog, and gnarly creatures representing Death and the Devil, all set in a naturalistic landscape. Contemporaries of Dürer would have understood the symbolism of every aspect of this print. But our own unfamiliarity with those symbols doesn’t lessen the impact of the work. Clearly this stalwart fellow is making his way through the forest of temptation and vanitas. He is able to keep to his path, ignoring all that is going on around him and stands by the courage of his convictions. Even if we strip the image of its religious associations of pre-reformation Catholicism, the message of perseverance is clear. Stick to your guns, well, lance, and you can get through anything with grace and dignity. A message as important today as ever.

Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471-1528)
Knight, Death and the Devil, 1513
Engraving
Sheet (trimmed within platemark): 244 x 187 mm. (9 5/8 x 7 3/8 in.)
Baltimore Museum of Art: Gift of Alfred R. and Henry G. Riggs, in Memory of General Lawrason Riggs, BMA 1943.32.188

This image is less than stellar, serving as an excellent reminder that it's always better to see works like this in person.
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Sometimes you get lucky and come across an artist by chance whose work you love. Even better is when you become friends. I made a studio visit to an artist who happened to be married to Susan Harbage Page. Because their studios were adjacent, I was able to see both in one visit. Susan's work runs the gamut: photography, drawing, performance, fibers, writing. One project has always risen to the top for me. The Border Project is a long running exploration of immigration issues focused on the border at the Rio Grande river in Brownsville, Texas. (An exhibition catalogue about the project is  available here: https://susanharbagepagedotcom.files.wordpress.com/…/1_bord….)

Long before children were being separated from their parents, Susan spent a lot of time photographing objects in situ and then collecting them. The objects left behind by migrants--bras, wallets, identification cards, shirts, toothbrushes--are catalogued and photographed in an anti-archive. The large-scale, color photographs of objects in the landscape hold power for me. Yet, sometimes no object is needed as evidence of a human presence. In Nest (Hiding Place), Laredo, Texas, a human-sized divot in the dry, tall grasses has been recently used as a resting or hiding place after crossing the border from Mexico. Easy to miss, once we understand how these crossings occur, we will recognize signs like this one forever. This now-empty nest is simple, stark, potent, and full of untold stories both of hope for a better life and fear of capture.

Susan Harbage Page (American, born 1959)
Nest (Hiding Place), Laredo, Texas, 2011, printed 2012
Inkjet print, pigment–based
Sheet: 1067 × 1553 mm. (42 × 61 1/8 in.)
Image: 965 × 1448 mm. (38 × 57 in.)
The Baltimore Museum of Art: Gift of the Artist, BMA 2012.156
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​In my previous post I talked about Stanley William Hayter's 1959 open bite etching Cascade and promised to dig into its making. It takes many images to describe the process of simultaneous color printing, so I created a PDF slide deck to illustrate how Ben Levy, Tru Ludwig, and I made a group of test prints to figure it all out. You can find the PDF here: 

In the previous post I shared a video about Stanley William Hayter (known as Bill to his friends), an artist that has interested me for many years. I also shared a link to a PDF catalogue for an exhibition that took place last year in São Paolo, Brazil. I was lucky enough to participate in a conference there in conjunction with that exhibition, Atelier 17 and Modern Printmaking in the Americas. I’m sharing a summary of the conference I wrote for another publication that I hope you find interesting. And, if you or any of your students need a dissertation topic, read through to the end.
 
The conference was held at the Museu de Arte Contemporãnea, which is part of the University of São Paolo and is known as MAC USP. Both the exhibition and conference focused on printmaking and artistic exchange between the United States and South American countries in the mid-twentieth century. The exhibition, catalogue, and conference were born out of the research of USP graduate student Carolina Rossetti de Toledo, who, under the supervision of professor and chief curator Ana Gonçalves Magalhães, focused on several gifts to São Paolo’s new Museum of Modern Art (MAM) in the 1950s of prints from Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and Lessing Rosenwald (the majority of MAM’s permanent collection was transferred to MAC USP upon its founding in 1963).
 
Nelson Rockefeller made two gifts, one in 1946 of paintings and sculpture and another in 1951 of twenty-five modern prints, to assist in the establishment of a museum of modern art in São Paolo. (He also donated a group of paintings to a museum in Rio de Janeiro in 1952.) Rockefeller’s interest in Brazil began when he travelled there as the director of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, the purpose of which was to strengthen relations with Latin America during World War II, both politically and culturally. The initial selection of prints for the Rockefeller donation was made by MoMA curator William Lieberman, who chose prints that represented cutting-edge modernism. The majority reflect American printmaking of the time, meaning works by artists associated with Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17. Why Rockefeller focused on MAM in São Paolo specifically remains unclear. Whatever the real reason, it was noted as a “gesture of goodwill.” A selection of prints from the 1951 gift were exhibited that year in São Paolo but have rarely been shown in the intervening years.
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​Following Rockefeller’s gesture, Henry Ford donated one print in 1953, and Lessing Rosenwald made a gift of nine modern prints in 1956, which were meant to augment the collection in the area of international modernism. The connection between the three donors and what motivated the Ford and Rosenwald gifts is unclear. But among the prints in these later gifts were yet more examples of international modernism in the form of works by artists associated with Atelier 17.
 
For Brazilian artists, there were three possible points of contact with Atelier 17. The first was through trips abroad. The second was through the publication and circulation of books by Hayter and his associates. The third was through exhibitions such as MoMA’s 1944 Atelier 17 exhibition, which traveled not only around the United States but also throughout Latin America, and through the exhibitions of works by Atelier 17 artists in the São Paolo Biennials and other venues. Hayter had an exhibition in Rio de Janeiro in 1957, which also traveled to Buenos Aires, and his work was included in the British pavilion in the 1959 São Paolo Biennial (MAM purchased several prints from this show). Interestingly, Atelier 17 artist Minna Citron had an extensive one-person show at MAM in São Paolo in 1952, which was by far the biggest exposure of an Atelier 17 artist in Brazil up to that point. Citron was fairly proficient in Portuguese (and many other languages), which may account for how she secured and coordinated this show.
 
Several of the prints in the Rockefeller gift to MAM had been shown in other impressions in the 1944 MoMA exhibition and yet other prints in the gift were seen in Una Johnson’s seminal National Print Annual exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum. In other words, the gift was of cutting-edge contemporary prints. There are still gaps in the story, however. In her essay for the exhibition catalogue, Rossetti de Toledo notes, rightly, that the connections between modern American and European printmaking and its Latin American counterparts are not well understood or properly documented. The Rockefeller gift is one piece of the puzzle.
 
Rossetti de Toledo’s research into the Rockefeller gift developed into the MAC USP exhibition and bilingual catalogue, both majorly supported by the Terra Foundation. In addition to prints from MAC USP’s collection, the exhibition featured loans from the Terra Foundation’s extensive collection of American prints and works from the Brooklyn Museum and Art Institute of Chicago. The conference began with introductory remarks from Magalhães and Terra Foundation curator Peter John (PJ) Brownlee. Rossetti de Toledo spoke about her research on the Rockefeller gift. I introduced Hayter and the Atelier 17, setting the stage for the discussion. Other speakers included Luiz Claudio Mubarac, who gave an overview of Brazilian printmaking in the twentieth century; Silvia Dolinko, who gave an overview of printmaking in her home country of Argentina; Heloisa Espada, who focused on Brazilian artist Geraldo de Barros (he worked at Atelier 17 in Paris in 1951); and Priscila Sacchettin, who spoke about Livio Abramo (he worked at Atelier 17 in 1951–52 and his work appears in Hayter’s book, About Prints). Christina Weyl closed out the conference with her talk on women at Atelier 17, which was an excellent preview of her important, recently published book.
 
Over the course of two days, it became clear that South American printmaking runs in sometimes intersecting but separate tracks from European and American art. While artists cross pollinated through travel, books, and exhibitions, for those of us who study prints, there’s a whole other world of printmakers to be discovered in South America. It is also clear that research on these printmakers is wide open. Brazil lacks the central repository of artists’ papers and archives like our Archives of American Art. Many of the artists’ families remain in possession of the works and papers of their creative relatives. These artists’ estates have not been formalized or catalogued, nor are they easily accessible. Hardly any estates’ papers have found their way into libraries or universities, meaning there is a lot of room for intrepid scholars to uncover the careers of any number of artists. How’s your Portuguese? Need a dissertation topic?
 
As I noted yesterday, the exhibition catalogue was printed in a small run but a pdf of the book is available here: bit.ly/Atelier17MACUSP.
 
I also include a list of Brazilian and Argentine artists who were mentioned repeatedly. Brazilian artist-printmakers of note:
Edith Behring (1916–1996)
Maria Bonomi (born 1935, she was married to Abramo)
Ibêre Carmargo (1941–1994)
Oswaldo Goeldi (1895–1961)
Marcelo Grassmann (1925–2013)
Evandro Carlos Jardim (born 1935)
Renina Katz (born 1925)
Anna Letycia (born 1929)
Maria Martins (1894–1993)
Fayga Ostrower (1920–2001)
Carlos Oswald (1882–1971)
Mário Pedrosa (1900–1981)
Gilvan Samico (1928–2013)
Lasar Segall (1891–1957)
Regina Silveira (born 1939)
 
Argentine artists-printmakers:
Hilda Ainscough (born 1900)
Mauricio Lasansky (1914–2012)
Julio LeParc (born 1928)
Fernando López Anaya (1903–1987)
Ana Maria Moncalvo (1921–2009)

At the exhibition reception: (L-R) Taylor Poulin, Elizabeth Glassman, Ana Gonçalves Magalhães, Peter (PJ) Brownlee, Christina Weyl, Amy Zinck, and Ann Shafer. Photo by MAC USP staff.