Ann ShaferBack in June 2014, Tru Ludwig, Ben Levy, and I spent hours poring over prints by Hayter and associated artists of Atelier 17 with an eye toward technique. We wanted to change the way people describe these simultaneous-color-printed works so that it was clearer to the layperson how it was done. (They are confusing enough without adding fuzzy descriptions.) Ben devised a method for listing the mediums. We would first describe what techniques were used to make the image in the plate. Then we would follow with a description of how the plate was inked. In our Notes to the Reader (for the unpublished catalogue), we wrote about it this way: The most complicated aspect of the checklist is the media information. Conventionally, print media lines in checklists and on labels are concise, which assumes some knowledge on the part of the viewer. These works demand more explanation. To maintain consistency throughout in describing the techniques and media, we have adopted a two-tiered method of describing each print. For each entry in the checklist, readers will find the first line describes what is in the plate (the grooves and textures that carry the image). The subsequent lines describe each layer of inking, which are combined on the single plate and run through the press once. This second line also includes verbiage referring to the method of inking, which is divided into two categories: intaglio and relief. Intaglio inking means the ink is pushed into the grooves on the plate and the surface of the plate is wiped clean. Relief, in these cases, means that ink is applied to the surface using one of several methods: stencil, screen, various rollers. This last point is critical when discussing simultaneous color printing. Whereas traditional color printing requires a separate plate for each color, Atelier 17 artists discovered a method of printing in multiple colors on a single plate. A description of these terms and how they are used within the context of these complicated works is included below. Conventionally, for black-and-white prints, the media lines are pretty simple: Engraving and etching In this catalogue the same type of work is listed as: Engraving and etching Printed in black (intaglio) It gets more complicated when describing the works with multiple colors: Engraving and open bite etching Printed in black (intaglio), red (relief) Or even more complicated: Engraving, softground etching, and scorper Printed in black (intaglio), red-orange gradient (wood offset, stencil, relief), yellow (stencil, relief), and blue-green gradient (stencil, relief) Each layer of ink is described by the color followed by the method in parentheses. When multiple colors are listed in the same inking run, that means they were applied to the plate at the same time by the same means. Multiple colors connected by hyphens followed by the term gradient indicates several colors rolled and blended on a single glass palette (sometimes called a split fountain or rainbow roll). Multiple colors separated by commas followed by the term unblended indicates several colors that are unblended on the palette (think of mottled colors plopped on the palette). So, take Pillars, 1974. The orange ink is wiped in the intaglio manner, meaning into the lines and open-bit areas. This is followed by two rolls of ink across the surface in the relief manner, with varying amounts of oil so they reject each other. With these two gradient rolls, yellow and blue, Hayter (well, actually Hector Saunier printed this edition) also used a stencil to block the center area from the yellow roll and the blue roll (see the image with the purple shape representing the stencil—roughly). They also used gradient rolls for both the yellow and blue. Meaning, two columns of yellow at the outside portion were rolled with no ink in the center so that the yellow fades as it reached the center. The same was done with the blue. While this may sound like a lot of hogwash, I hope it clarifies a bit about the magical work going on at Atelier 17. In the first image, Ben Levy and Tru Ludwig are parsing Pillars, 1974, in June 2014, at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Stanley William Hayter (English, 1901-1988) Pillars, 1974 Engraving, softground etching, and open bite etching; printed in orange (intaglio); blue-blue gradient (stencil, relief), and yellow-yellow gradient (stencil, relief) Sheet: 746 x 561 mm. (29 3/8 x 22 1/16 in.) Plate: 584 x 430 mm. (23 x 16 15/16 in.) Baltimore Museum of Art: Bequest of Virginia Fox, Palm Beach, Florida, BMA 1988.29 Stanley William Hayter (English, 1901-1988) Pillars, 1974 Engraving, softground etching, and open bite etching; printed in orange (intaglio); blue-blue gradient (stencil, relief), and yellow-yellow gradient (stencil, relief) Plate: 584 x 430 mm. (23 x 16 15/16 in.) Tate Britain: Purchased 1981, P07471 Ben Levy and Tru Ludwig are parsing Pillars, 1974, in June 2014, at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Stanley William Hayter (English, 1901-1988), Pillars, 1974. Engraving, softground etching, and open bite etching; printed in orange (intaglio); blue-blue gradient (stencil, relief), and yellow-yellow gradient (stencil, relief). Sheet: 746 x 561 mm. (29 3/8 x 22 1/16 in.); plate: 584 x 430 mm. (23 x 16 15/16 in.). Baltimore Museum of Art: Bequest of Virginia Fox, Palm Beach, Florida BMA 1988.29. Stanley William Hayter (English, 1901-1988), Pillars, 1974. Engraving, softground etching, and open bite etching; printed in orange (intaglio); blue-blue gradient (stencil, relief), and yellow-yellow gradient (stencil, relief). Plate: 584 x 430 mm. (23 x 16 15/16 in.). Tate Britain: Purchased 1981, P07471. Stencil marked in purple. Stanley William Hayter (English, 1901-1988), Pillars, 1974. Engraving, softground etching, and open bite etching; printed in orange (intaglio); blue-blue gradient (stencil, relief), and yellow-yellow gradient (stencil, relief). Plate: 584 x 430 mm. (23 x 16 15/16 in.). Tate Britain: Purchased 1981, P07471.
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Ann ShaferVarious print dealers made annual visits to the BMA’s print department, during which we were able to look through several boxes and portfolio carriers they brought. More often than not, we retained one or more works for possible acquisition. One day in 2011, a particular dealer came who always had great stuff to offer. Out of one of the medium-sized boxes came an etching by Horst Janssen. It caught my eye immediately for several reasons. One, it’s totally cool. Two, the subject is Edgar Allan Poe, who Baltimore claims as one of its own because he died here. Three, Poe’s poem The Raven is the reason Baltimore’s NFL team is called the Ravens. Four, Horst Janssen was unrepresented in the collection. Five, museum director Doreen Bolger was working on an exhibition about Poe and it seemed a great addition. Six, we had been searching for an appropriate work to bring into the collection in memory of Doreen’s mother, who had recently passed away (back then it was customary for museum members to send in some money to be put toward an acquisition for a particular person’s retirement or death). In other words, it was a no brainer. Horst Janssen was an amazingly prolific printmaker in nearly every technique (everything but screenprinting). He completed landscapes, portraits of notable people including Edgar Allan Poe, erotica, as well as a huge number of self-portraits. A glance at a sequence of the self-portraits shows every bit of his hard life, which was challenging: he never knew his father, his mother died when he was fourteen, he had multiple marriages and children, he was an alcoholic, and probably had a host of other issues. As for Poe, Janssen portrays him as a bit of a kook, or at least as a tortured soul like the artist himself. Poe’s nose seems to have broken down, his eyes are unfocused, the bags under his eyes rival his eyebrows, his hair is a fright, a bug crawls up the right-hand side of the composition, and his tie seems to be made of a crustacean of some sort. This is a portrait of a tortured artist/creative, raising all sorts of questions about artistic genius and whether one must be a bit crazy to access that kind of creativity. But that’s a debate for another day. Horst Janssen (German, 1929–1995) Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe, 1988 Color etching Sheet: 686 x 483 mm. (27 x 19 in.) Plate: 559 x 381 mm. (22 x 15 in.) Baltimore Museum of Art: Purchased in Memory of Alice Bolger with funds contributed by her Friends, Staff and Board of Trustees of The Baltimore Museum of Art, BMA 2011.70 © Horst Janssen / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn Horst Janssen (German, 1929–1995), Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe, 1988, color etching, sheet: 686 x 483 mm. (27 x 19 in.); plate: 559 x 381 mm. (22 x 15 in.), Baltimore Museum of Art: Purchased in Memory of Alice Bolger with funds contributed by her Friends, Staff and Board of Trustees of The Baltimore Museum of Art, BMA 2011.70 © Horst Janssen / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn Ann ShaferA spirit of collaboration and experimentation was at the heart of Atelier 17. Prints by Hayter and his associates are conceptually and passionately full of ideas about the human condition, dreams, mythology, war, and natural phenomena. The exceptional rigor of subject matter in these images was achieved by means of three technical innovations, which changed the course of twentieth century printmaking. First, Hayter revived the art of engraving, which he believed was uniquely suited to address issues of modern art. (Historically engraving had been used to reproduce more famous works for a large market.) Second, members of the studio pioneered the use of textiles, paper, string, wood, and other materials pressed into a softground-coated plate to gain an amazing variety of textures. Third, Hayter and his colleagues (credit to Krishna Reddy and Kaiko Moti) developed several inventive methods of printing in colors from a single plate, eliminating the need to print separate plates for each color. All of these are counterintuitive to admirers of traditions intaglio prints. While looking at the works from this studio, know that often when you think you are seeing etching, it is actually engraving. When you think you are seeing aquatint, it is really softground etching. When you see a color print, it is not the result of each color being printed from separate plates, but of being applied to a single plate. Today’s post zooms in on the second element, softground etching. Not a new technique by any means, the possibilities were greatly expanded by one of the women artists working at Atelier 17, Sue Fuller, who used bits of fabric that went beyond a simple pattern like pantyhose used to create tonal passages mimicking aquatint. Rather, she utilized lace and pieces of string to create the subject of the image itself. Fuller’s print Hen, 1945, is the clearest example of this in its use of a lace collar to form the hen. Fuller’s Cacophony, 1944, features several standing female figures, which are delineated by string. Fortunately for us, Fuller also created collages of some of her compositions, including the one for Cacophony, which is currently “on view” in an online exhibition from Susan Teller Gallery. Seeing the collage of string in the same composition really brings it together and enables viewers to imagine what is meant by softground etching. Teller also is showing the first state and the final, all of which makes clear the composition’s creation. Susan Teller is the go-to person for works by Fuller. Her breadth of knowledge and depth of stock by Fuller and others who worked at the Atelier during its New York years is legendary. The online exhibition is here. For a superb read on Sue Fuller and the many female artists working at Atelier 17, look no further than the recently published book by Christina Weyl, The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York (Yale University Press, 2019). Christina’s accomplishment with her book is tremendous and it is required reading for students of this era. Yesterday, Joanne B Mulcahy published a review of Christina’s book for Hyperallergic, beautifully summing up its contents. I suspect there may be a run on the book from online sources; I suggest if you are thinking a procuring a copy, act fast. Sue Fuller (American, 1914–2006) Hen, 1945 Engraving and softground etching Sheet: 458 x 364 mm. (18 1/16 x 14 5/16 in.) Plate: 378 x 299 mm. (14 7/8 x 11 3/4 in.) Baltimore Museum of Art: Gift of Adelyn D. Breeskin, BMA 1948.52 Sue Fuller (American, 1914–2006) Cacophony, 1944 Collage 11 x 8 inches Susan Teller Gallery, New York (courtesy the Estate of Sue Fuller and the Susan Teller Gallery, New York) Sue Fuller (American, 1914–2006) Cacophony (first state), 1944 Softground etching, 11 x 8 inches Susan Teller Gallery, New York (courtesy the Estate of Sue Fuller and the Susan Teller Gallery, New York) Sue Fuller (American, 1914–2006) Cacophony (final state), 1944 Etching, softground etching, and aquatint 11 x 8 inches Susan Teller Gallery, New York (courtesy the Estate of Sue Fuller and the Susan Teller Gallery, New York) Ann ShaferIn 2017, the museum held what is likely to be its last Baltimore Contemporary Print Fair (BCPF). The fair ran at the museum beginning in 1990 (the brainchild of Jay Fisher and Jan Howard), and the proceeds generated enabled the purchase of many prints for the collection. From the final fair, we made a handful of acquisitions, including several that I’ve written about previously. Another of those works is this print by Sascha Braunig executed at Wingate Studio, which is headed by Peter Pettengill. Not only is Peter a consummate printer, but also he and son James and daughter-in-law Alyssa are just about the nicest people you will ever meet. The work they brought to BCPF was always timely, beautifully executed, and exciting. And their sales pitches were also on point. I was honored to include them in the fair over the years.
Braunig’s subject is the human body (usually female and usually in paintings and sculpture) portrayed in a reductive but potent manner. In this print, the female figure is formed by metal-looking tubes that mimic a coat rack or corset stays (hence the title). Across the width of the image area is stretched her undergarments, which are delightfully mismatched and totally relatable. But it’s hard to know if the undergarments are effective in any way. They look like they are supporting and shielding the figure but are not really being worn. This confusion fades as one notices that the profile face of the figure is draped over the pink top in a gesture of defeat or resignation. And, just as you begin to make sense of the image, suddenly you notice that the tubes crisscross each other in an impossible way behind her eyes. For me, it comes across as a woman who is dependent on and trying to escape the confines of the stays. The push-pull tension of the piece grows as you spend more and more time engaged with it. In the end, her weariness seems a perfect metaphor for these days of social distancing and this disastrous pandemic. Sascha Braunig (Canadian, born 1983) Printed and published by Wingate Studio Stays, 2016 Four plate aquatint etching with burnishing, soft ground, and sugar lift Sheet: 988 × 711 mm. (38 7/8 × 28 in.) Plate: 733 × 481 mm. (28 7/8 × 18 15/16 in.) Baltimore Museum of Art: Women's Committee Acquisitions Endowment for Contemporary Prints and Photographs, BMA 2017.69 Ann ShaferEdward Hopper, the original social distancer. Seems like the perfect time to write about the first artist I studied in depth. Back in college, I was aiming at American paintings, mainly of the first half of the twentieth century. That I ended up a print person surprises me still since I backed into their study unintentionally. I wrote my junior thesis on Edward Hopper and his depiction of women in paintings. (Tip of the hat to my brother Ren MacNary, who helped me type it--on a typewriter.) I think I tried to approach it with a feminist lens but really, I was writing from my gut. I haven’t looked back at it in years; I don’t even know if I still have a copy, which is just as well. New York Movie, 1939, is one of my favorite Hopper paintings featuring a lone figure. I’m fascinated by artists’ depictions of the audience and the loneliness that can be felt in a room full of people. Hopper’s woman is a great example of the theme of alone in a crowd.
Like so many artists, Hopper also made work in other media as a regular part of his practice. I have a soft spot in my heart for good watercolors (I dabble, and my mother was pretty darn good at them) and Hopper painted some real beauties like The Mansard Roof, 1923. I love that he portrays Victorian domestic architecture (considered out of fashion at the time) rather than the picturesque harbor of the fishing village of Gloucester, Massachusetts, which was the focus of other artists working there in the twenties. Painted on an angle and from below, the house’s billowing yellow awnings dominate. While this is an accurate representation of the house, really it is an exercise in light and shadow. When he painted this house in 1923, Hopper was spending the first of six summers in Gloucester, was trying out watercolor for the first time, and had just met his soon-to-be-wife, Josephine Nivinson. In addition, after not selling any work for the prior ten years, this watercolor was included in an exhibition at, and subsequently purchased for the collection of, the Brooklyn Museum. Not bad for a first stab at the notoriously difficult medium of watercolor. His facility with the brush reminds me of another watercolorist who seemed to be able to whip off a gorgeous work in no time, John Singer Sargent. Because of my own experience and love of watercolors, landing a first job as a curator in a works on paper department represented a shift, but a good one. It wasn’t until much later that I made the final shift to loving prints, which are a tough sell to the public. The barriers to entry are many: the technical information is challenging and complicated, the concept of multiples is confusing, and what does “original” mean anyway. But, once we get people past a certain point, they’re in. Hence my self-identification as a print evangelist. My transition to the dark side was completed under the expert eye of Tru Ludwig. We’ve looked at thousands of prints together and he is my rock. Prior to painting in watercolor in Gloucester, Hopper began making etchings in 1915. He is said to have taught himself, but there is some thought that he learned some of the technical ins and outs from Martin Lewis (more on him in a future post). Of his seventy-some etchings (only 28 were published), my favorite is American Landscape, 1920. Formally, it is such an odd composition with its horizontality and the main subjects—a group of cows trundling over railroad tracks—occupying the lower half of the composition. Only the top of the house rises into the sky. Perhaps we could read into it that Hopper’s prevailing theme of loneliness is personified in the house that is cut off from society by the railroad tracks. Perhaps the cows are the farmer’s only link to the outside world. Who knows? But I do know that to our twenty-first century eyes, the composition looks like a film still: dramatic angle, stark lighting, mundane action portending the future. It all seems apropos in these times of pandemics, quarantines, and social distancing. Edward Hopper (American, 1882–1967) New York Movie, 1939 Oil on canvas 81.9 x 101.9 cm (32 1/4 x 40 1/8 in.) Museum of Modern Art, 396.1941 Edward Hopper (American, 1882-1967) The Mansard Roof, 1923. Watercolor over graphite 352 x 508 mm. (13 7/8 x 20 in.) Brooklyn Museum: Museum Collection Fund, 23.100 Edward Hopper (American, 1882–1967) American Landscape, 1920 Etching Sheet: 326 x 442 mm. (12 13/16 x 17 3/8 in.) Plate: 185 x 313 mm. (7 5/16 x 12 5/16 in.) National Gallery of Art: Rosenwald Collection, 1949.5.70 Ann ShaferI’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. Ann ShaferYou might be surprised to learn that Hayter's workshop is still operating in Paris at 10, rue Didot. After his death in 1988, the workshop changed its name to Atelier Contrepoint and is run by Hector Saunier, who printed many of Hayter’s late compositions. I was fortunate to be able to visit the Atelier twice, in 2014 and 2015. The first time was to meet Hector and see what the operation looked like. The second time Hayter's widow, Désirée, agreed to bring over one of his plates so Hector could ink and print it for us (there is no one better suited for this particular task). The plan was to create an online feature for the exhibition’s web site, which never happened because the show was cancelled. As usual, Ben Levy and Tru Ludwig were with me, and between the three of us, we shot a lot of video and photographed Hector and Shu-lin Chen printing Hayter’s Torso, 1986.
Désirée couldn’t find the plate she was originally thinking of, so she randomly selected Torso, which turned out to be serendipitous because Torso conceptually circles back around to the fist clenching the void discussed in an earlier post. In Torso, Hayter used stripes with inverted color variants, inking the central intaglio composition in green, red, and fluorescent orange, and with a horizontally rolled gradient of blue/yellow/green. The shape of the torso is defined by a mask that was laid down on the inked plate, blocking the rollers from depositing the blue, yellow, and green ink on the paper, producing an area of white across the center. The positive shape of the torso, described by an absence, echoes the conundrum of the untitled plate six from The Apocalypse, in which the negative space of a clenched fist is described by a positive volume. In this late print, the cognitive inquiries and accumulated techniques of four decades have come together. With the copper plate under her arm, we met Désirée on the appointed day at Atelier Contrepoint. After consulting the catalogue raisonné, they got right to work. Shu-lin set about inking the plate (intaglio) in red, fluorescent orange, and dark green in vertical stripes. Hector prepared the rainbow roll of blue, yellow, and green on a glass palette. The mask was still wrapped with the plate, so it was used as well. When Shu-lin was satisfied with her wiping job, the plate was ready for the mask’s placement and the rainbow roll. Hector completed his part and the plate was placed on the bed of the press that had been used for thousands of prints by hundreds of artists over the majority of the twentieth century. After a few unsatisfactory pulls, they printed four impressions, one of which eventually entered the Baltimore Museum of Art’s collection. I remain amazed that I got to experience the printing of one of Hayter’s plates and so appreciative of Désirée, Hector, and Shu-lin’s generosity that day. Even better, Ben Levy and Tru Ludwig were with me to witness the magic. Ann ShaferIn 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:
Ann ShaferCascade, 1959, by Stanley William Hayter, is the print I planned to use of the cover of the catalogue. One, because it's gorgeous. Two, because by 1959, Hayter is 58 and had been at it for more than thirty years and Cascade sums up so much of Hayter's thinking. During that time, he's helped Spanish refugees during the Spanish Civil War by hiding them in the studio; he's dropped everything and fled Paris as it went to war with Germany in 1939; he's created something really special in NY during the war and following (he's in NY from 1940-1950); he's watching his 16-year-old son die in 1946; he's helped hundreds of artists find their voices and discover new ways of creating intaglio prints; he, like so many other artists, has grappled with the horrors revealed by the Holocaust and bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and he's been able to return to France and purchase a vacation home in the south of France. But Hayter was also a man who never stopped thinking, working, creating, loving, living. Three, it's a great place to start talking about one of the Atelier's most important discoveries, that of simultaneous color printing (sometimes called viscosity printing, although Hayter didn't like that term since all inks have a viscosity of some sort).
Cascade, 1959, is a colorful print with an all-over composition that appears completely abstract; seemingly random drips and gestures cover the plate. Hayter, however, never accepted pure abstraction as a meaningful subject—even when his subjects defy conventional representation, his titles anchor them in the world of places and things. Cascade is one of many works inspired by the appearance of rushing water in a river near his home in the south of France. The direct autographic drawing that had been essential to Hayter’s work since he began engraving has disappeared, replaced by a variety of devices that could be set in motion by his hand, but whose outcomes were far more open to chance: leaking cans of liquid ground suspended as pendulums, and marker pens that could dribble and spray showers of thin resist. These systems recorded, rather than depicted, the behavior of liquids in motion. Cascade is an indexical print (see prior post about Trisha Brown). Despite all of the scholarly reasons we can cite for Hayter's switch from engraving lines to depict images to indexical splashes of liquid, I've always wondered if his hands were just tired and he was dealing with an onset of arthritis. I have absolutely no proof of this--it's just a thought. What's so intriguing to me about the print is figuring out how in the world a bunch of open-bit swooshes and gestures are inked to produce the colorful image. First, we need to understand that to produce a color print, normally one would create separate copper plates for each color and they would be printed in successive layers on the paper in multiple passes through the press. Instead, Hayter layered the different colors on the same, single plate, and ran it through the press once. The trick is to vary the amount of oil in each color so that they don't run together as they are applied. (This idea was developed at the Atelier by Krishna Reddy and Kaiko Moti--an example of the collaborative nature of the workshop.) Along with the print itself, I'm including an image of the zinc plate (also in Baltimore's collection, a gift from Mrs. Hayter, BMA 2014.40), and an image that shows the cross section of the plate in the order it is inked. I hope this will make some sense; we'll dig in more tomorrow. First, the plate is wiped intaglio in black so that the ink clings to the canyon walls; second, a soft roller carrying the rainbow roll of blue/pink/blue deposits color in the canyons; third, a hard roller deposits an unblended green and yellow across the plateau. This will all be made clearer tomorrow when I share the test plates we created for the exhibition to show each step in this inking process. Because these test plates are the first and only etchings I've ever made, you can imagine I had help. I am deeply, supremely indebted to Tru Ludwig and Ben Levy, who made it all happen. Tomorrow you'll see us in action. Stanley William Hayter (English, 1901-1988) Cascade, 1959 Open bite etching; printed in black (intaglio), blue-pink-blue gradient (relief), yellow, green, and blue, unblended (relief) Sheet: 794 x 584 mm. (31 1/4 x 23 in.) Plate: 489 x 489 mm. (19 1/4 x 19 1/4 in.) The Baltimore Museum of Art: Purchased as the gift of the Print, Drawing & Photograph Society, BMA 2008.112 Ann ShaferIn 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. 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.
Ann ShaferThe first time I went to the IFPDA Print Fair at the Park Avenue Armory, I didn't know anyone, wasn't traveling with anyone, and felt overwhelmed. (Art fairs can do that to a person.) At the end of a very long day, I paused in the Graphicstudio booth where soon-to-be-friend Kristin Soderqvist invited me to sit down. We were chatting about nothing in particular when I glanced over her shoulder and saw these prints by choreographer Trisha Brown. These are softground etchings with a relief roll of yellow on the surface of the plate. To create the image, Brown pirouetted on the plates that were coated with a soft, sticky ground, allowing the impression of her foot to be recorded. These are the first works that helped me understand the concept of being indexical. Simply put, instead of drawing what a foot in action looks like, the image is the product of the thing itself in action. I also love the idea of a dancer's work transferring to the wall, especially since one of Brown's famous pieces featured a person walking down the side of a building (https://trishabrowncompany.org/…/man-walking-down-the-side-…). These were the first works I acquired from a fair for the BMA's collection.
Trisha Brown (American, 1936-2017) Published by Graphicstudio; printed by Tom Pruitt (American, born 1956) Untitled Set One, No. 1–3, 2006 Sheet (each): 657 x 578 mm. (25 7/8 x 22 3/4 in.) Plate (each): 429 x 352 mm. (16 7/8 x 13 7/8 in.) Set of three softground etchings printed in black (intaglio) and yellow (relief) The Baltimore Museum of Art: Women's Committee Acquisitions Endowment for Contemporary Prints and Photographs, BMA 2007.336–338 Ann ShaferOne of my first acquisitions for the BMA was this Jim Dine print. I was working on a small show of his works from the collection and was able to purchase two of Jim's more recent prints to round out the show. The inimitable Tru Ludwig and I set off to NYC to shop at Pace Prints. I knew for sure I wanted to acquire A Side View in Florida, a massive skull derived from Grey's Anatomy, but was open about a second print. Then Raven on Lebanese Border was unveiled, and we knew instantly this was the obvious choice. It has been on view in multiple exhibitions and was my go-to in the classroom because of its Baltimore-related subject matter, experimental printing methods, and multiple techniques. It is probably the work that I got the most use out of. Jim Dine (American, born 1935) Published by Pace Editions, Inc., New York; printed by Julia D'Amario Raven on Lebanese Border, 2000 Sheet: 781 × 864 mm. (30 3/4 × 34 in.) Plate: 676 × 768 mm. (26 5/8 × 30 1/4 in.) Soft ground etching and woodcut with white paint (hand coloring) Baltimore Museum of Art: Purchased as the gift of the Print, Drawing & Photograph Society, BMA 2007.224 |
Ann's art blogA 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
February 2023
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