european
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Münchner Künstlerhaus-Stiftung/
München II Lithotage 2012 presented
an impressive list of invited lecturers.
Among them, art writer
(e n d e g r a )
Richard Noyce, UK.
for development and education in
printmaking
reports from
Read more of Richard Noyce on his site:
http://www.artwriter.co.uk
All rights reserved by the author.
A PRINT? WHAT’S THAT?
Richard Noyce (for Lithotage 2012, München, 1st
September 2012)
I am not sure what printmaking is anymore, well
not exactly. I write books and articles about
printmaking, I have travelled widely to talk about
it, to meet artists and printmakers in the studios and
workshops and to see exhibitions of printmaking;
I have attended printmaking conferences and
participated in juries for printmaking competitions.
But I can no longer be certain what printmaking is,
not exactly. This admission might perhaps come
as a surprise, or might even raise questions about
my suitability as a person to write, speak and sit
in judgment on the subject. I have to say from the
outset that I have not gone through some sort of
dark night of the soul, neither have I experienced a
crisis of conscience - far from it. Instead I believe
that, with the continuing and rapid evolution of the
contemporary visual arts, printmaking is a stronger
and more varied art form now than ever before. But
it continues to shape-shift with alacrity and to take
on numerous alternative forms. And, as always,
the basic human need to attempt to define things
and nail them down has led to the use of the term,
‘alternative printmaking’. And, as always, this has
led to muddier rather than clearer waters.
So, the first question should be, ‘alternative to
what?’ and I ask this for a very good reason. An
alternative route between two places will still get
you from point A to point B, will cover different
ground and perhaps take more or less time, offering
different experiences along the way, but still getting
you to the same destination. In a similar way the
observational and imaginative power of the artist,
mobilised through her or his choice of alternative
mediums and materials, leads to the creation of an
original work of art that can be shared with others.
Despite the efforts of those who set themselves up
as being the ‘art establishment’ at various times in
the past, there have always been artists who have
defied the establishment, taking the various visual
art forms in new and often extreme directions. The
richness of the history of the global visual arts scene
is in many ways the result of the work of the rebels
rather than the traditionalists. Printmaking has for
many centuries offered alternative ways of making,
and being alternative is nothing new: neither is
the historically undeniable fact that printmaking
has always been a difficult subject to define or
nail down. Many among the ranks of Printmakers,
despite the image that some choose to present to
the world, are revolutionary, sometimes anarchic,
and choose ways of working that are different, even
radically so. What is more, Printmakers have a long
history of questioning the status quo and shaking
a fist at established society. In short, ‘Alternative
Printmaking’ has a very long and honourable history
of making work that is different, challenging,
revolutionary and therefore ‘alternative’, (even if
that term was not used) to what went before and
had become accepted as the orthodox form of the
medium.
Paul Croft, a noted British printmaker and Tamarind
Master Printer who also teaches Printmaking at
Aberystwyth University in Wales, organised a
well-received exhibition in 2007 with the title,
‘Stone-Plate-Grease-Water’ which was shown at
the Museum of Modern Art in Machynlleth, and
later in London. This was a very international
exhibition that demonstrated beyond question the
versatility of lithography. After the official opening
I followed two smartly dressed older Welsh ladies handbags and hats much in evidence in the middle
of that Sunday in chapel-strewn Mid Wales - as
they viewed the exhibition. They stopped at the
first work and declared it most emphatically to be
a watercolour - and then looked at the title card
and exclaimed that it was a lithograph. The next
work was hailed by them as a beautiful drawing and once again they expressed surprise that it was
a lithograph. After repeating a similar dialogue for
the next few works, one turned to the other and said,
‘Ah, so they’re all lithographs! What a versatile
medium, we must find out more!‘ and went to buy
a catalogue. Lithography gained two new fans that
day, and many more during the run of the exhibition.
As people who are connected with printmaking, we
are not too surprised by this, but isn’t it wonderful
what can be achieved, given the right situation?
Printmaking is certainly an alternative means of
creating an image to that offered by Painting or
Drawing. While it lacks the immediacy of a pencil
mark on paper, or the directness of a brush stroke
on canvas, it offers one crucial difference, and that
is the inherent possibility of creating a reproducible
image, one that can be produced in an edition, with
each print being almost precisely identical to the
others in the edition. It is true that paintings and
drawings can now be reproduced in astonishing
detail by the ‘giclée’ process, which can be very
deceptive. On a visit to Vienna, a few years ago,
I visited the Albertina museum with the ambition
of seeing their collection of works by Albrecht
Dürer. I walked into the hushed gallery and saw
his masterpieces, including, ‘The Young Hare‘ and
‘The Great Piece of Turf’, hanging on the soft red
walls. From a distance of a few feet they looked
as wonderful as I expected them to, until I looked
more closely at the labels and read that the originals
were on exhibition elsewhere and that what I was
looking at were digital reproductions, albeit of an
extremely high quality! Paying homage, in this
case, turned to disappointment. ‘Giclée’ prints are
essentially photographic reproductions, and lack
the subtleties and nuances that art lovers look for.
As an aside, the French verb ‘gicler’ from which
the printing term is derived means ‘to squirt’ and
is more colloquially applied to the means by which
male cats mark out their territory! But, as opposed
to such photographic reproductions, true prints
offer something different, something distinct, and
something far more complex, with that essence
that comes from the process by which an image is
transferred from a matrix onto a surface, generally
paper, resulting in a numbered edition of prints. I
will turn later to the problematic area of the matrix
in digital and other forms of printmaking, and for
the present will remain with this image > matrix >
paper > numbered edition process.
The generally agreed lineage of printmaking in
this sense is from stone engraving and relief, to
wood engraving and relief, to etching and metal
engraving (including mezzotint), to lithography
and planography, to screen-printing or serigraphy,
and now to digital mediums. The evolution of this
lineage occupied several thousand years, and is
closely reflective of the process of the evolution
of technology, with which printmaking has always
been closely allied. Once again, the present
symbiotic (although some would say incestuous)
relationship between printmaking and technology is
nothing new.
All the traditional processes, with the exception of
screen printing, require that the artist, or the block,
plate, or stone maker, produces the image in reverse
on a matrix that is then prepared and inked according
to the technique being used, before being placed on
the bed of a press so that the image can be transferred
under pressure to a sheet of paper, or by the simpler
process of the application of hand pressure using
a baren, or the back of a wooden spoon. Prints
made in all these ways have a particular allure to
collectors and art lovers - as well as to artists. There
is something about the processes by which the ink is
transferred to the paper that gives traditional prints
their special quality, their attraction, and their worth:
or to use a word in the same sense in which Walter
Benjamin used it, their ‘aura’.
Prints made within this spectrum of techniques,
and combination or variation of techniques, do
not necessarily all conform to a uniform style or
approach, or a tightly defined technique. There are
further alternatives within each of the conventionally
accepted forms of traditional printmaking, and
such alternatives have been developed throughout
the long history of this art form and across many
countries. In fact, it is the persistent presence of
a willingness to experiment with techniques and
materials, and to develop alternative forms, that has
served printmaking so very well, giving the art form
a vitality and range of variations that continue to
intrigue and amaze. It is not surprising therefore that
it is a visual art form that has become so widespread
in world culture as to be endemic. And it starts with
something very simple, something that is commonly
known among children and those who teach them
in many parts of the world: the humble print made
by slicing a potato or other vegetable in half, then
carving lines, or holes, or patterns, in the cut surface
before dipping it in ink, or paint, and pressing it
against paper - there it is, a print, capable of being
reprinted over and over, of being combined with
other images, other colours! This is printmaking in
its simplest form, reduced to its essence.
Beyond this simple form printmaking techniques
become steadily more complex, involving
processes, techniques, materials and technologies
that, taken together present a bewildering range of
alternative choices and permutations for an artist.
There are some practitioners of printmaking who
get very hung up on working within this range of
alternatives, becoming expert in one or another of
the techniques they choose. The knowledge and
experience they build up is of course valuable to
those with whom they share it: teaching, whether
formal or informal, has always been very much part
of printmaking - the master/apprentice relationship
still has real value and the relationship between
the artist and the master printmaker has become
one of the core strengths of printmaking. But,
valuable and fascinating though it may be, is the
development of a skill in the use of a technique all
there is, and is this enough? I am reminded of the
reference to medieval theologians who, it is said,
argued endlessly about how may angels could dance
on the head of a pin: intellectually and spiritually
absorbing, no doubt, but in the end utterly irrelevant
to the business of everyday life. Thus it is with
prints that present a masterly skill in technique but
offer no deeper resonance, no contemplation of the
human condition, or no indication of the relationship
of the artist to the world in which she or he lives. If
printmakers wish to make such prints and collectors
wish to buy them, then that is of course OK - but
it is never going to be more than a transaction of
limited lasting worth.
***
At this point the important question arises concerning
the problem of the value of precise definition. I have
a degree of wariness, of scepticism even, about the
value of definition when applied to what a person is,
or does. As human beings we are far too complex to
be rigidly defined, and such exclusive description
tends too often to miss the subtleties and oddities
that mark us as individuals. So, the question arises:
do you want to be defined as a printmaker, or even
more tightly as an etcher, lithographer or wood
engraver, or do you want to be known as a human
being who is also an artist who happens to use
printmaking techniques in the making of art? And if
so, what do you mean by the definition you choose?
This is not intended to be pedantic, but to go to the
core of what it is that we do.
So, how does the dictionary help? The Concise
Oxford Dictionary (1982 edition) defines ‘art’
(firstly) as: ‘skill, especially human skill as opposed
to nature; ability in skilful execution as an object
in itself; cunning; imitative or imaginative skill
applied to design, as in paintings, architecture, etc.’
It also defines ‘artist’ (firstly) as ‘one who practices
one of the fine arts, especially painting’. Curiously,
the word ‘printmaker’ is not defined, at least not in
the 1982 edition! But the current online edition of
the Oxford Dictionary defines ‘printmaker’ as ‘a
person who makes pictures or designs by printing
them from specially prepared plates or blocks.’
So, following this definition strictly, someone who
makes prints by other means such as screen-printing
or digital processes is not a ‘printmaker’. This will
come as welcome relief to those in the traditional
printmaking community who have only recently got
round to accepting, albeit it grudgingly, that screen
printing might perhaps be a valid form, and who
still consider digital prints to be well outside the
limits of acceptability, if not actually the work of
the powers of darkness! All of which comes back
to ‘Alternative Printmaking’ and what it can be said
to mean.
Over the past decade or more I have explored
contemporary printmaking and the international
printmaking community through journeys to a
number of very different countries and also through
the medium of the Internet. My two most recent
book titles both incorporate the word ‘edge’,
and reading those books will reveal some of the
complexities and paradoxes that this word entails.
What is certain however is that contemporary
printmaking is in very good health, that it continues
to expand and diversify and, importantly, that it
continues to defy exact and scientific definition.
All of these qualities offer artists and students an
extremely wide range of possible techniques and
approaches, as well as many different opportunities
for sharing the results. Further than this, the number
of international conferences, exhibitions and events
that are generated by contemporary print continues
to increase. I suggest that there is no other single
visual arts form in which those who produce the
work, write about it, or collect it, can have such
a wide range of ways in which to get together at
events such as ‘Lithotage’, to look, to learn and,
importantly, to share ideas. For all these reasons
contemporary printmaking continues to exert a
strong fascination in a growing number of people.
As the notion of the print and printmaking is
unpacked a whole new set of questions arises. Can
an image produced through screen printing, in which
the intermediary image is a stencil transferred by
hand or photographic means the right way round
(and not reversed) onto a soft fabric, be a print?
What about a stencil print applied to the wall of
a building, or a roadway in a city? What about a
digital image on paper, or on a fabric or plastic
surface? What about a digital image produced on
vinyl and applied to the side of a vehicle? Or an
image produced on perforated vinyl the size of a
building and applied to its windows? Or an image
transferred onto a three dimensional ceramic object?
Or a series of images produced in a digital sequence
and projected on a wall, or on the exterior of a
building? What indeed about a digital photograph
- either as an image created within the camera,
or in which the image has been subsequently
electronically manipulated - can this be considered
a valid form of printmaking? Finally, what about a
series of digital images produced as a slideshow,
or even as a film, and copied to be distributed on
CD, or DVD, or as an electronic file - can this be
considered as a print? After all, we are used to
speaking about ‘photographic prints’ or ‘prints of a
film’. All of these, and other new forms and hybrids,
are becoming increasingly accepted as printmaking
on an extended scale, and many of them are now
routinely accepted in international competitions and
exhibitions of printmaking. Each of them is, at least,
a visual image that can be reproduced through one
of the broad variety of printmaking techniques, and
each of them has a beginning in the eye and mind
of the artist, an intermediate stage in the means of
production, and a final result that can be viewed by
others.
As a side note: The appearance of photography
in the mid-19th century signalled – it was claimed
- the death of painting. Since then, in various
contexts and at various times, photography has
been the ‘enfant terrible’ of the art world, being
accused, vilified, praised, ignored, celebrated
and finally, one hopes, assimilated. Consider, for
example, this quotation: ‘When photography was
invented artists thought it would bring ruin to art
but it is shown that photography has been an ally
on art, an educator of taste more powerful than a
hundred academies of Design would have been…’
If asked to guess the date of the quotation, few
would get it right – but it dates back to an article
on, ‘Photography and Chromolithography’ in ‘The
Philadelphia Photographer’ in April 1868. And yet,
painting is still not dead, refusing to die. Closer to
the present time the rise of digital print has caused
a similar crisis – for those who like to create and
maintain crisis as a means of validating the status
quo, and their part in it. The fact remains that digital
photography has become completely embedded in
the contemporary lives of at least half the people on
this planet, and cannot be ignored.
However, what of monoprints or monotypes or
unique prints on paper? Can these be considered
as prints since they are the result of the use of
printmaking processes, with the image prepared on
a surface, to be transferred in reverse on to paper
by the application of pressure? The answer, so far,
has to be yes, but it is not intended to produce such
works in an edition - they are one-offs, they are
original works of art, so where does this leave them,
and what are they? There are so many questions
and so few answers; and all of them arising from
the extraordinary range of ways in which artists in
their search for expression can utilise printmaking
processes, producing their work in editions and
making it available to larger numbers of people at
prices that more people can afford.
In my explorations, both real and virtual, I find that
the range of alternatives is growing. So much so
in fact that it is tempting to say that all forms of
printmaking are alternative! But, on the assumption
that engraving, etching and lithography are the
conventional forms, being based on the reversed
image > matrix > paper process, what can be
included in the term, ‘alternative printmaking’? I
would suggest, for a start, screen printing, and its
street art relative the stencil or ‘szablon’; I would
add in monoprints and monotypes; and of course
digital prints, as well as the newly emerging form of
3D digital objects, not forgetting time-based digital
products such as photography, film and animation.
In addition to this I would include all forms of
printmaking, both traditional and alternative, in
which there are unusual combinations of techniques,
the application to unusual materials, prints made at
extremely large (or an extremely small) scale or
incorporated into installations. In all of these forms
there is the element of reproducibility, or at least the
potential for this. That is for a beginning - there are
no doubt other alternatives - but it is an impressive
list nonetheless.
The matrix, as generally and conventionally
understood, is a physical and material intermediary
between the artist’s idea and the final image. The
mystique of the matrix is central to the conventional
and historical wisdom of printmaking. In exhibitions
in which the matrix, be it plate, block or stone, is
exhibited alongside the print, it can serve a most
useful object lesson to those looking at it - the
relationship between matrix and print becomes
instantly clear. But how to consider the image applied
to the fabric of the screen, or the stencil, or the
digital file stored on a computer hard drive, or even
the digital photograph? Can these be considered as
an extension of the idea of the matrix? Or is the true
matrix always within the imagination of the artist?
(One could, at this point, think about the role of the
imagination in the films in ‘The Matrix Trilogy’…)
But in terms of printmaking, is the matrix located
within that creative nexus, that intellectual point
of decision through which the broad conceptual
thinking about the work in the mind of the artist is
brought to a point of focus, so that it can be turned
into a physical matrix by the tools and materials
in the artist’s hands, or into a virtual matrix on a
hard drive through the camera, scanner, tablet or
keyboard that the artist uses, and beyond that used
to be reproduced in physical or virtual form? If this
more inclusive definition is used then the whole
world of possibilities in printmaking is opened
wide. And that is where it all starts to become one of
the most fascinating forms of contemporary human
expression.
To illustrate some aspects of the current variety
of work that artists are making within the broader
definition of printmaking, I will show a selection
of images of work by a few of the artists I am
including in my forthcoming book, ‘Printmaking
Off the Beaten Track’, which is due for publication
in September 2013. The book will feature 56 artists
from 25 countries along a broad arc from Indonesia
to Finland, via the Middle East, and one or two other
countries. ‘Off the Beaten Track’ refers to places that
are rarely if ever featured strongly in exhibitions
and writing about contemporary printmaking, but
which are nonetheless places in which interesting
work is being done. The selection of artists, and
through that the list of countries, is idiosyncratic,
and largely as a result of my personal subjective
choice. Among the artists are some who continue
to live in the countries of their birth, and others
who for political or personal reasons have chosen
to live elsewhere. A number of countries are places
where there has been, or still is, conflict in the form
of civil or international war, or disruption following
the ending of communist rule, or conflict resulting
from the friction between the growing influence of
fundamentalist faiths and the conflicting desires
for modernity. The beaten track, like the edge, is a
transitory place undergoing constant redefinition.
(To whet your appetite for the book, some images:)
And, in conclusion:
Printmaking – let it never be forgotten – is art, and
contemporary printmaking is contemporary art.
Printmaking is not something else, it feeds on and
feeds the same things as other forms of visual art.
It is just another medium through which someone’s
ideas, passions, fears, desires and emotions are
expressed in a visible form to be shared with others.
I believe that Printmaking continues to change with
changing circumstances and changing technology, as
it has done for centuries. I believe also that we are in
a most fortunate position; one in which all mediums
of printmaking, whether traditional or digital, used
singly or in combination, can be equally valid,
and equally respected. Contemporary printmaking
is no longer content with staying in the obscure
corners into which some commentators pushed it
in the past, and in which some printmakers were
content to let it stay. It is a vibrant and continually
evolving set of mediums that defies safe definition.
Paradoxically, while much printmaking continues
to take place at the edges, where there is a greater
sense of risk and danger, it is also moving resolutely
towards the centre of the contemporary visual arts.
I believe that in the coming years printmaking will
no longer be seen as a poor relation, but will be front
and centre where it can do what it has always been
good at doing - celebrating the creative potential of
artists all over the world, revealing the deeper truths
in society, and asking those questions that need
constantly to be asked, but which many shy away
from. ‘Who are we, where do we come from, how
should we relate to others, and where are we going?’
It will, I believe, be a fascinating experience.
© Richard Noyce
Wales, July-August 2012