Tag: lithography

Jim Dine

Jim Dine, The “Pinocchio Paintings”

Forty years ago, Jim Dine acquired an effigy of Pinocchio that evoked in him some of the emotion he felt upon seeing the Walt Disney film as a child. The figure of the marionette that becomes a boy did not turn up in Dine’s own work until more than 30 years later, and in those paintings and drawings it was a stand-in for the artist himself, communicating some of Dine’s own youthful terror.

Kelly Fearing

Six Etchings by Kelly Fearing

Kelly Fearing was one of the first Texas painters to reject the bluebonnets, cowboys and secondhand Impressionism that had been the mainstays of the state’s artistic output since the end of the 19th century. Along with the other members of the Fort Worth Circle, Fearing introduced Texas to European Modernists like Picasso and Miró. He helped introduce the Texas population to abstraction, surrealism and cubism, all new forms of art not previously promoted in the area.

Even in the 1940s, Fearing lived as an openly gay man. Like the later work of gay artist David Hockney, Fearing’s subjects were often pretextual reasons to introduce the subject of homoeroticism into the contemporary art world. One example of this is his 1950 “Male Bather”, an emerging, transitional work influenced by the work of Paul Klee, which exemplifies tthe  theme used by many artists of the time.

In a 2000 interview, Fearing said in reply to a question about the Fort Worth Circle: “We were considered way out at the time. But we were just doing what we liked.” This individualism made Fearing into one of Texas’ most important Modernists.

John Singer Sargent

 

John Singer Sargent, “Study of a Young Man (Seated)”, 1895, Lithograph, Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University

In October 1895, Galerie Rapp in Paris organized one section of a large exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts that marked the hundredth anniversary of the invention of lithography by Aloys Senefelder. The British printer Frederick Goulding, who had developed an improved transfer paper for lithography, was involved in the show, and he encouraged Sargent and other London artists to participate, even offering to supply them with materials and print their work.

Sargent created six lithographs at this time; he selected the above print for the Paris exhibition, which moved on in November to the Rembrandt Gallery in London. This is the most developed of composition, and demonstrates the artist’s progressive engagement with tone. To form strong highlights falling across the sitter’s shoulders and some of the drapery folds, portions of the paper have been left in reserve, in a manner that echoes Sargent’s brilliant handling of watercolor.

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, “Figure Reflected in Mirror”, 1977, Color Etching on Arches Paper, 36.5 x 27 Inches

Francis Bacon was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his emotionally charged raw imagery. He produced series of images of popes, crucifixions, and portraits of close friends, with abstracted figures sometimes isolated in geometrical cages, set against flat, nondescript backgrounds.

Bacon said that he saw images ‘in series’; and his work typically focuses on a single subject for sustained periods, often in diptych or triptych formats. His work which numbers almost six hundred paintings, including some he destroyed, can be described as variations on single motifs. These include the 1930s ‘Furies’ and the bio-morphs influenced by Picasso; the 1940s male heads in rooms; the 1950s screaming popes, the later 1950s animals and lone figures,;the  crucifixions done in the 1960s; the later 1960s portraits of friends; the sea-portraits in the 1970s; and the more technical 1980s paintings with the cooler palettes.

Sascha Schneider

Sascha Schneider “Mammon and His Slave”, 1896, Wood Engraving, 24 x 32 cm, Private Collection of Hans-Gerd Röder

Born on September 21, 1870, in St. Petersburg, Sascha Schneider was a painter, printmaker, and sculptor. He enrolled in the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts in 1889, and in 1903 he met Karl May, the popular author of Western novels featuring Winnetou and Old Shatterhand, which led to Schneider becoming the cover illustrator for many of May’s books.

In 1904 Schneider became professor at the Weimar Saxon-Grand Ducal Art School . When his partner, the painter Hellmuth Jahn, threatened to expose his homosexuality, at that time a criminal offense, in an attempt to blackmail him, Schneider fled to Italy, where homosexuality was not a crime. After traveling through the Caucasus and living in Leipzig for a short time, he went back to Italy to live in Florence, returning to Germany upon the outbreak of World War I. He later co-founded a body-building institute called Kraft-Kunst, where some of the models for his work trained. He died of complications from diabetes in 1927 in Swinemünde.

Schneider knew Czech poet and writer Jiří Karásek from Berlin and Prague, where he taught on occasion. While Freud’s idea of anxiety being rooted in the repressed unconscious was one source of inspiration, no doubt Schneider’s greatest influence was the symbolist artist Max Klinger, whose work Schneider recast into his own original conception of Decadence. All but forgotten for decades, the past few years have seen a revival of interest in his work, with a major exhibition held in the US in 2013.

The Wolf of Chazes

Artist Unknown, “The Wolf of Chazes Displayed at Versailles”, 1765, Engraving, Département Réserve des Livres Rares, Paris

Text:

“Représentation de la Bête du Gévaudan qui a fait tant de ravages dans ce pays et dans l’Auvergne, laquelle a été tuée le 20 septembre dernier par M. Antoine, chevalier de Saint Louis, seul porte-arquebuse de sa Majesté et présentée le 1er octobre au Roy et à la famille royale par M. Antoine de Beauterne fils. Pour que cet animal se conserve dans son naturel, on l’a disséqué, embaumé et attaché sur une planche tel qu’il est ici représenté.

À Paris, chez Mondhare, rue Saint-Jacques. Gravure extraite du recueil factice de pièces relatives à la bête du Gévaudan, formé par Gervais-François Magné de Marolles.”

“Representation of the Beast of Gévaudan, which has wreaked so much havoc in this country and in Auvergne, was killed on September 20th by M. Antoine, Chevalier de Saint Louis, the only harquebus holder of his Majesty, and presented on the 1st October to Roy and the royal family by M. Antoine de Beauterne fils. To keep this animal in its natural state, it has been dissected, embalmed and attached to a board as shown here.

In Paris, at Mondhare, rue Saint-Jacques. Engraving extracted from the fictitious collection of parts relating to the beast of Gévaudan, formed by Gervais-François Magné de Marolles.”

Macbeth

Artist Unknown, “Macbeth, Banquo, and the Three Witches”, 1803, Published by John and Josiah Boydell, London

In 1789, the publisher John Boydell opened the Shakespeare Gallery, an exhibition space in London’s Pall Mall showcasing paintings that exclusively represented scenes from Shakespeare’s plays. The Gallery was a bid to revive historical painting in contemporary British art, a genre thought to be of great public benefit because of its morally instructive messages. The works of Shakespeare had become very popular and integral to British identity by the middle of the eighteenth century.

The Gallery opened in May 1789 with an exhibition of thirty-four canvases by eighteen British artists. By 1796 there were eighty-four canvases exhibited, along with dozens of smaller paintings. Once the exhibition was mounted, reproductive engravings of the paintings produced by an in-house team of forty-six printmakers were available to purchase, either as a large portfolio of ninety prints or as a luxurious illustrated edition of the plays.

The above “Macbeth, Banquo, and the Three Witches” was an illustration from a bound 1803 portfolio by Boydell Publishers entitled “A Collection of Prints, from Pictures Painted for the Purpose of Illustrating the Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, by the Artists of Great Britain”.

M. C. Escher

M. C. Escher, “Snakes”, 1969, Woodcut Print, 49.8 x 44.7 cm,

“Snakes” is a woodcut print by the Dutch artist Maurits Cornelia Escher. First printed in July of 1969, the print was Escher’s last before his death on March 27, 1972.

Maurits Cornelia Escher was a Dutch graphic artist who made mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. In 1918, he studied at the Technical College of Delft. Escher then attended Haarlem School of Architecture and Decorative Arts from 1919 to 1922, studying drawing and the art of woodcut printing.

Escher’s work is inescapably mathematical. This has caused a disconnect between his full-on popular fame and the lack of esteem with which he has been viewed in the art world. His originality and mastery of graphic techniques are respected, but his works have been thought too intellectual and insufficiently lyrical by critics. However, Escher’s narrative themes and his use of perspective have made his work highly attractive to the public.

M. C. Eschers woodcut “Snakes” depicts a disc made up of interlocking circles that grow progressively smaller towards the center and towards the edge. There are three snakes laced through the edge of the disc. The image is printed in three colours: green, brown and black. The use of snakes and the color palette of this composition recalls an earlier 1960 woodcut by the artist,”Möbius Strip I”.

The print haa rotational symmetry based on the number three, comprising a single wedge-shaped image repeated three times in a circle. This means that it was printed from three blocks that were rotated on a pin to make three impressions each. Close inspection of the print reveals the central mark left by the pin.

In several of his earlier works, Escher explored the limits of infinitesimal size and infinite number by actually carrying through the rendering of smaller and smaller figures to the smallest possible sizes. In “Snakes”, the infinite diminution of size and infinite increase in number is only suggested in the finished work.

Swedish pianist Fredrik Ullén used the “Snakes” print for the cover art of his 1998 album entitled “György Ligeti: Complete Piano Music, Volume 2”.

Robert Del Tredici

Robert Del Tredici, “Ubiquitous”, 2014, Mixed Media Print on Metallic Paper, New Bedford Whaling Museum

Robert Del Tredici started out as a pen-and-ink landscape-maker in the Marin county hills of California. His first big project was a series of 100 illustrations to “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville. He then took up street photography, made portraits of film-makers, and, with the near-meltdown at the Three Mile Island, started documenting the nuclear age.

His first book, “The People of Three Mile Island”, published in 1980, led to a 1987 book written about the entire US nuclear weapons complex, “At Work in the Fields of the Bomb”. Following its publication, he traveled to the former Soviet Union and photographed nuclear towns and facilities there.

Del Tredici is the founder of The Atomic Photographers Guild, an international collective of photographers dedicated to making visible the nuclear age. Since 2001 he has been creating collages depicting the era of the War on Terror, a series he calls “Evolution Pages 9/11”.

In the mixed media print “Ubiquitous”, artist Del Tredici captions an image of the phases of the moon, with Moby Dick breaching in between them. A quotation from Melville’s novel “Moby Dick” about ghostly sightings of the whale is written at the bottom left.

“One of the wild suggestions coming to be linked with white whale in the minds of the superstitously inclined was the unearthly conceit that Moby Dick was ubiquitous, that he had actually been encountered in opposite latitudes at one and the same instant of time.”

Dorothy Hardy

Mabel Dorothy Hardy, “Odin and Ferris”, 1909, Lithograph

This image is one of her three illustrations from “Myths of the Norsemen from the Eddas and Sages” written by H. A. Guerber and published by George G, Harrap and Company, London, a now defunct publisher of high quality illustrated books.

Born in 1868, Mabel Dorothy Hardy was an illustrator who was known for her popular equestrian prints. She also did a series of black and white animal illustrations for Strand Magazine which appearred in  their first issue of January 1891. Dorothy Hardy died in 1937.