Page 52 - Studio International - December 1971

other cases, a whole population of art workers to would never have come into being. This gravers, but by painters, especially those with a
draw upon.) LeWitt's concept of an idea as a activity is in turn providing an educational painterly sense of the possibilities of colour
machine for the making of art, perfectly adapts input for a community that extends considerably lithography. And especially those, of course,
itself to an involvement with a lithography beyond Halifax. with an efficient outlet for their work. When
workshop, where of necessity all art products are A complete list of artists who have made Ambroise Vollard, from 1890, started publishing
adjusted to that circumstance. lithographs in the NSCAD Lithography the work of such artists as Vuillard, Denis,
Vito Acconci's Kiss-off is lithography as Workshop : Roussel and Bonnard, a commercial as well as
performance, in that the making of the Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Iain Baxter, an artistic corner had been turned; it is arguable
lithograph was a performance situation, with David Bolduc, Jack Chambers, Greg Curnoe, that the Nabis would never have had their suc-
the photographic documentation of the Francois Dallegret, Gene Davis, Jan Dibbets, cess as a group had not their printed productions
performance (of its making) as part of the image Gerald Ferguson, Dan Graham, Arthur Green, been so widely disseminated throughout Paris.
of the print. Art as an interest in the closed John Griefen, Patrick Kelly, Garry Kennedy, M Adhemar is clear and informative about such
system. In the performance an element (lipstick) Sol LeWitt, Ken Lochhead, Arthur McKay, matters, and discusses the real changes of
is used that's fundamental to the process,1 Bob MacLean, Hugh McKenzie, Guido artistic policy that were brought about by varia-
which is based upon the antipathy between Molinari, Robert Murrary, Dennis Oppenheim, tions in techniques and in selling methods.
grease and water. Lipstick is grease. Many Bruce Parsons, Philip Pearlstein, Gordon As for instance in Gauguin's adoption of the
things, technical and conceptual, work together Rayner, Robert Ryman, Michael Snow, Joyce woodcut, with its implied primitivism and
in this print. Wieland. rejection of the classical tradition; 'The great
To accommodate some artists who find that An exhibition of the lithographs is currently mistake was Greek art, no matter how beautiful
they can't deal with capital L lithography, being circulated through Canada by the it was ... it is precisely because my engraving
books were published as being consistent with Extensions Department of the National Gallery returns to the primitive days of engraving that
the workshop's objectives. Flowed, a thirty-page of Canada. Concurrently, an exhibition is being it is interesting; wood engraving has become
book by Lawrence Weiner, is a series of ten sent across the United States by the Museum sickening ... I am sure a time will come when
pieces, each translated into seven languages. of Modern Art, New York. q these woodcuts, so different from what is now
Weiner's art is communicated through language, CHARLOTTE TOWNSEND being done, will be valuable'. Such sentiments
necessitating written form, to de-emphasize its were not confined to Gauguin in the South
object value, and is only appropriate to an offset 1 Lithography is a planographic print medium in Seas; remarkably similar attitudes transposed
circumstance. which images are made on a flat grained limestone to an urban setting were held by Alfred Jarry,
surface with a greasy material. The printing is
The N.E. Thing Company's NSCAD- accomplished by chemically preparing the stone so whose marvellous 1896-8 woodcut of Ubu Roi
NETCO Connection Sept. 15—Oct. 5,1969 that the natural resistance of grease and water is is deeply revealing of the character of Jarry's
documents a telex-telecopier exchange between enhanced. During printing, the stone is dampened public and artistic impulses. Much the same
with water and rolled up with greasy ink. The ink is
Iain Baxter and the Nova Scotia College of Art repelled from the wet stone but adheres to the areas could be said of Munch's woodcuts, which were
and Design. All material in this 105-page book drawn with a greasy substance. After a sufficient indeed inspired by Gauguin's; he had seen them
amount of ink is applied, dry paper is placed on the
is in the form of an 'exhibition' to circulate at the Mollards', Gauguin's friends.
stone and then subjected to a great amount of
loco times, and theoretically never end. pressure by passing the stone through a press. The The expressionist and symbolist periods
The Workshop is, on one level, an exhibition ink is thus transferred from the stone to the paper provide most of the interest to the historian in
giving the first impression. In theory, the
programme of the working process of the M. Adhemar's book. His account of the Cubist
opportunity for an infinite number of impressions is
professional artist. It attempts to demystify that possible. era tends to degenerate into mere listings of
activity, and perhaps helps the student to avoid what artists produced when they weren't actu-
[Illustrations related to this article appear
the erroneous assumptions made from just on p. 269] ally painting or sculpting. This surely is the
encountering art products, through exhibitions danger inherent in any history of twentieth-
and magazines. I believe that the behaviour of century graphics, and one is sometimes led to
an artist working is crucial to an understanding wonder, in the slacker parts of the book,
of art for the young artist. For this reason areas whether there is really very much work of this
other than print-making benefit from the Masterpieces and potato cuts sort produced with a real sense of artistic ambi-
presence of the Workshop in the college. The phenomenal expansion of printmaking in tion. There are, of course, marvellous things;
By publishing and producing work by artists, recent years, together with the considerable one only has to think of Picasso's 1904 zinc
and further by distributing that work, the backlog of both experience and experiment in etching The Frugal Meal (greatly helped by not
college gets an insight into the fine art the field during the major movements of modern being blue, of course), of certain works by Klee,
distribution process and the whole art world art, form the rationale of two new books, Print- Grosz and Ernst; but the relentless lack of
operation, which is transmitted back to the making by Harvey Daniels (Hamlyn £2.75), and masterpieces tends to grind one down.
student. Assuming that the student will one day Twentieth Century Graphics by Jean Adhemar Harvey Daniels's large and well-illustrated
deal with, or at least be affected by that world, (Elek £2.50). book is a simple and sensible introduction to the
this would seem consistent with, and a necessary practice of printmaking, and is perhaps the best
part of a thorough art education. The experience M Adhemar begins his account with the sudden thing to have been written on the subject, one
is often sobering for the student, one might even demise of engraving, which Baudelaire, alert that always seems to be so difficult to translate
say disillusioning. as always both to novelty and to the &mode, from the realities of the workshop situation into
The college subsidises the Workshop making immediately sensed; 'Into what disrepute the cold print, ink that you can't smell any more.
it possible to deal with artists who don't have a noble art of engraving has fallen ! Where are the Mr Daniels begins right at the beginning, with
high market potential. Because of the many days when, after a new plate was announced, potato cuts, and works up to the most sophisti-
economic pressures on the college and, further, collectors used to come and put their names cated modern techniques, illustrating his points
to obtain information on the art distribution down in advance for the first proofs ?' Those with a wide range of pictures and doing what
system, the Workshop must engage in cost days seemed to have gone for ever; they had M Adhemar does not, explaining techniques at
recovery to maintain the level of production set. been put to flight by photography. Goupil dis- length in the captions. Indeed, the only tech-
Consequently NSCAD is making available to appeared, and the many pupils of Henriquel- nique for making artistic marks which is not
the public a group of lithographs that under Dupont were superseded. The printmaking of explained and illustrated would seem to be that
normal profit-oriented production circumstances the next generation was not produced by en- developed by Yves Klein. q
264