Page 61 - Studio International - June 1971

manner that one looks upon stock market quantity without the burdensome bronze casting recapitulated, in a sense, the method by which
securities. process. And plastics offered different degrees of the original source material itself was created—
An excellent example of a very large edition transparency and colour intensity that could be by the graphic route, with its technological
work is Robert Rauschenberg's offset lithograph used provocatively with the same material or overtones and implication of high yield. A
Visual Autobiography print, a twelve-foot- with contrasting materials such as paper, which photographic image could be re-routed through
deep triptych that sells for $150, mainly in turn could be imprinted, as could the plastic the photographic process once again and
because it is in an edition of two thousand. itself. In some examples, the viewer would further 'processed' through the regime of
Several years ago, this print might have been wonder when the print ended and the sculpture serigraphy. The myriad results in Pop Art, on
frowned upon as not being 'original'. And yet began, or vice versa, so compatible a blend was canvas and metal, with oil paint and baked
today, it is accepted as such by collectors and this hybrid object. Metals such as aluminium or enamel, testify to the widespread utilization of
curators and is included in the catalogue raisonné stainless steel could be exploited for their this mechanical approach.
of Rauschenberg's graphic works. The reason: varying degrees of reflectivity and contrast with The recent Warhol retrospective," mainly
there is now a far better understanding of what imprinted areas. A strange blend of several works on large canvases, can easily be mistaken
constitutes originality when an artist turns to a processes and procedures was giving birth to a for an exhibition of 'paintings'. But are they ?
specific technique for high image yield. The new form of sculpture that by its very make-up Most of them are almost totally silkscreened
biggest question that would have been raised could be made in a very large edition. This new images. Closer to the truth is that this is a large
about Visual Autobiography was the transfer of object was to be termed the 'multiple' during its print exhibition, even though there are often
images to the lithographic plates by photographic proliferation in the 1960s." The blend was one slight variations in screening from one multiple
means. But there is no reason why the artist of printmaking techniques, new industrial image to the next. Not only do we have a given
cannot and should not employ this aid when it fabrication techniques, and the concept of the work repeated several times, with or without
is the only efficient method to secure the large edition which in itself was a blend of mass- these screen-manipulated variations in colour
`graven' image for printing. The next question production attitudes that stemmed naturally or density of paint, but we often view a repetition
is one of the offset process itself. In contrast to from fabricating technology and the larger of the same image reprinted many times within
the traditional flatbed press with hand-rolled editions normally associated with printmaking, one work. This `seriality' within one work or
inking, the offset press employs rollers; pressure as distinguished from the much smaller editions stretched out over many is evidently a
is exerted and ink distributed on a more for cast bronze sculpture. preoccupation among artists with time and
mechanical basis. Prejudice against the offset The new aesthetics of abstract art, with its change variants that inevitably led them to
press has been overcome in avant-garde circles minimalist and hard-edge approaches, and its graphics and the multiple and ultimately to the
by understanding of the precise pressure and exploitation of optical-retinal dynamics, the open-ended production concept.
inking controls that are built into advanced experiences gained, for example, from A flock of younger artists, worldwide, have
versions of these presses. The third question assemblage, from Constructivism, and the since about 1965 laid down their brushes,
affecting originality is the size of the edition Bauhaus practices and philosophy, all philosophically vowing never to pick them up
itself: is there a point in the number of contributed to the sophistication and momentum again. Comprising a movement called
impressions when the print ceases to be an of this new movement (for it deserves to be `conceptual', these artists claim to have
original ? Does the image's originality sort of called that) after World War II. Artists had abandoned traditional aesthetic considerations
fade conceptually into a banal common object dreamed of such flexibility and several were in favour of text works. Although many of them
by this 'mass production' ? Of course, this is pioneers, in experiments made earlier in this still use photographic and diagrammatic
mere superstition, for as long as the printed century." The multiple could now contain a material, some have completely rejected the
image retains its faithfulness to the 'bon a tirer' mass-produced 'found' object or objects, could pictorial." But all of them use the graphic
that the artist established as the model for the consist of two or more parts, could be a 'system' process, be it photography, offset or Xerox—all
printer, the work is original. Certainly, the to be arranged or assembled by the owner, and of which have an open-ended production
thousands of Daumier lithographic impressions could even employ sound or project other potential. This capability is compatible with
are original—and the tens of thousands or images (becoming truly multi-media). A new their philosophic stand: the art object, although
perhaps millions of impressions from the wood form of flexibility in the making and presenting recently freed of the tyranny of subject matter
engravings of Posada, the amazingly prolific of the sculptural object had been developed, and narrative, and thus having its own
printmaker and 'artist of the people' of the bringing with it an Arcadian potential for mass, `language', is still, by the nature of its being
Mexican revolution, are also original. The works low-cost editions or, ideally, a complete open- handcrafted, precious, and experienced in an
of both these artists are art in the fullest sense ended production system where, as in Dürer's aggressive art context (e.g. the museum,
and are icons of social tempest and indignation. day, demand or consumption was the sole collectors' walls); it cannot reach the receiver's
In the example of Rauschenberg, the creative determinant. mind unencumbered or unprejudiced by this
process, employing what this writer described The loosening-up effect on the size of art aura and loose associations coming from
as 'progressive collage'," is likewise edition is already beginning to have its tell-tale `art interpretation'.
progressively photographed and printed— effects or feedback on traditionally cast sculpture These artists have therefore turned to the
collage element by collage element—until the editions—these are also, in certain instances, printed word for self-explication, and for one-
completed image emerges at the last print cycle. being issued in editions far larger than the to-one communication with the receiver, and
Growing out of the intense activity in almost rigid maximum of twelve casts that has have published their works via offset or Xerox
printmaking in this century came innovative been the practice since the nineteenth century. for direct distribution.
experiments such as with deep intaglio etching, Even painting, the mainstay of the unique'1, Although these processes are very low-cost
which produces high relief prints, and the and the primary medium of artists for centuries, methods of printing, and the images themselves
utilization of plastics and metals for imprinting has developed certain unmistakable are highly reproducible, some of these artists
with the serigraphy process. Vacuum or characteristics of the multiple. With the advent nevertheless declare a given image as unique'1.
hydraulic forming of plastic, where the material of Pop Art, and the employment of so-called This might appear rather paradoxical for a
is pressed to the shape of the form beneath it, banal subject matter and documentary material, work created solely by photographic printing,
could produce with hard material what the mechanical processes of phototransfer and Xerox or other forms of mass media—all
printmaker's press had partly achieved with silkscreen imprint have been the dominant associated with non-precious multiples. The
malleable paper. Thus was born a form of relief means of execution. The desired effect could artist, though, as creator of the image, holds the
sculpture that could be produced in large be best achieved by this method, one that prerogative of whether this image should be

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