The
Frick Collection in New York Presents
Goya's Last Works
Here
comes Goya again, surprising us, moving us, humbling us, humanizing
us. This time it's at The Frick Collection
in New York until May 14. This is the
first exhibit in the United States to concentrate exclusively
on the final phase of the artist's long career, primarily on the
period of his voluntary exile in Bordeaux from 1824 to 1828. The
exhibition presents more than fifty objects including paintings,
miniatures on ivory, lithographs, and drawings borrowed from public
and private European and American collections. This is a privileged
look at the last works of an artist who, by his own admission,
"never stopped learning." Read
curators Susan Grace Galassi and Jonathan Brown's fascinating
and informative commentary.
Dan
Welden on Solarplate
Maureen
recently ran across a DVD called Printmaking
in the Sun, a solarplate demo film made by American
printmaker, master printer and educator, Dan Welden, based in
Sag Harbor, N.Y. She was so taken with the excellence of the film
and the possibilities it opened up for seemingly painless less-toxic
printmaking that she contacted Welden and proposed an interview.
Here's their conversation, accompanied
by some of Welden's striking solarplate images.
John
Shaw Sends Us a Link to a Washington Post Review of a Photography
Show at the National Gallery of Art
Our
friend, John Shaw, from Printhead.net
sends us this Washington
Post clipping on Photographic
Discoveries: Recent Acquisitions,"
a pleasure of a picture show at the National Gallery of Art in
Washington, D.C., open until July 30, 2006.
This
show, more than mere "Recent Acquisitions" represents
the consolidation of this important museum's commitment to photography
as an art form on the same level as painting. Why should a site
dedicated to printmaking highlight this fact? Simple. What is
photography if not "printmaking?"
The
National Gallery, at Fourth Street and Constitution Avenue NW,
is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m.
to 6 p.m. Sundays. For information, call 202-737-4215. Admission
is free.
Art
on Paper Asks: "Is Printmaking Dead?"
"Is
printmaking dead?" asks Art
on Paper, the N.Y. magazine whose name says it all. "Of
course not," they add, "but it has been subsumed into
a larger category of contemporary art, one that some curators
and critics are calling 'poly-graphics.' The term encompasses
everything from lithographs and woodcuts, to posters, billboards,
graphic novels, installation, and web design."
This
is the first time we've seen the term "poly-graphics"
and, though it sounds a bit clinical, it's probably necessary
at this juncture in the history of printmaking. World
Printmakers has been featuring digital prints alongside
traditional work for just a few years now, and already the term
"digital print" is looking antiquated. We're doing some
research lately on contemporary digital artists and were surprised
to hear comments like "We generally deal with time-based
and interactive work rather than 'print' as such..." (Mike
Phillips, Institute of Digital Art and
Technology, University of Plymouth, UK. See a couple
of Mike's projects here
and here.) or "Anish
Kapoor is the great exponent of three dimensionality in digital
graphic art. It's sculpture, but it's also graphic art..."
(Clemente Barrena, La
Calcografía Nacional, Madrid).
It
looks as if we're going to have to make room in our scheme of
things for more novelties, more innovation, new approaches, new
media, some of which will exist solely in the virtual world and
have nothing to do with paper. Far from "dead," printmaking
is born again every few years.
Maureen
Invites You to Her Summer Etching Workshop
Printmakers
and aspiring printmakers from around the world are invited to
participate in Maureen Booth's summer etching workshop here at
World Printmakers headquarters
in a mountain village outside Granada, Spain, during the first
three weeks of July. Maureen holds the workshop in her own studio
and limits the number of participants to just five at one time,
so everyone gets maximum personal attention. This year's workshop
will be devoted to the traditional intaglio techniques, along
with some innovative relief approaches based on liquid metal.
The novelty this year is the possibility to sign up for one, two
or three weeks of tuition with Maureen. "I decided on this
flexible approach in order to accomodate different peoples' needs
and time restrictions," she says. Find
the details on this summer's workshop (and see what former participants
have said) on Maureen's website.
See
you next time. Till then, when in doubt, keep on printing!
