ASPECTS
of MODERNISM
.
. . and a small collection of old master prints at
the end
In
the 500 years from the first great ‘modern’ movement
in art, the early Renaissance, in the 14th century until
the mid-19th century style evolved with a certain logic
through the High Renaissance, Mannerism, the Baroque,
and Rococo to Neo-Classicism and Romanticism.
In
the 100 years from 1850-1950, and with increased intensity
between 1880 and 1920, art went through a huge numbers
of isms – Naturalism, Realism,
Pre-Raphaelism, Plein-airism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism,
Neo-Impressionism, Pointillism, Cloisonism, Synthetism,
Symbolism, Aestheticism, Fauvism, Cubism, Orphism, Suprematism,
Futurism, Vorticism, Primitivism, Constructivism, Da-da-ism,
Expressionism, Surrealism,
Tachisme as well as the movements of Art Nouveau/Jugendstil,
the Belle Epoque, De Stijl and Abstraction.
A compelling and exciting century.
With few exceptions modernist and especially experimental
printmaking is the province of painters who turn momentarily
to the print media. Trained graphic artists are usually
more traditional in style, though are naturally aware
of and respond to artistic developments around them.
In
the modern period art dealers and publishers such as
Cadart or Vollard in Paris have encouraged painters
to take up printmaking to reach a wider audience. The
art periodicals, The Studio in London, the Gazette
des Beaux Arts and Revue de l’Art ancien et moderne in Paris, the Zeitschrift
für bildenden Kunst, Pan,
Insel and Der Sturm among others in Germany, etc, commissioned
painters and graphic artists to contribute original prints
to their publications thus spreading ideas and generating
interest in printmaking throughout Europe. Some artists
published sets of prints as self-promotion. Artists’ societies
published albums of prints to complement their annual
exhibitions and promote their membership.
Artists’ printmaking generally lagged behind their
prime avant garde activity in painting, though for the
German Expressionists of Die Brücke woodcut was
an important aspect of their work from the group’s
inception. In general the multiple nature of printmaking
demands an already established or receptive market and
public acceptance of the style or subject content of
the print. Hence the usual delay between theoretical
manifesto and exemplification in published editions of
prints.
British printmaking artists were slower to participate
in or contribute to Modernism than their European counterparts,
and only did so selectively. Whistler, equally at home
in London and Paris was abreast of contemporary Continental
developments. Wadsworth as a Vorticist made pure abstract
woodcuts by 1917, quite early in the European scheme
of things. The British-born engraver S W Hayter through
his Atelier 17 had influence in pre-war Paris and in
New York when he relocated there for the duration of
the Second World War. With the exception of Wadsworth,
Nevinson, Nash, Sutherland and the Grosvenor School colour
linocut artists, most pre-WWII British printmaking remains
traditional and informed by post- impressionism and japonisme.
Modernism
can be seen as the artist’s response
to the industrial age. This took many forms and affected
either form or content or both. Middle class prosperity
created a new market. Concentration in urban centres
suggested scenes of contemporary city life and conversely
an appreciation of landscape and disappearing rural traditions.
Industrialisation and urbanisation also highlighted the
plight of workers subject to poor conditions. Some artists
relished the dynamism and mechanisation of the new age.
Others wished to escape mass production and in the spirit
of the Aesthetic and Arts & Crafts movements in
general advocated the artist printing his own etching
plates and lithographic stones. In contrast yet others
adopted the new ‘mechanical’ inventions
such as photography and duplicating devices like blueprints
and Roneo to original printmaking.
Alternatively,
non-mechanistic cultures with conventions uninformed
by classicism and linear perspective, from contemporary
Japan to ancient Egypt, Oceania and African & European
folk art, inspired artists in theme, style and technique.
Japanese
colour wood block prints had perhaps the most pervasive
influence. Their themes from Japanese daily life, theatre,
weather effects and beautiful courtesans confirmed
existing European tendencies to naturalism and realism
and gave new emphasis to contemporary everyday city
life as subject matter. Japanese compositional devices
were equally influential to artists from the 1860’s
onwards. European printmakers exploited such devises
as the high viewpoint, the immediacy given by forms partially
cut off by the edge of the matrix, the bold simplification
of form and expressive outline of silhouettes. Colour,
particularly the brilliant modern Japanese aniline pigments,
inspired the explosion of the French Colour Revolution
of the 1890’s; though colour prints in that decade
were carried out in lithography or aquatint. Colour woodblock
prints came in with the 20th century.
In
modern printmaking, as never before, a particular print
technique was selected for its specific characteristics
which would themselves actively contribute to the expression
of the artist’s intention. Symbolist prints are
most frequently soft crayon lithographs; the few pointilliste
prints are exclusively colour lithographs; expressionist
prints are most typically woodcuts.
While
etching continued, particularly among the more traditional
technicians, throughout the whole period 1850-1950,
other techniques came to the fore in certain decades
or countries. The predominance of monochrome etching
in the 1850’s to 1880’s is reflected
in the name of the Etching Revival. From the later 1880’s
and through the 1890’s lithography became popular,
especially in France, both as a monochrome technique
and in the 1890’s for colour prints, taken up by
such masters of the technique as Toulouse Lautrec. But
with the new century colour and monochrome lithography
virtually ceased in France for several decades, while
in England the Senefelder Club was founded specifically
to promote the technique among British artists. German
Expressionists made use of the medium too.
Aquatint
was used by etchers to make colour prints from the
1890’s, with Delâtre, Legrand &c
in Paris, Menpes and Roussel in London and continued
to be used in France, England and Czechoslovakia through
the early decades of the 20th century.
Monochrome
woodcut was revived at the close of the 1890’s
and colour woodcut after the turn of the century. The
first generation, William Nicholson in England, Félix
Valloton and Auguste Lepère in France, were followed
by Munch, the Fauves and the artists of the Viennese
Seccession, die Brücke, de Stijl and the Constructivists.
Woodcut lent itself to bold design and was used equally
by figurative and abstract artists. At the same time
in England, Austria and Germany colour woodcuts printed
in the Japanese manner with variegated water-based inks
came into vogue. In England wood engraving was revived
as a technique for artists’ original printmaking.
In England too in the 1920’s intaglio line engraving
was revived and through Hayter later exported to France.
Monotype was re-invented; lino was exploited as an alternative
to wood, cliché-verre briefly made use of light
as a printing medium.
Art
in earlier centuries had sort increasingly naturalistic
interpretation of the external world. The invention of
the camera could be seen as making the artist redundant.
The art of other cultures confirmed that there were potential
alternative roles for the artist; the challenge of expressing
the invisible, the world of dreams, emotions, the artist’s
own personal vision and understanding of the world, even
totally non-objective art.
A great diversity with many aspects summed up in the
single word ‘modernism’.
Published 1998
64 pages, 156 items described and illustrated in black & white,
with two in colour on the cover.
(UK
Price: £10, International orders: £15)
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Artists
included in the catalogue:
- Albers
A
- Arnberg
H
- Austen
W
- Banting
J
- Barrett
R
- BaumP
- Bawden
F
- Begeer
F A
- Belleroche
A
- Bernard
E
- Binder
P
- Bissill
G
- Bouverie
Hoyton E
- Bresslern-Roth
N von
- Brown
E C A
- Bruycker
J de
- Charpentier
A
- Clausen
G
- Collins
C
- Copley
J
- Corot
J B C
- Delâtre
E
- Denis
M
- Detmold
E J
- Dexel
W
- Dillon
H P
- Dooren
E van
- Dufy
R
- Evans
M
- Forain
J L
- Fookes
U
- Frank
H
- Gabain
E
- Goetz
O
- Greaves
W
- Greengrass
W
- Greenaud
H
- Hecht
J
- Heckel
E
- Helleu
P
- Hermann-Paul
R G
- Ibels
H
- Jacque
C
- Jennings
P
- Kalckreuthe
L von
- Kandinsky
W
- Keith
E
- Kermode
W A
- Khnopff
F
- Kowalsky
L P
- Kroll
K H
- Laage
W
- Laboureur
J E
- La
Gandara A de
- Lalanne
M
- Lang
E
- Laprade
P
- Lazlo
P de
- Legrand
L
- Le
Sidaner H
- Lord
E
- Luce
M
- Luling
P
- Macnab
I
- Maillol
A
- Marchand
J
- Martial-Potement
A
- Martin
H
- Mead
R
- Millais
J E
- Nash
P
- Nerlinger
O
- Neumann
H
- Nevinson
C R W
- Nicholson
W
- Nitz
- Orovida
- Peeters
J
- Petitjean
H
- Pissarro
L
- Pissarro
O
- Ravilious
E
- Redon
O
- Renoir
P A
- Renouard
P
- Richards
E M
- Rieser
D
- Rohlfs
C
- Rössing
K
- Royds
M A
- Russell
A L
- Schaeffler
F
- Simon
L J
- Simpson
A L
- Steinlen
T A
- Sterrer
K
- Stevens
A
- Stokes
G V
- Stremel
M A
- Sutherland
G
- Villon
J
- Vuillard
E
- Waterhouse
J W
- Whistler
J M
- Zadkine
O
Index
of Old Masters
- Aldegrever
H
- Bella
S della
- Bewick
T
- Callot
J
- Constable
J
- Dürer
A
- Goltzius
H
- Lucas
D
- Mortimer
J H
- Rembrandt
- Runciman
A
- Saenredam
J
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