In this blog we explore the diverse medium that are art prints. Perhaps taken for granted in the twenty-first century, images were once only available within the confines of religious spaces or royal palaces. The widespread production of prints, which began in Europe in the early fifteenth century, meant that hundreds of identical images could be produced from a single template (or matrix) of carved wood or metal. For artists, prints provided a new outlet to explore their subjects, and a way to share their work to distant patrons. On the other hand, prints made things like playing cards and devotional images accessible to even the poorest members of society. In the decades to come printing techniques evolved not only to produce images but text, expanding the possibilities for the spread of written word and knowledge exponentially.
The different methods of printmaking:
There are many different variations and printing techniques in use today, however we have selected the most common to explore here.
Relief:
Relief printing encompasses all methods which involve removing the surface of a material such as wood or lino. Ink is rolled onto the surface of the template leaving the carved sections blank in the final image. The oldest form of relief is woodblock, recorded as early as the seventh century CE (Common Era) in Tang China, only reaching Europe almost 600 years later.
Artist Spotlight: Katsushika Hokusai
Katsushika Hokusai, Under the Wave off Kanagawa (The Great Wave), from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, ca. 1830-32.
Hokusai’s woodblock print Under the Wave off Kanagawa (also known as The Great Wave) is probably one of the most instantly recognisable art prints in history. A Japanese master printmaker of the ukiyo-e school (meaning ‘pictures of the floating world’), Hokusai lived and worked in Edo, now Tokyo, in Japan. Despite this particular print being one of his most well-known, Hokusai produced thousands of paintings and prints, as well as illustrations for hundreds of books during his lifetime. His reputation grew as an artist when he began to produce drawing manuals such as the ‘Basic Instruction in Sketching,’ in 1812. He was commissioned to design landscapes and bird illustrations for commercial publishers, in which The Great Wave appears within the ‘Thirty-six views of Mt. Fuji.’
Artist Spotlight: Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse, Nu Assis (Le Grand Bois), 1906.
French leader of the fauvists Henri Matisse frequently used printing techniques to experiment with line and form. From 1900 until his death in 1954 he completed more than eight hundred intaglios, woodcuts, linocuts, and monotypes. For Matisse his printmaking practice was an extension of his drawings and another method of personal expression. Nu Assis (Le Grand Bois), meaning seated Nude or The Large Woodcut, is the largest of the woodcuts he made. It was included in both the Paris Salon of 1907 and the second Post-Impressionist Exhibition in 1912. Such was the scale of this particular print that the artist collaborated with his wife Amélie on the physical task of cutting the relief.
An ongoing exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art actually pairs Matisse and Japanese artworks to explore their influence on his work: https://artbma.org/exhibition/the-art-of-pattern-henri-matisse-and-japanese-woodcut-artists
Intaglio:
The opposite of relief carving, intaglio involves carving the desired image into a plate of copper through engraving tools or etching with an acid solution. The entire plate is covered with ink, then wiped clean, leaving ink only in the incised areas which is then transferred onto paper.
Artist Spotlight: Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer, Knight, Death, and the Devil, Meisterstiche, 1513-14.
German artist of the renaissance period Albrecht Dürer was a painter, draftsman, and writer. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries his designs which mixed Italian and Netherlandish styles were spread across Europe. As a result, Dürer revolutionised print, elevating it to the level of an independent art form, expanding its tonal range and proving what could be done with the medium. As well as producing many woodcuts, such as The Apocalypse, 1498, he also created intaglio engravings known as the Meisterstiche (Master Engravings). Melencolia I, St. Jerome in His Study, and Knight, Death, and the Devil, all from 1513-14, are frequently discussed together for their rich symbolism. For example, Knight, Death, and the Devil embodies the state of moral virtue as the Knight remains focused on his mission. Using the burin tool to engrave the metal plate Dürer demonstrates his sensitive and skilful ability to render shadows and the different textures of clothing and animal fur.
Artist Spotlight: Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso, La femme qui pleure, I, 1937.
Picasso made prints throughout his whole career, producing some 2,400 in total. His drypoint engraving La femme qui pleure, I, 1937, sold for sold for $5,122,500 at auction at Christie’s in New York in 2011, the highest ever for a print.
Similarly to other artists working in the early twentieth-century, Picasso’s print designs often precede or predict works which are then painted. In this case, La femme qui pleure was made as a preparatory study for Picasso’s Guernica, 1937, a monumental mural commission for the Spanish Pavilion of the 1937 International Exhibition in Paris.
Stencil:
One of the most commonly used forms of printing today, stencil printing involves the passing of ink through a cut out stencil. For example, screen printing is a common stencilling technique which utilises a fine mesh stretched over a frame. Artists use an emulsion which hardens in UV light in order to transfer their design onto the screen’s surface. Ink is pushed through the open areas of the mesh onto the material below to create a printed image. Due to its high level of precision, screen printing is widely used for printing on clothing and posters.
Artist Spotlight: Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe, 1967.
Warhol adopts the screen-printing process in the twentieth-century as a way to evolve his art process into a machine-like production line. While printing techniques had been used for centuries, it was not until the twentieth-century that print began to be used increasingly for commercial or advertising purposes, therefore becoming a part of everyday life and culture. Removing any translation or evidence of the artist’s unique hand in favour of a mass-produced artwork appealed to Warhol in the wake of Abstract Expressionism’s emphasis on individuality. In comparison to the immaculate prints of Hokusai and Durer, Warhol’s prints featured many imperfections. However, these imperfections were deliberately left to further imitate the rushed and poor quality associated with tabloid news photos.
Artist Spotlight: Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg, Retroactive II, 1963.
American painter and printmaker Robert Rauschenberg began to use silkscreen prints in 1962 after visiting Andy Warhol’s studio. Similar to Warhol, Rauschenberg took images from popular newspapers and magazines as his sources, including National Geographic, Life, and Esquire. Rather than using one design per artwork, Rauschenberg then used the screens in a method akin to creating a collage. While his prints were still reproductions of original images, their compositions changed every time he made them.
Digital:
Thanks to high quality modern printers, many artists today use prints to supplement this original works, either as limited editions or normal prints, which also allows a wider audience to support their practice. These works are not just copies but another way for an artist to experiment with scale and medium. In some cases, artists choose to hand-finish prints, giving them unique qualities while still keeping them affordable.
Art On a Postcard Prints: Sara Pope
Sara Pope, I miss you.
Sara’s early commercial work, in fashion, beauty and media proved to be the inspiration for her art. Working in oils and acrylic, she makes use of bold, attractive colours with high shine gloss. Her painting style imitates the slickness of advertising, whilst provocatively subverting its themes.
Sara is best known for her seductive paintings of bold and colourful lips. She aims to capture the glamour and sexual power conveyed by a pair of lips. All her paintings from this series start with a photographic shoot, a model and some make up. Exploring the ideas of communication, she asks the model, to think of emotions, love, happiness or flirtation, which she captures photographically. Pope works in series’ or ‘collections’, painting a body of work with common stylistic elements and colour palette, as with seasonal collections in fashion. Her limited edition, hand-signed giclée prints are available to purchase here.
Art On a Postcard Prints: Anita Klein
Anita Klein, Lady with Dove, 2016.
Anita Klein studied at Chelsea and the Slade schools of art. She is a fellow and past president of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers (RE) and her work is in many private and public collections in Europe, the USA and Australia, including Arts Council England and the British Museum. She divides her time between studios in London and Anghiari, Italy.
Learn more about Anita's work as she talks us through her practice from her studio.
Art On a Postcard Prints: Ivana de Vivanco
Ivana de Vivanco, Long-necked Lady.
Ivana is a Chilean-Peruvian artist based in Germany working primarily with painting, installation and sculpture. She studied Fine Arts at the University of Chile in Santiago and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig. Shop her collection here.
