Contact Art And The Pull Of Print

A leading art historian presents a new grammar for understanding the meaning and significance of print In process and technique, printmaking is an art of physical contact. From woodcut and engraving to lithography and screenprinting, every print is the record of a contact event: the transfer of an image between surfaces, under pressure, followed by release. Contact reveals how the physical properties of print have their own poetics and politics and provides a new framework for understanding the intelligence and continuing relevance of printmaking today. The seemingly simple physics of printmaking brings with it an array of metamorphoses that give expression to many of the social and conceptual concerns at the heart of modern and contemporary art. Exploring transformations such as reversal, separation, and interference, Jennifer Roberts explores these dynamics in the work of Christiane Baumgartner, David Hammons, Edgar Heap of Birds, Jasper Johns, Corita Kent, Glenn Ligon, Julie Mehretu, Robert Rauschenberg, and many other leading artists who work at the edge of the medium and beyond. Focusing on the material and spatial transformations of the printmaking process rather than its reproducibility, this beautifully illustrated book explores the connections between print, painting, and sculpture, but also between the fine arts, industrial arts, decorative arts, and domestic arts. Throughout, Roberts asks what artists are learning from print, and what we, in turn, can learn from them. Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington

A leading art historian presents a new grammar for understanding the meaning and significance of print In process and technique, printmaking is an art of physical contact. From woodcut and engraving to lithography and screenprinting, every print is the record of a contact event: the transfer of an image between surfaces, under pressure, followed by release. Contact reveals how the physical properties of print have their own poetics and politics and provides a new framework for understanding the intelligence and continuing relevance of printmaking today. The seemingly simple physics of printmaking brings with it an array of metamorphoses that give expression to many of the social and conceptual concerns at the heart of modern and contemporary art. Exploring transformations such as reversal, separation, and interference, Jennifer Roberts explores these dynamics in the work of Christiane Baumgartner, David Hammons, Edgar Heap of Birds, Jasper Johns, Corita Kent, Glenn Ligon, Julie Mehretu, Robert Rauschenberg, and many other leading artists who work at the edge of the medium and beyond. Focusing on the material and spatial transformations of the printmaking process rather than its reproducibility, this beautifully illustrated book explores the connections between print, painting, and sculpture, but also between the fine arts, industrial arts, decorative arts, and domestic arts. Throughout, Roberts asks what artists are learning from print, and what we, in turn, can learn from them. Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Offering a critical analysis of Smithson's view of time, it provides comprehensive case studies of three of his most influential projects: "The Monuments of Passaic," a sardonic tour of a decaying New Jersey city conducted in the wake of the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act; "Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan," a textual-sculptural-photographic travelogue that coincided with a series of revolutionary discoveries about Maya history; and the Spiral Jetty."--BOOK JACKET.

This anthology, the first of its kind, presents thirty-two texts on contemporary prints and printmaking written from the mid-1980s to the present by authors from across the world. The texts range from history and criticism to creative writing. More than a general survey, they provide a critical topography of artistic printmaking during the period. The book is directed at an audience of international stakeholders in the field of contemporary print, printmaking and printmedia, including art students, practising artists, museum curators, critics, educationalists, print publishers and print scholars. It expands debate in the field and will act as a starting point for further research.

"An exploration of historical and contemporary fine art printmaking, with an emphasis on the roles and processes of the artist, master printer, and publisher"--

Meet your dream plate and fall in love with a faster, friendlier approach to printmaking. For artists and crafters who love the creative possibilities of monoprinting on gelatin but not the prep time, mess and inconvenience that comes with it, the Gelli Arts Gel Printing Plate is a dream come true! It's durable, reusable, stored at room temperature, and ready to get creative whenever you are. Simply apply paint with a soft rubber brayer, make your marks and pull your print. It's that simple! Wipe the plate down with a spritz of water and a paper towel, and you're ready to go again. In this premier guide, artist Joan Bess--inventor of the concept for the Gelli plate--unleashes the fun through more than 60 step-by-step techniques. Create intriguing patterns using tools like sponges, textured rollers and homemade combs. Learn how to incorporate stencils and rubber stamps. Experiment with metallic paint, dimensional paint and gel medium. Become a texture-hunter, creating a wide world of effects using embossed papers, natural objects, rubber bands, lace, corrugated cardboard, metal tape, die cut letters...anything goes! Even beginners can enjoy immediate gratification--just grab a textured surface, smoosh it into your painted Gelli plate, and you'll have a stack of amazing prints in no time. For experienced printmakers, the inspirations in these pages will push you to experiment, adapt, combine and layer. It's easy, fun and totally addicting! Printmaking just got easier! • Expert tips from the creator of the Gelli plate • 60+ awesome step-by-step techniques • Ideas for incorporating stamps and stencils, using ghost prints, salvaging uninspired prints, and more • 26-page gallery shows the many wonderful ways artists are incorporating Gelli printing into their work

A Pop Up Book featuring 3-D Versions of Comic, Pop & Street Art from 6 Acclaimed Artists

A concise and beautifully illustrated introduction to printmaking that uses highlights from Tate's extensive print collection Prints have played a unique and important role in the history of art and image. This engaging book explores the numerous ways artists have embraced printmaking over the course of three centuries. Each of the works illustrated has been selected to reflect the broad spectrum of techniques and purposes, which are explained in clear and concise terms. The featured artworks are among the highlights of Tate's extensive but little-known print collection, a remarkable grouping no book has previously attempted to survey. Among the leading artists for whom printmaking has been an important and experimental part of their practice are William Hogarth, George Stubbs, William Blake, J.M.W. Turner, Pablo Picasso, Barbara Hepworth, Andy Warhol, Lucian Freud, Bridget Riley, Paula Rego, William Kentridge, and Kara Walker. Yet printmaking remains somewhat mysterious as a topic, perhaps because original prints are often understood as "reproductions," or wrongly given a similar status to preparatory sketches and archival material. In fact, prints are finished artworks, often the result of highly considered creative experimentation with print processes. Chapters are structured around different types of printmaking, allowing each section to reveal the various ways artists have engaged with the different techniques. In addition to complete reproductions of more than 120 works, carefully selected details enable the reader to examine closely some of the remarkable visual effects seen in the prints.

On Hammons' seminal series that ingeniously merged print and performance, celebration and critique The first book dedicated to these pivotal early works on paper, David Hammons: Body Prints, 1968-1979 brings together the monoprints and collages in which the artist used the body as both a drawing tool and printing plate to explore performative, unconventional forms of image making. Hammons created the body prints by greasing his own body--or that of another person--with substances including margarine and baby oil, pressing or rolling body parts against paper, and sprinkling the surface with charcoal and powdered pigment. The resulting impressions are intimately direct indexes of faces, skin, and hair that exist somewhere between spectral portraits and physical traces. Hammons' body prints represent the origin of his artistic language, one that has developed over a long and continuing career and that emphasizes both the artifacts and subjects of contemporary Black life in the United States. More than a half century after they were made, these early works on paper exemplify Hammons' celebration of the sacredness of objects touched or made by the Black body, and his biting critique of racial oppression. The 32 body prints highlighted in this volume introduce the major themes of a 50-year career that has become central to the history of postwar American art. The book features a conversation between curator and activist Linda Goode Bryant and artist Senga Nengudi, as well as a photo essay by photographer Bruce W. Talamon, who documented Hammons at work in his Los Angeles studio in 1974. Born in 1943 in Springfield, Illinois, David Hammons moved to Los Angeles in 1963 at the age of 20 and began making his body prints several years later. He studied at Otis Art Institute with Charles White and became part of a younger generation of Black avant-garde artists loosely associated with the Black Arts Movement. He moved to New York in 1978.

This book is published in conjunction with the exhibition Jasper Johns / In Press: The Crosshatch Works and the Logic of Print, on view at the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 22-August 18, 2012.