News from PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Office of Communications
Stanhope Hall
Princeton, New Jersey 08544-5264
Telephone 609-258-3601; Fax 609-258-1301January 19, 2001
CONTACT: Ruta Smithson (609) 258-3763
The Art of the Print in the Western World Featured at Princeton University Art Museum
Exhibition Dates: January 10 through March 19, 2001
PRINCETON -- The Art Museum, Princeton University, is presenting "Great Impressions: The Art of the Print in the Western World" from January 10 through March 19, 2001. The exhibition accompanies "The Art of the Print," a course taught by Assistant Professor Al Acres in the Department of Art and Archaeology. It is open to the public.
Professor Acres, in his introduction to the exhibition, writes, "Prints, which have played a central role in the Western artistic tradition since the fifteenth century, are images made in such a way that they can be multiplied. To accomplish this, printmakers prepare a surface so that a sheet of paper applied to its inked surface will accept its image. Although techniques for the impression of patterns or images (for example to clay, metal, and textiles) had been developed much earlier, it was only with the rising availability of paper in Europe after ca. 1400 that prints as we know them began to proliferate in the Western tradition.
"By the end of the fifteenth century, the rudimentary contours of the first European woodcuts had been eclipsed by graphic vocabularies of stunning sophistication, most famously in the prints of Albrecht Dürer. Prints had emerged not only as relatively inexpensive media for the reproduction of devotional images or book illustrations -- two crucial early functions -- but also as a means for producing objects valued as self-sufficient works of art. These works on paper vitally shaped the broad market for privately owned images that developed during the Renaissance and has boomed ever since. Although prints evolved in the succeeding generations and centuries to serve myriad informative, illustrative, polemical, and other practical needs, the majority of works displayed here were created with aims that were conspicuously (though not always exclusively) artistic. As we consider the content of the image, we also are invited to relish the skill and ingenuity with which it was made.
"Drawn from the collections of The Art Museum and Firestone Library, these works are selected to represent a range both of major printmakers (mostly German, Italian, Netherlandish, and French) and of the primary printmaking techniques developed by the end of the eighteenth century. A second group of prints, representing an array of major European and American printmakers and techniques since ca. 1800, will be exhibited beginning in late March."
The works on view were selected by Professor Acres, Laura Giles, associate curator of prints and drawings and Calvin Brown, preparator.
The Art Museum is open to the public without charge. Free highlights tours of the collection are given every Saturday at 2:00 p.m. The Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and on Sunday from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. It is closed on Monday and major holidays. The Museum Shop closes at 5:00 p.m. The Museum is located in the middle of the Princeton University campus. Picasso's large sculpture Head of a Woman stands in front. For further information, please call (609) 258-3788.
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A Glossary of Printing Processes
INTAGLIO PRINTING
In intaglio printing, an inked impression is made from a design that has been etched, scratched, or engraved into a metal plate. The surface of the plate is covered with printer’s ink that is pressed into the recessed lines, and then wiped clean, leaving ink only in the intaglio, or groove. The plate is then laid on the press bed, covered with a sheet of dampened paper, and passed through the press. The dampened paper is pressed down into the groove to pick up the ink, resulting in a reversed impression of the plate. The following are basic intaglio techniques:
Engraving -- A metal plate is cut with a burin, which makes a clean V-shaped groove; the curls of copper thrown up on the front and sides of the furrow are cleaned away with a scraper.
Etching -- A metal plate is coated with a thin layer of a waxy ground, through which the image is drawn with a pointed metal stylus to expose the bare metal below. The plate is then immersed in an acid solution bath that bites into the exposed metal. After a period of time, the plate is removed, washed, and inspected by the artist, who can then cover parts of the plate with an acid resisting varnish, re-draw, and return the plate to the acid bath. The deeper the lines have been etched, the darker they will print.
Drypoint -- The design is worked directly into the metal plate with a pointed stylus that scratches the image into the surface, carving out a thin line, and raising a slight burr. The plate is rubbed with ink that collects both in the lines and in the burr, producing a soft velvety quality to the drawn lines.
Mezzotint -- The metal plate is first "grounded," or systematically worked over with a spiked tool, or rocker, until it is thoroughly roughened; if inked in this state, it will print a rich black. The engraver then smoothes out graduated highlights with a scraper or burnisher. The more burnished the area is, the less ink it will hold and thus, when the plate is printed, the design will emerge from the basic blackness.
RELIEF PRINTING
In relief printing, an inked impression is made from a design that stands in relief above the rest of the block (or plate), which has been cut away. Ink is applied to the surface of the block, and is transferred to paper by applying a vertical pressure. The following are basic relief processes:
Woodcut -- The surface of a flat block of wood carved in relief with a knife so that the lines and shapes of the image that will print are left intact, and the empty open areas of the design are cut away. The entire surface is then inked with a roller, a sheet of paper placed on top, and run through the press.
Metalcut/dotted print -- A metal plate is cut to the same effect as wood. In the fifteenth century a more distinctive use of metalcut&endash;the dotted print&endash;was invented in order to create a particular decorative effect. The plate was first engraved with the outline of the subject, and then the large plain areas of the surface (which would print as an unrelieved black) were broken up using punching and stamping tools.
Wood-engraving -- Although the method of printing is the same as for the woodcut, the wood is cut across the grain, rather than along it, and the tool is an engraver’s burin rather than a knife.