On The Aesthetic Qualities of Prints
Both Old and New
Author: Lawrence Finn
Being a printmaker traditionally and historically means that at the basest level we create reproductions, thats the nature of what we do. Most printmakers (but not all) celebrate the craft of their creative process and in return they create (by hand to greater or lesser degrees) works which have subtle nuances, each the same, each different.
Artist printmakers use an inherently mechanistic process for the reproduction and creation of their works and that is an inherent contradiction which diferentiates a uniquly individual fine art work such as a painting from that of a cast sculpture or an edition of prints.
A printmaker is either making editions of unique states or is making editions. Printmaking is a reproductive process and regardless of creating using a lossy method such as reduction cutting or multiple state multiple bite etching, it is inherent that a skilled printmaker can if they choose to, create reproductions of each state of the process. The prints are similer in size, they have a uniformity of look and feel within certain tolerences! If they do not, then they are simply individual unique states worked up from the same blocks. There is often an affectation about the uniqueness of those works, but a modern reprographic process such as offset printing or glicee makes a leveller of such pretentions.
The levelling effect of modern reprographic methods also creates a need to examine what is unique and desireable about the use of archaic methods such as wood engraving, etching, letterpress, linoblock. If it comes down to only an aesthetic then the artist is actually an illustrator or designer. Art to be complete, to move away from design and or illustration must exist on multiple levels, it must work on the intellect, it must work on the aesthetic, it must work on the tactile. The tactile historically is a cause for concern for printmakers.
Some printmakers (especially the currently fashionable and contemporary letterpress school) frequently fly in the face of "Ivans" description of print as a battle to remove muddy water from a deep ditch. Printing until very recently has been a battle to remove indentation from the page; it is a battle which historically culminated in the victory of lithography.
Printmaking has had a history of perfecting the techniques of reproduction to remove the printers hands from the image. In modern times it has also been seen as desirable to preserve the "hand" of the artist on the reproduced work. So for artist printmakers who are concerned about such things that has to raise serious questions... How can you be present and yet not? What is it that gives life to a print created mechanistically but also by hand, and why are those qualitiesd frequently missing from processes such as glicee, offset printing which are entirely automatic in that they have no hand intervention as such?
The Glicee process arrives at a point in time when technology and civilisation have ironically come to respect and enjoy the hand of the artist/printer showing through onto the page. We want to touch, we want intimacy, we want to have a personal conversation with the soul of the artist through their work. We want to feel the humanity in the work we hold. Of course there are artists who do not, and they use methods which allow for a sterilty to their work (a certain slickness), but it still begs the question why would a printmaker who choses to utalise archaic methods for production decide to reproduce in a medium that is comparatively sterile?
I have a peculiar attitude to lithography as for the most part, I do not collect it or tend to respect it, no matter how great the printer. It simply comes down to the fact that I do not enjoy the visual tacticity of a lithograph. I don't collect offset printed works either for similar reasons.
A printmaker like myself is looking to create a work which can be touched by the hand and or the eyes. The work should rise out of the page and massage the eye and the mind.
Why let a work be reproduced as a glicee or by offset reproduction methods when the aesthetic of the process originally used is what brought the artists to its use in the first place?
Glicee, is a modern reproductive method, it offers a great means of producing cheap reproductions and making a few dollers in the bargain. While I have no objection to making money from the art I create Glicee is the path of the commercial artist and or commercial printer rather than the artisan printer because it begs the question why are you editioning more than one image by hand from your plate if you only require one perfect print to begin your limitless reproductions in glicee form? The answer to that question might provide an insight into exactly what it is that you like about your own work (both the perspecitve of creation and from the media used).
It is a personal view, but adding a pretentous name like Glicee to what is a pretty sterile archival reprographic process seems a contradiction and a feint. Why not use offset or some similer commerically viable process and be done? I suspect that glicee is often chosen because it is easier on the wallet for both seller and buyer and not because of any inherent aesthetic qualities that makes it unique contribution to the work. From the glicees' I've seen it is not a particularly attractive finish!
When I was at artschool (at the age of 16-19) I used to do photocopies of my expensive artist books and sell them for nominal prices to all and sundry (and they did very well, in fact mostly I'd make my expenses back on the fine art edition and the photocopy editions by sheer volume of sales, and those photocopies took on a life of their own as they deteriated. The copiers back then were a bit crap and things were a bit more random, the copier would introduce flaws into the image and those flaws were in many respects part of the aesthetic integrity of the finished photocopied work. The photocopier added a quality to the work that would not have been there without that process. In essence the photocopies became nice little objects in their own right.
It was a dubious activity from the lofty heights of fine art editioning, but it made sense to a starving art student at the time.
I've read a lot of thoughts on Glicee and the only defense of that medium which is consistent is accessability and affordability. To my mind that shows a failing in the medium and a lack of insight into why artists choose particular mediums to work with. I don't have a problem with that, thats just the way it is, but I do like to call it what it is, a reproductive method which lends no addional aesthetic redibility to the work.
Do people like Glicee and buy them; yes. Does it matter that they are ignorant of the concerns I have raised in this article; probably not. Do they need to be educated; don't we all? Would I buy one, never...