In
a time when the gesture of the written script is vanishing, along side of many
branches of linguistic tongues at a rapid pace we wonder what next follows the
simplification of syntax in relaying specific nuanced ideas as well as our
bodily disconnection from the gestures of our thought. In this distillation of
our communication, greater eloquence and specificity will be needed to covey
our ideas more elegantly and effectively in the fullest expression. At the same
time that our language is becoming a distilled universal it is trying to
communicate about more and more ideas and more and more aspects of many different
cultures. Our products are
presented in editioned multitudes for consumption, our information presented in
the possibility of infinite repetition within the Internet. All of these having
a similar shared visual form that is also shared with the graphic arts. These
objects as multiples have become a network of potential contexts within the
shared visual vocabulary and are new part of the new possibilities of communication
and understanding.
Within
the context of relational aesthetics and current movements within contemporary
art, using recent modes of presentation from sculpture as a counter point example,
take the work of the sculptor, Michael Jones McKean, stating, as many others,
that objects carry with them specific content, and it is not so much the
objects themselves that he is sculpting with, instead, the content associated
with these objects. I think that a similar attitude should be embraced when
thinking forward of printmaking and its possibilities for the future. In the
same way that objects carry a specific history and context, so too, the
specific processes as well as the graphic marks, and gestures that each process
lends itself too carry with them, their own histories and contexts. Each
process offers a specific language, and like the inability to translate
properly the meaning from one language to another, the same is true about the
way that information can be translated via different print technologies. And
for this reason I would advocate for the sustenance of the knowledge associate
with these. And as future printmakers implement these technologies they should
do so with the intentional use of the context and history each graphic process
implies an question what sort of network that they are creating through their
use in combination and if it is appropriate to the ideas that are generating
the work.
There are inherent conceptual
concerns, historical baggage, and philosophical implications of print
technologies, processes, and media and we cannot dismiss the connectedness of
print with its various manifestations of past and present usage. Print exists
at a specific intersection of time and technology. Seeing and understanding
this specificity is crucial to, and will direct its future as an art form.
First, I would like to state that print is a technology, some uses dated, while
some on the cutting edge of technology. Each technology offers up its own
possibilities, each with their own limitations, and conceptual baggage. I would also argue that each art form/media,
has it’s own paradoxical properties of possibility and limitation, and everyone
with their chosen form needs to wrestle with its place in the continuum.
Breaking
down then some the physical properties of print, which differ from each
specific print technology to the next: repetition, (with the possibility and
implication of an infinite repeat), reversal (transformation), matrix, (stability,
fixedness), process of delay and indirectness, transfer. These properties carry with them
content that every printmaker should address in their practice, not necessarily
with a concrete answer but at very least an awareness to these greater
questions and implications behind each of these qualities.
The
properties of each property can be broken down further. There are specific
conceptual concerns regarding the matrix, it’s ability to reproduce, exactly or
with variation, many matrix technologies offering up the theoretical possibility
to be repeated infinitely. The arrival at matrix from original idea/image to
printed form requires a specificity of labor and process ends with a determinacy
that is unlike any other media. The stability of the matrix, which allows for
ease of read of the printed image. This read of a seemingly unlabored image is
a characteristic unique to print; it is also an illusion, as the evidence labor
is lost. Labor, the read of and inability to read labor, is something to be
considered.
There
is a different sense of unfolding of time of which the print, in contrast to
painting, a stamping, an immediacy of the whole, a resolve. If fact I would
argue that time does not unfold at all I print, instead the instants flicker,
instant totalities is read all at once. Different areas may in fact, unfold
more slowly and function in this manner, but this is an attribute of composition
not of print technology. It is not a material unfolding in the ways that paint
can lend itself to. This assertion of a certain totality, in contrast with the
build up of painting, the searching for form is a property of painting, which is
different from printing. The printmaker must arrive at a decision about the
determinacy of the image before the image is realized in printed form; many of
the problems are solved ahead of time. While, the painter, drawer, or other
direct media artists, must wrestle with and problem solve the issues directly
on the chosen substrate.
This
indirectness and delay through process is something that cannot be skirted
around, but rather each printmaker needs to determine the role of these and how
this lends itself to, or inhibits the read of their work. We are surrounded by
printed material; we live in variable editioned microcosms of attempted culture
through capitalism and the spread of corporate colonialism.
Print
whether it wants to be or not, is associated with all of these attributes;
having risen out of the need to spread and share information. Print is tied to
this history, tied to the conversation of technology, and the history of
communication, production, edition, and seriality. If a printmaker wishes to be loosed from this there are
specific knots that need to be untied. Printmakers cannot disconnect themselves
from these issues at least without fully grappling with them first. Printmakers
need to own their history, own an awareness of their unique coordinates, which
intersect the greater terrain. We need to realize print is a specific technology,
that in its own uniqueness of process, it is a process with a history and
generating images out of this technology should not be done with arbitrarily.
If
a printmaker is discontent with their role, place in the artworld, they should
evaluate their own conceptual concerns within this paradigm. If the monetary value of prints if a
particular concern, this needs to be realized for what this is, that people
desire the uniqueness of a work, the ontological artifactuality, is of
imperative importance when determining stature and monetary value of a work. Although,
this financial point seems negligible and a good print seems to fare as well as
any other art form.
Prints
are often just lacking the physical presence that a painting has, as well as
most all works on paper. In their fragility, and need to be framed, work will
not hold the same presence behind a barrier of glass, as that of being faced
with the raw materiality. Print is
tied to ideas of ephemera yet at the same tied the imagery has the ability to
slam its fist on the table with a certainty and conviction that painting is not
able to hold to. The strength, fragility and intimacy, for instance, of an
intaglio line are comparable to no other.
This is a paradox to be embraced and also teased apart.
A
major conceptual concern of contemporary drawing and painting is the idea of
the material trace. Here as well, the directness, the artifact, is an entity
that a painting and drawing holds up in contrast to the print. The materiality
of print, as well as the process itself, as already stated is often lost in the
process. In painting and drawing this struggle, (which is not just about the
struggle and heroic nature of abstract expressionism, the struggle as struggle
is not enough) but the direct residue of these efforts is of a different philosophical
interest than of imagery that has been refined and processed. This underlying issue
cannot be understated or ignored.
The
philosophical concerns underpinning print and in line with is history and
inherent properties; the matrix, reproduction, edition, these are all part of
how we experience and live in the world and should be exploited by the
printmaker as we move into the future. They certainly cannot be ignored or
wished away nor should they, as the terrain is rich and teaming with
possibilities. Romantic notions to hold on to dated technology for the sake of
itself will not move this field forward in the way that is seems to wish to go.
We all wish to dislodge ourselves from the histories of our chosen field and
have a fresh clean break, but this can only be done with a keen awareness of
the implications of the processes we are projecting forward.
