Contact: Art and the Pull of Print (The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 70)

by: Jennifer L. Roberts (Author)

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Publication Date: 2024/5/14

Language: English

Print Length: 232 pages

ISBN-10: 0691255857

ISBN-13: 9780691255859

Book Description

A leading art historian presents a new grammar for understanding the meaning and significance of printIn 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 conces at the heart of mode 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 leaing from print, and what we, in tu, can lea from them.Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington

About the Author

A leading art historian presents a new grammar for understanding the meaning and significance of printIn 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 conces at the heart of mode 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 leaing from print, and what we, in tu, can lea from them.Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington