PART I | PART II | PART III | PART IV | PART V | PART VI | PART VII

Working States

 

Part II – Reviews:

Reviews of individual artists, exhibits, galleries, museums, and shows.

Bayliss, Sarah. “The New Art Wallpaper: It Doesn’t Just Hang There.” The New York Times. 29 June 2003.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9a01e2df133bf93aa15755c0a9659c8b63&
sec=&spon=&pagewanted=prin
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This overview of the Fabric Workshop’s exhibit on wallpaper art provides quotes from artists as well as collectors, and briefly discusses the history of wallpaper.

Braff, Phillis. “Materials Are Put To Use As Themes”, The New York Times. 18 November 1990.

Phillis Braff discusses work by Angela Milner, who incorporates microchips and sheet music into her prints.

Colless, Edward. “Ironic Iconoclast.” Vicnet. Feb.-Mar. 1998. Vicnet. 27 May 2008.

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~abr/FebMarch98/coll.html

While reviewing Wystan Curnow’s book Imants Tillers and The Book of Power, Edward Colless describes Australian artist Imants Tillers’s work as less innovative and more “camp” or “cynical” than Curnow had originally understood it to be. Til lers, however, is commended for his post-modern approach to appropriation, and the effective mixture of minimalism with monumentalism in his works.

Eugenio Dittborn - B.1943 Chile. Lives + Works in Santiago De Chile.” Dareonline. DARE. 27 May 2008.

http://www.iniva.org/dare/themes/space/dittborn.html

A quick introduction to Eugenio Dittborn’s Airmail Paintings, this article explains Dittborn’s location on the international margins of the artworld, and the commentary on the repression enacted by political images (mostly from the Pinochet regime) that he voices through his works.

Genocchio, Benjamin. “Five Centuries of Printmaking Packed into One Museum,” New York Times. April 1, 2007

Benjamin Genocchio writes a review of a survey exhibition at the Nassau County Museum of Art entitled From Rembrandt to Rosenquist. Genocchio makes an insightful comment about Rembrandt’s masterwork, “The Triumph of Mordecai” (1641) and the Dutch master’s use of multiple print processes within one work, suggesting that it is “inappropriate to think of the graphic arts as separate processes”.

Gilmour, Pat. “Thorough Translators & Thorough Poets: Robert Kushner & His Printers”, Print Collector’s Newsletter. Vol. 16, no. 5, Nov-Dec 1985. 159-164.

Pat Gilmour explores the nature of collaboration within the practice of printmaking by examining the relationship of artist Robert Kushner with various presses. He focuses on distinguishing the unique contributions of the printer from the col laboration process.

Hall, Emily. “Offend Me Please! Kara Walker’s Harsh Emotional Truths.” The Stranger. 2001.

http://thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=7259

In this short review of Kara Walker’s exhibit at the Kucera Gallery in Seattle, Emily Hall emphasizes the efficacy of Walker’s printed silhouettes. Their definite and controlled abstraction allows for a kind of subversion – indeterminacy of perception and of thought – that allows for “a disruption of history’s confident stance”.

Lanzilotta, Allison. “William Kentridge: Exhibit At the New Museum in SoHo.” Art Baby Art. 2001.

http://www.artbabyart.com/newmuseum/apartheid_kentridge.htm

Allison Lanzilotta, covering the first large-scale solo William Kentridge show, calls her readers’ attention to the ways in which Kentridge’s unique stop-motion charcoal drawing-based films effectively addressed the South African apartheid.

Lyons, Beauvais. “The Cerebral Versus the Retinal in Printmaking”

http://www.clt.astate.edu/elind/sagaarticleBLyons.htm

This article is a section from a keynote address titled “In Praise of Neglected Printed Histories” presented by Beauvais Lyons, from University of Tennessee, Knoxville (USA) at the IMPACT Conference, Bristol, United Kingdom, September 22-25, 1999.

Beauvais Lyons examines Duchamp’s use of print techniques to create his conceptual art, locating himself as the effective precursor to the Fluxus artists. Mapping Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” onto Duchamp’s prints, Lyons concludes this essay by stating that “Duchamp’s use of print methods point to a middle ground, a place which employs mechanical reproduction while simultaneously using methods which retain a historical aura.”

Roob, Alexander. “On Luis Camnitzer‘s Engraving Cycles.” 2006.

Roob’s article is a brief introduction to Louis Camnitzer’s influential and visionary work in and approach to printmaking. Discussing, in particular, Camnitzer’s “Agent Orange” series, Roob also commends Camnitzer for his essay “Printmaking: A Colony of the Arts.”

Russell, John. “Controversy - and Platitudes - Writ Large.” Rev. of Committed to Print, at the Museum of Modern Art. New York Times 21 Feb. 1988.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE0DC143FF932A15751C0A96E948260

John Russell reviews one of the first MoMA exhibits that acknowledges the controversies influencing the out side world in that historical moment (including its own inernal politics). Through a retrospective of prints that bear witness to a political or social moment, curator Deborah Wye hoped to show the force with which these artists expressed themselves in this medium. Russell, while commending specific works in the exhibit, argues that it was flat and uninteresting work on the whole.

Salkin, Allen. “Selling Himself and Prints, Too” New York Times, April 8, 2007.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/fashion/08lewis.html?ex=1333684800&en=542f3bba39409e6
a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
&emc=rss

Allen Salkin writes about Jacob Lewis’ new endeavor: opening a Pace Prints gallery in Chelsea. His mission statement is to pitch to collectors the beauty of collecting prints. “Mr. Lewis”, writes Salkin, “plans to deliver his gospel of print collecting…for a couple thousand bucks you can buy a print that may go up in value, rather than a purse or a pair of shoes that are just going to fall apart.” According to Salkin, Mr. Lewis hopes that by showing work by younger artists in his gallery, he will give printmaking the sexy excitement it had in the in the 1960s and 1970s.

Schwendener, Martha. “Even in the Digital Age, a Strong Case for Printmaking” New York Times. February 12, 2007.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9504E1DF1F3FF931A25751C0A9619C8B63&
sec=&spon=&pagewan
ted=all

Martha Schwendener’s article is a review of the Universal Limited Art Editions and the retrospective of the print shop at the MoMA. The author begins by anecdotally commenting on the disappearance of traditional printmaking departments in favor of new digital equipment and instruction. She concludes by arguing that traditional prints are still relevant today.

Schwendener, Martha. “Material Muse for Some Strange Bedfellows” New York Times. April 6, 2007.

This article is a review of the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria that focuses on the prints of Matthew Bran non. According to Martha Schwendener, Brannon brings art, poetry and advertising together through silkscreen, lithog raphy and letterpress images. The Whitney website about exhibition states the following about the exhibit: “Matthew Brannon employs a signature combination of printed materials, design strategies, and text to create work inscribed with psychological content and critique. In various modes of production including letterpress prints, screenprints, and posters, Brannon constructs an indeterminate graphic identity that veils a pointed sensibility. For his first solo museum exhibition, Brannon expands this practice in an installation commissioned by the Museum that explores the complex relationship between art, design, ambition, and taste. Drawing on the graphic iconography of corporate, commuter, and New York cosmopolitan lifestyles, Where Were We presents letterpress and screenprint imagery ranging from men’s toiletries to sushi dinners arranged as framed prints on a series of custom display structures designed by Brannon.”

Shiff, Richard. “L’empreinte.” Art Forum. June 22, 1997.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_n10_v35/ai_19677882/print

In this review of “L’empreinte,” a large exhibit on the imprint at the Georges Pompidou Centre, Richard Shiff both discusses the artwork and criticizes the theoretical background of the exhibit. By simultaneously commending and attacking Georges Didi-Huberman’s catalogue essay (which he says was more coherent than the show itself, but lacks theoretical sanity), Richard Shiff outlines his own theory on the imprint and the beauty of its failures.

Smith, Cherise. “Re-Member the Audience: Adrian Piper’s Mythic Being Advertisements.” Art Journal. 2007.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0425/is_1_66/ai_n19187654

Cherise Smith questions the implications and choices behind Adrian Piper’s unique methods of distribution for her Mythical Being “ad-works.” By considering Piper’s racial, economic, and gender backgrounds – in other words, her identity, which is the underlying subject of all Piper’s work – Smith proposes several hypotheses for the artist’s choice to make her work known through The Village Voice, a non-art publication.

Smith, Roberta. “Urban Outsider Artists Evoke Society’s Margins.” The New York Times. August 3, 2005.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/03/arts/design/03deit.html

In this review of Barry McGee’s exhibit at Deitch Projects in SoHo, Roberta Smith considers the energy and social commentary that infuse these works by urban outsiders about urban outsiders.

Taylor, Sue. “Review: The Contemporary Print From Pre-Pop to Postmodern.” Art Journal. 1990.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0425/is_1_58/ai_54517207

Reviewing, mainly, Susan Tallman’s text The Contemporary Print from Pre-Pop to Postmodern, Susan Taylor’s article surveys and reviews several other texts (including Linda Hults’s The Print in the Western World and the exhibition cata logue Visionary States: Surrealist Prints from the Gilbert Kaplan Collection) about contemporary prints that she believes influenced Tallman’s writing.

Zimmer, William. “An Outpouring of Creativity in Neuberger’s ‘First Impressions’”, The New York Times. 2 September 1990.

In this review of the Neuberger Museum’s exhibit First Impressions: Early Prints by 46 Contemporary Artists, Wil liam Zimmer analyzes the images present in the show for their influential and revolutionary value. Taking Jasper Johns as the initiator of a kind of printmaking challenge, William Zimmer narrates the technical and visual revolutions made by subsequent artists.

Zimmer, William. “Defining Parameters of Hispanic Sensibility”, The New York Times. 10 June 1990.

William Zimmer reviews the Black and White in Color Gallery’s exhibit New York Spanics, Giving Some – Taking Some, commenting on the ways in which both culture and choice in medium made the featured works both stirring and intriguing.

 

 

 

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