Albrecht Dürer, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Four Horsemen... is the most famous image in this series of fifteen illustrations and was made from a specially prepared woodblock
Dürer commissioned professional block cutters to perform the layering, and they also cut the highly detailed lines of his original drawing into the block
The Book of Revelation is a symbolic piece of writing that prophesies the Apocalypse, or end of the world
The horsemen represent Death, Plague, War, and Famine
Kitagawa Utamaro, Lovers in an Upstairs Room
Uses multiple colors and shows great graphic skill in controlling the crisp character of the print and the interplay of multiple blocks in different colors
Care must be taken to align each print color perfectly; this registration is done by carving perfectly matching notches along two sides of each block to guide the placement of the paper
Utamaro made images for the Japanese middle and upper classes of figures, theaters, and brothels, in a style known as ukiyo-e printmaking
Ukiyo-e means “pictures of the floating world”
Emil Nolde, Prophet
Uses the natural character of the wood to suggest the hardships and austerity of the life of his subject
The crude carving of the block has produced splintering, and the printing has revealed the grain of the wood
The print’s lack of refinement reflects the raw hardness of the life of a prophet
Hokusai, “The Great Wave off Shore at Kanagawa” Using the Woodblock Printing Method
Hokusai was not solely responsible for the production of this print: he relied on skilled craftsmen
He made a drawing of his subject, which a print craftsman then transferred face down onto a block of cherry wood
The craftsman then carved the image into the wood
To create a color woodblock print a printer must produce a new relief block for each separate color
Nine blocks were used to print “The Great Wave”
The printmaker had to carry out the sequence of printing skillfully because each new color was printed directly on top of the same sheet of paper
Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve
Dürer had a financial reason for choosing to engrave his work:
He had to pay engravers to make his printing plate, and because the metal plate is much more durable than the woodblock, he could make and sell many more copies
Max Beckmann, Adam and Eve
The artist probably chose drypoint because of its slightly uneven, irregular quality of line
More expressive line is created by the burr
Rembrandt, Adam and Eve
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a master of intaglio printmaking, especially etching
Rembrandt brings out details by marring the plate surface more in the areas that will appear darker in the print
Francisco Goya, Giant
This print shows the wash-like appearance of the aquatint process
The print has a soft, rich implied texture
The contours of the giant’s body are not sharply distinguished
Goya, The Third of May, 1808 Prints as Art and as Creative Tools
Goya sketched scenes of the occupation by Napoleon’s troops, calling them Disasters of War
Compositionally, there are similarities between the print “And There Is No Remedy” and the later painting The Third of May, 1808
The firing squad about to shoot its helpless targets is arranged in a strikingly similar way
The horizontal rifles on the right side of the print create a directional line drawing attention toward the victim
Goya’s masterpiece The Third of May, 1808 evolved after years of trial and practice in his prints
Dox Thrash, Defense Worker
Uses mezzotint over etched guidelines
Thrash wanted to use the dark mood created by mezzotint to reflect the drama and seriousness of the war effort at home
This work was sponsored by the Works Projects Administration, a government program originally created during the Great Depression to employ Americans at a time when jobs were hard to find
Thrash, like other artists of the time, uses the dark values afforded by the medium to express the spirit and strength of the American worker
Honoré Daumier, Rue Transnonain, April 15, 1834
Daumier used his skills combined with the lithographic process to tell the citizens of Paris about an incident of police brutality
Depicted the aftermath of an incident that took place at Rue Transnonain on April 15, 1834
Thinking that an attack had come from a residence at 12 Rue Transnonain, the authorities entered the house and ruthlessly killed everyone inside
A father and child lie in the center, flanked by the mother and an elderly family member
Andy Warhol, Double Elvis
Andy Warhol utilized photographic silkscreen techniques over aluminum paint to create a distinctive style
The artist deliberately repeats the image of Elvis to comment on the nature of mass-produced images in advertising
He emphasizes the flatness and lack of depth in the character played by Elvis
The doubling “clones” of Elvis accentuate the degeneration that occurs when an original is copied
Hedda Sterne, Untitled (Machine Series)
Sole woman in a group of abstract painters called the Irascibles
Although abstract, Sterne’s Untitled monotype makes associations with architectural and mechanical images
Sterne probably employed a straightedge to maintain the regularity of line in the print
Kathy Strauss, Kepler Underneath 1
Painstakingly depicts the Milky Way Galaxy
The artist has first incised a series of calculus problems into the metal plate
The plate was then completely covered with ink and wiped
Strauss then painted the image of the Milky Way in ink directly onto the same plate
Centered the paper over the image and ran it through the press
Because Strauss painted the ink on by hand, she cannot re-create the result exactly in a second print, so it is not part of an edition