The apparent grounds for such skepticism derive from two facts about the processes by which many prints are produced. First, the techniques involved in producing the matrices from which many prints are made may seem insufficiently dissimilar from ordinary drawing or painting techniques to be of independent artistic interest.
These matrices, one might think, are simply drawings or paintings done on unusual surfaces. Second, the process by which prints are produced from these matrices might be considered too mechanical to contribute anything of artistic interest to the resultant prints. Thus, one might think that any artistic interest the resultant prints have is due entirely to the drawings or paintings from which they are produced. This conclusion seems to gain support from the fact that, instead of producing their own prints, many artists hand their matrices over to master printmakers who then produce prints from them.
My aim in this article is to determine to what extent, if any, skepticism about the artistic potential of printmaking is warranted. To get a clearer grasp on exactly what form a skeptical argument of this kind might take, I outline Roger Scruton's arguments against the artistic significance of photography and cinema as forms of representation, and examine whether, suitably modified, they can be extended to printmaking.
The diversity of printmaking practices means that many forms of printmaking are immune to arguments of this form. I argue, however, that similar arguments cannot undermine the artistic significance even of those forms of printmaking to which they seem best to apply. Nevertheless, it does not follow that there are no grounds whatever for skepticism about the artistic significance of printmaking.
The thought that printmaking lacks artistic potential because it involves the mechanical production of prints from drawings or paintings poses a challenge specifically to those forms of printmaking whereby prints are mechanically produced from a single matrix which is made by drawing or painting onto a surface.
A wide variety of prints are made in this way, including etchings, engravings, and many lithographs, aquatints, mezzotints, woodcuts and linoprints.
Etching matrices are produced by drawing with an etching needle on a plate covered with a wax or acrylic ground. Once this drawing process is complete, the plate is then dipped in an acid bath, which eats away the plate where it is exposed through the ground.
The remaining ground is then removed, leaving a metal plate on which the original drawing can be seen and from which prints can then be produced by inking the plate and transferring the image onto paper. Nevertheless, engraving can be thought of as involving drawing skills, albeit skills for drawing in an unusual medium, just as drawing with pastels requires different skills from drawing in pencil. Lithography too involves drawing onto a lithography stone or plate with a greasy substance.
Woodcuts and linoprints often involve drawing an image on a matrix, although production of this matrix also requires the additional skill of cutting the wood or lino block after the outline has been drawn. All derive from the apparently mechanical nature of the processes involved in each. According to Scruton, representational artworks are things that are of aesthetic interest to us in virtue of the way in which they represent their objects. For something to sustain an aesthetic interest in the way in which it represents its object, he claims, it must be capable of expressing its maker's thoughts about that object.
Art forms, such as painting, drawing, theater, and sculpture, are methods for producing artworks. A representational art form is a way of producing representational artworks. Scruton denies that photography is a representational art form, on the basis that it follows from the mechanical nature of photography that photographs are accurate representations.
Photographs bear purely mechanical, causal relations to the things they are photographs of, he claims, and yet we are able to work out what they are photographs of simply by looking at them, without prior knowledge of what they are causally related to.
Our ability to do this, he thinks, is explicable only if the appearance of photographs is a good guide to what caused them, and this condition is met only if they are accurate. Cinema, Scruton assumes, involves producing moving photographs of theatrical performances. Whereas photographs generally represent only whatever was in front of the camera lens when the photograph was taken, works of cinema generally also represent whatever characters the actors in front of the film camera were portraying at the time the film was shot.
Consequently, although it involves photography, and photography is not, according to Scruton, a representational art, cinema is a representational art, he holds, because works of cinematic fiction do not represent their fictional objects purely photographically.
Rather, they represent the fictional characters and scenarios they do by photographically representing theatrical representations of those characters and scenarios. Although he takes photography to be accurate, Scruton does not take theatrical performances to be. Theater is a representational art because screenwriters, actors, and directors can express their thoughts about a character or scenario by theatrically representing it in a certain way.
Because cinematic fiction involves theatrical representation, it too is therefore a representational art form. Nevertheless, Scruton denies that cinematic fiction is an independent representational art form.
To be independent, a representational art form must not rely on any other art form for its capacity to express thoughts about the things it is used to represent. Works of cinema represent their fictional objects, Scruton holds, only in virtue of photographically representing theatrical performances that represent those objects. The accuracy of photography, he claims, ensures that fictional cinematic works accurately represent the theatrical performances at issue.
Therefore, they accurately represent the features of those theatrical performances in virtue of which those performances represent fictional characters and scenarios. It follows that fictional cinematic works represent fictional characters and scenarios in exactly the same way as the theatrical performances of which they are moving photographs.
The methods of representing fictional characters and scenarios available to cinema are derived entirely from the theater. Scruton's assumption that representational art forms must enable artists to express their thoughts about the things works of that form represent is contentious.
However, one need not accept this assumption in order to use his arguments to help identify the limitations to the artistic potential of printmaking. His arguments seem equally compelling if one accepts only the weaker and more plausible assumption that representational art forms must enable artists to exercise their intentional control over the way in which objects are represented, and that independent representational art forms must provide artists with ways of intentionally controlling representational content independent of those provided by other art forms.
Drawing and painting play roles in these forms of printmaking that are analogous to that which the theater plays in cinema. In such a case, the only way in which printmakers can intentionally control the representational content of their prints and thus express their thoughts about the things their prints depict is through the way in which they draw them on the matrix.
In fact, there are important differences between the mechanical relation between prints and drawings or paintings and that between cinematic fictions and theatrical performances. Whether or not Scruton is right that cinematic fictions accurately represent theatrical performances, the relation between prints and drawings or paintings cannot be one of accurate representation.
Prints simply do not represent the drawings or paintings involved in their production. They represent only the things those drawings or paintings depict. While a print plausibly could accurately reproduce the drawing or painting from which it was made, it is not possible for a cinematic fiction accurately to reproduce the theatrical performance involved in its production.
Nevertheless, there is good reason for doubting that this construal of the issue is correct. Even prints that are produced from drawn or painted matrices by purely mechanical means may not accurately reproduce the features of the matrices from which they are produced. This is true except in cases in which offset methods of print production are employed, and cases in which the objects depicted are symmetrical, such that the mirror reversal does not produce any difference in depictive content between the drawn matrix and the resultant print.
Prints that are mirror images of the drawings or paintings from which they are mechanically produced often have both representational and formal features that they do not share with those drawings. I suggest that these processes are mechanical insofar as they are insensitive to the representational and formal features of the drawn or painted matrices to which they are applied.
Today students who study art are taught different methods and techniques that are involved in printmaking. There are many galleries, forums and society that make a special effort to exhibit the artists who use varied styles of printmaking techniques. There are societies that have developed fan following of this kind of art work produced from printmaking. They not only exhibit, preserve but also encourage young artist and art enthusiast to produce more work. In this fast-moving world of the internet and soft form of art, we may not notice printmaking today, but printmaking has evolved with time.
It has actually formed a part of many changes in the way we live today. Printmaking is not only an art form, but a way we live and think today.
Printmaking has actually formed the basis of the way humans have developed art and literature. It would not be wrong to say that printmaking today has formed a cult, and it is one for art form that has got it niche artists, patron and enthusiast.
A lot of galleries around the globe who exhibit printmaking have use following, and people from different walks of life come and follow printmaking. If you found a print-maker or an unusual printmaking work to be displayed, Leave a comment or let us know via Facebook and Twitter. Printmaking is here to stay as the roots of the printing process still go back to the ancient ways of creating an impression.
Although, this needs to focus longer than other art forms, we should salute the spirit of those who have been following this art and helping it to live further. She writes articles and tutorials for the design and graphics community. View all posts by: Anum. The German invention of lithography presented a new medium to artists, while the French influence dominated the European printmaking world.
After a few decades of producing masterful lithographs, the country saw an artistic revolution at mid-century with the Barbizon school. The Barbizon school printmakers created landscape etchings that laid the groundwork for the Impressionists to come.
Other Barbizon school acolytes depicted peasant life. Meanwhile, Japanese woodcuts made their way into Western consciousness. The woodcut master, Hokusai, was prolific, with a body of work encompassing 35, drawings and prints. After the invention of photography, art was no longer necessary as a reproduction tool, which let printmaking and other art forms return to creativity and experimentation.
While known for his paintings, Pablo Picasso also created over 1, prints from woodcuts, linocuts, lithographs, etchings, drypoints and engravings. As traditional printmaking as an art form flourished, modern printing techniques were also born. Printing as we think of it today began when Chester S. Carlson invented the photocopy in Later popularized by the Xerox Corporation, the technology involved dry toner powder rather than ink.
The machines used static electricity to bind the powder to paper. In , inventor Gary Starkweather introduced laser printing, which used a laser to bond the dry toner to the page. The inkjet printer came on the scene in , and it is still the preferred method used for fine art printing today. Japanese inventor Ichiro Endo developed the technology while working for Canon. The technology works by spraying tiny ink dots onto a page to form an image. In , the IRIS printer came to market , becoming the first large-format digital printer.
It was the first commercial printer adapted for fine art printing in the late s and early s. It made the yet-untested technology sound more refined and dignified. The IRIS printer remained the most popular fine art printer until the s, when the Epson and Canon printing companies developed newer, cheaper technologies that accommodated archival inks.
Whereas traditional printmaking uses one of several techniques to transfer a carved image onto paper or cloth using a printing matrix or plate, modern digital printing transfers the images directly onto the substrate using a digital image file. Digital printing techniques can render images onto many orthodox and unorthodox materials, including fine art paper, canvas, aluminum and acrylic.
While the final product varies with the printing technique, every method starts with printing an image using an inkjet printer. At Tribeca Printworks, we use the Epson large format printer, which allows us to print images with unrivaled definition and depth in many custom sizes. As part of the printing process, we select the right type of ink technology for the chosen substrate.
Printing on acid-free museum grade fine art paper or canvas requires aqueous ink. At Tribeca Printworks, we use a pigmented ink, which means pigmented particles are suspended within the liquid water molecules. Using a pigmented ink lets the finished piece last longer and resist fading when exposed to sunlight. The inkjet printing technique employed in giclee paper and canvas printing uses a small ink nozzle to spray microscopic ink droplets onto the page. The Epson printer we use at Tribeca Printworks can expel droplets onto the page with astonishing accuracy.
The ink nozzles contain piezo crystals, which vibrate, causing the ink to eject from the nozzle. When printing onto aluminum, we use a process called dye-sublimation rather than inkjet printing alone.
Dye-sublimation occurs when solid ink converts into gas and back into a solid, skipping its liquid state. When using dye-sublimation for aluminum, we first print the image using an inkjet printer. When we use a heat press to transfer the image onto aluminum, the temperatures get as hot as to degrees. These conditions cause the dye to sublimate, and after a few minutes, the image is permanently affixed to the aluminum.
At Tribeca Printworks, we use archival pigment inks and printing substrates alongside high-resolution digital inkjet printers to achieve museum-quality fine art and photography prints. Photographers and fine artists often want paper reproductions of their works to hang in galleries or sell to their customers.
Fine art printing on paper lets these creators create many copies of their pieces at an affordable price. Likewise, it allows their customers to enjoy the beauty of fine art in their homes without the high price tag of an original painting. The techniques involved in giclee printing on paper produce a gallery-quality print in vibrant colors, defined detail and considerable depth.
As opposed to regular photo paper, fine art printing paper incorporates cotton fibers or cellulose and has a neutral pH. The paper itself is thick and durable, locking in pigmentation while retaining clarity and detail. Painters have long used stretched canvas for their original artworks, and fine art printing on canvas lets both artists and photographers create reproductions on this material.
Its natural texture adds depth, and the wooden frame provides an alternative to traditional framed photos. You can choose from unprinted or mirrored edges or add a floater frame for a more finished appearance. At Tribeca Printworks, we can hand-stretch our canvas around custom stretcher bars or provide print-only services for your hand-stretched canvases. Printing photos and artwork on HD aluminum provides another attractive alternative to a traditional frame.
The metal printing substrate creates a sleek effect with vibrant colors and incredible detail. With aluminum, you can choose from glossy and matte white finishes, ideal for color photography and artwork. Black and white photographs and other high-contrast images can achieve a unique effect on silver aluminum.
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