Month: October 2021

Margaret Burroughs, Renaissance woman/artist, and her Black Venus/Week 4

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As with many of the artists, I stumbled across a print created by Margaret Burroughs (1915-2010), and thus started to learn about her life Cliche though it is, she was an incredible example of a Renaissance woman. She was a painter, sculptor, poet, printmaker and perhaps most important community organizer and fierce advocate for African American people. She was born in the rural South, but her family moved to Chicago when she was a child, and she lived there for more of her life. She was a gifted artist, being noticed by teachers in her childhood and being encouraged and nurtured. She continually created, never stopping. In addition to her many paintings, sculptures and prints, she authored more than 10 books, mostly poetry and children’s books, and edited several anthologies. She established a museum of African America History and Art (now the DuSable Museum of African American History) and a community art center (the South Side Community Art Center). She was recognized with many awards later in life.


I wrote in a previous post about representation and how important it is. Many African-American artists have worked hard to provide it, and this was one of Burroughs’ passions. In addition to portraying everyday scenes with dark-skinned people, she created some visual art showing strikingly beautiful images of dark-skinned people in dramatic settings. Today’s print is called Black Venus, and is loosely based on Botticelli’s well-known Birth of Venus (humorously referred to by some as Venus on the Half-Shell). There was an intermediate artwork which is important to note. Thomas Stothard’s Voyage of the Sable Venus (see below), created around 1800, replaces Botticelli’s light-skinned Venus with a black one who is clearly traveling across the water in a seashell vessel. Some have suggested that this represents the voyage of black people from Africa to slavery in America, and using the symbol of Venus is an allusion to the rape of enslaved black women. Looking at Stothard’s print, it’s easy to imagine the figure of Triton or Poseidon gazing at Venus in a lecherous and commanding way, whereas in Burrough’s version that figure appears to be looking at Venus with awe or admiration. Stothard’s Venus looks unsure of herself, whereas Burrough’s version presents a calm beauty with no apparent lack of confidence. It’s not clear if Burroughs was aware of Stothard’s piece..

I applaud Burroughs for wanting to represent dark-skinned people in historical or fictional contexts as well. There are many speculations that Jesus, for example, was dark-skinned for all that European artists always represent him as white. Who knows what color skin the mythic gods of Greece had? I find many of Burrough’s prints pleasing and interesting and will undoubtedly show more of them in the future.

Margaret Taylor Burroughs’ Black Venus

Grainger after Stothard’s Voyage of the Sable Venus from Angola to the West Indies

Waterfall, Richard Bosman again: Week 4

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Richard Bosman was the first printmaker I featured when I started this endeavor a month or so ago. He does woodcuts, screenprints and monoprints as well as paintings. He uses bold colors but most of his prints feature a limited palette, often limited to variations of a single color. I chose today’s print of a waterfall as on our vacation this summer we spent time in upstate New York looking at several gorgeous waterfalls. This one is entitled Buttermilk Falls, but there are numerous falls with that name, so I’m not sure which one it is. We don’t need to know that in order to enjoy it, of course.

Buttermilk Falls

Learning to read, John Biggers: Week 3, Wednesday

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I showed a John Biggers print a couple of weeks ago, a charming picture of a playful young girl. You may remember that Biggers, like so many of the artists I am showing, overcame a lot of obstacles and had a brilliant career, perhaps limited by racism. Today’s Biggers print is a little deeper. It’s a lithograph entitled Learning to Read, and was created around 1960. I have not been able to learn much about it, but the one interesting piece of history I discovered is that it was created in at least two steps. The figure on the left/foreground appears to have been created first, as there are impressions available showing only that figure (described as an intermediate state print), without the figure on the right/background, who is holding a book. It suggest that the artist started with one figure in mind, and wasn’t sure what else he was going to put in this print. Presumably test printing just the left/foreground picture and looking at it helped him decide what else to do with this work. Both the intermediate state and the full print are show below.

I am trying to interpret the picture. I would say that both men are learning to read. The older man is ecstatic to have the opportunity to learn even at his advanced age (African-Americans were forbidden to learn to read for decades), whereas the younger man looks pained, perhaps because he knows if he was white, he would have learned at a far younger age. Please share your interpretations and thoughts!

Intermediate state print

Final print

Honoré  Daumier, political cartoonist/caricaturist/satirist: Week 4, Share-a-print-a-day

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I keep finding new printmakers and artists whose styles I like, but I also want to explore more of the artists I’ve already found. I am going to try to find a good balance between posting artists I’ve posed before and newly discovered artists. Feedback on that balance is definitely welcome.

The new artist for today is Honoré  Daumier, whos life spanned much of the 19th century. He painted and sculpted, but his biggest output was caricatures/political cartoons, done by lithography. and wood engraving, estimated at around 5000 total. Some of his stuff satirized social trends and some was political. Much of it was created for immediate publication in specific periodicals. He earned what might be thought of as the badge of honor for a political cartoonist by being jailed for his work, not once, but twice.

Today’s print is visually striking and incredibly well done, but the emotional tone is different from most of his prints, which were satiric. Rue Transnonain, April 15, 1834, is not a lovely , feel-good print, but it is beautifully done and conveys the intended tone very effectively. In 1830, the reigning Bourbon monarch was deposed and replaced by a popularly selected cousin named Louis-Phillipe, Duke of Orleans. In 1834, the government of Louis-Phillipe imposed restrictions on freedom of the press (in the form of town criers) and freedom of association, which triggered violent protests. During one of these protests in Paris, a government solider was shot from a house in the Rue Transnonain. The army retaliated by killing all 19 of the inhabitants of that house the next day. Daumier created a lithograph depicting his imagination of the scene inside the house immediately following that massacre. Not a warm and fuzzy subject or picture, but a beautifully done, visually arresting image.

Rue Transnonain, April 15, 1834

Atmospheric “print noir”: Martin Lewis again (week 3, day 7)

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Martin Lewis is the printmaker I stumbled upon that ignited this new enthusiasm. He was a virtuoso, exploring a number of printmaking techniques and many variations of them and producing an incredible variety of textures and effects thereby. He never touched color in printmaking, though he did to some extent in painting. By today’s standards, that means that his prints (all black and white) evoke a certain feel, a film noir kind of allusion. He was masterful at the use of light and dark. Many of his best works were set at night, especially in Manhattan, and evoke the feel of the night, and the city at night in a powerful fashion. His early prints feel somewhat more pedestrian than his later work. He took up painting (especially watercolor) in the 1920s, and it seems to have had positive effects on his printmaking, which became much more textured and nuanced. Is it an accident that it was in this period that he started to do more night scenes?

Today’s print is set in a somewhat suburban feeling location–perhaps one of the outer boroughs, or Connecticut. It is a lithograph. This was a technique he utilized much less than etching. In characteristic Lewis style, he wasn’t content with plain old lithography. He added texture to this print by using a metal stylus to scratch some fine white lines into the pattern laid down with the wax lithograph “crayon” before printing. Like most of the prints I love, this one pulls me in, makes me feel like I am part of the scene. Behold, “American Nocturne” (1937).

American Nocturne, 1937

Giovanni Antonio Canal (Canaletto): Week 3/Day 6

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You may have noticed that I have a penchant for prints that show a lot of detail. I recently ran across an oil painting with that same quality of knock-me-over-with-a-feather detail that I love in prints, which is what I am sharing with you today. Canaletto (the “use name” of Giovannai Antonio Canal) was a Venetian painter of the early to mid 18th century who was famed for his detailed and precise paintings of places. (You may also have noticed that I tend to enjoy landscapes more than portraits or still lifes.) His style has been described as “almost topographical”. He painted views of some places from many different vantage points, and is also known for painting capricci, or fantasies, of imaginary places, or imaginary juxtapositions of existing places or buildings. Here is today’s beautiful picture.

The Grand Canal, Venice, Looking Southeast, with the Campo della Carità to the Right, by Canaletto

Share-a-print-a-day, week 3/Tuesday: Rainy day in Boston, rainy day print by Hiroshige

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Given that it’s been a rainy day here, I thought a print of a rainy day would be appropriate. The Japanese ukiyo-e artists depicted weather a lot–wind, rain, snow–with sudden downpours an especially common feature. As in haiku, nature and the natural environment is very important. This print, Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake, by Hiroshige, was created in 1857, as part of the famous series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.  (Edo was the older name for the city of Tokyo.) Bridges were very common in Hiroshige’s prints. This particular print is one of the better known of Hiroshige’s works, and was copied in oil paints by Van Gogh (See below). I love this print like so many of the ukiyo-e scenes, because it’s very evocative–I feel like I can be in the picture.

Sudden Shower over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake, by Hiroshige

Bridge in the Rain by Van Gogh

Week 3 of share-a-print-a-day (Monday): John Taylor Arms again

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John Taylor Arms, as you may remember, was a prolific etcher from the first half of the 20th century who was widely recognized for his talent in his time. Most of his prints are of places, which happens to be the category I like best. Here’s an absolutely lovely one, which is not profound but just plain beautiful. You have to look twice to realize it’s not a photo.

Venetian Mirror

A few musings on works of art

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A couple of obsservations as I have been learning about print art:

  1. It’s remarkably hard to find all of an artist’s oeuvre in one place, and often hard even to assemble it from different places. In this age of instant online information/gratification, I have found that for most of the artists I’m looking at, there is not a single online repository of all their works, or even all their works within a single genre (e.g. prints). For many, there is not even a single publication with all of their work in it. When I do find a book with all of an artist’s work (a so-called catalogue raisonné; “A catalogue raisonné is a comprehensive, annotated listing of all the known works of an artist either in a particular medium or all media.”), it’s usually out of print, hard to find, and expensive. (Of course, these three properties are closely related.)
  2. There is often no information available about the why of a work, the meaning, or the artist’s intention in creating it. Those who are more familiar with the art world will doubtless not be surprised at this, but for a naif like me, it’s an unwelcome realization. No wonder there are so many critics and academics debating on these topics.

Both of these facts mean I have to equip myself with patience and a zen-like acceptance of what is. Neither of those things are skills for which I am known, but I guess I will have to get better at them.

Week 3/Day 2: Not just prints…Hirschfeld

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While my new passion is mostly for prints, it spills over a bit into other 2d art–including drawings and paintings. Today, I’m going to feature a caricature by Al Hirschfeld. Hirschfeld did miraculous line drawings of scenes from shows (mostly Broadway, but some film too), as well as performers and other well-known people. His drawings typically were on the first page of the NY Times Arts and Leisure section every Sunday, and they are marvelous. Here is his drawing of Man of La Mancha, a musical that is loosely based on the novel Don Quixote.interwoven with a loosely interpreted life of Miguel de Cervantes (author of Don Quixote). This drawing is from the original 1965 production starring Richard Kiley starring Richard Kiley (2328 performances, followed by 4 Broadway revivals to date and a film version), and this caricature was eventually used as cover art for the Playbill in later years of the original run.