As always, the stellar lithographer Stow Wengenroth brings happiness to my heart. This is one of my favorite prints of his, which I’ve been saving, and I think New Year’s Eve and the end of my 12th week of sharing a print a day is a fitting occasion to share this one.
If you’re curious about how Gloucester Harbor sits in relation to the rest of Cape Ann and the mainland, here’s a nice detailed map (from the late 19th century).
This one is pretty uncomplicated. Gorgeous pic, no back story that I was able to find (and nothing in the picture to suggest there should be.)
Hokusai created a series of 5 prints traditionally used as New Year’s decorations. Each contained symbols suggesting wishes or hopes for the New Year. These were all vertically oriented long pieces, suggesting they were mounted on silk scrolls and hung, in a manner usually intended for ink brush paintings. One commentator on today’s print even suggests the tree branches covered in snow were created to suggest brush strokes rather than the clean lines characteristic of these woodblock prints.
Today’s print shows cranes in a snow-covered pine tree. Both cranes and pine are traditional symbols of longevity–a typical wish for the new year. This print of Hokusai’s is fairly well-known-not nearly as famous as the Great Wave off Kanagawa, nor as well-known as the Thirty-sex Views of Mount Fuji, but still fairly widespread in its distribution.
Please accept today’s print as my wish for you to have a long, happy, healthy life, with the coming year as a harbinger of that.
Two Cranes on a Snow-covered Pine Tree (Woodcut, 1834)
Stokesay Castle is one of the best preserved examples of a fortified manor house in all of England. It is located in Shropshire, between the Welsh border and Birmingham. It was built in the 13th century and the basic structure has remained largely unchanged since then. The site was originally part of the estate of various Norman nobles, but was sold to a wool merchant in the early 1300s. Ownership passed back and forth between noble and common families. During the 19th century, owners recognized the historic significance and attempted to conserve/restore, which was a considerable financial burden. In 1986, the family that owned Stokesay gave it to the English Heritage Trust, which manages numerous historic sites throughout England.
I stumbled across a South Asian print artist purely by chance today, and like a lot of his work. Sadly, I have not yet been able to find much written about him or his art in English, so I can’t really get the symbolism in most of it, of which there appears to be a lot. Thus, today’s discussion is longer on speculation and shorter on certainty than I would really like.
Jyoti Bhatt (1934-) grew up in the Indian state of Gujarat and seems to have been living there most of his life. He studied at the university in Baroda (Now called Vadodara), with stints in Naples and New York (Pratt) to learn more. It was at Pratt that he really learned about printmaking, and in particular the intaglio techniques (etching and engraving and their variations). Like many artists, he isn’t limited to one medium–he paints and draws, but print is clearly his major channel. He was the nucleus of a group of print artists that grew in Baroda. At one point, as part of a seminar he was asked to photograph some Gujarati folk art, and this became a passion for him–both photography in and of itself, and documenting/preserving traditional art forms and more broadly, traditional ways of life. Here are a few of those photo graphs, interesting on their own:
Note the peacocks in both photos. Recurring motif.
Today’s print is a peacock, which is a big symbol in Hindu mythology–rather confusing actually. It can represent: the mount of the gods Kartikeya, the god of war, as well as of Ganesha, a god who is the remover of obstacles, and Sri Chanda Bhairava, the god of one of the eight directions; or the goddesses themselves, Lakshmi, goddess of wealth and beauty, Vishnu’s consort, and Saraswati, goddess of benevolence/patience. Given the appearance of the figure, I’d guess that this peacock is meant to represent Lakshmi.
Escher the printmaker was best known for his interesting perspectives, mathematical approach to art, and the impossible scenes he portrayed. I have committed to showing prints that are visually pleasing rather than primarily of intellectual interest. Thus far, I have stayed away from the kind of work for which he is famous. There are some of his characteristic pieces that are also visually pleasing. Today’s print is one that I find delightful visually.
Escher became friendly with mathematician Bruno Ernst. After spending a lot of time with Escher, Ernst developed a mathematical classification for Escher’s prints, which I will share here for fun.
Regular spatial figures
Regular division of the plane
Spirals
Mobius strips
Perspective
Metamorphoses and cycles
Approaches to infinity
The conflict between depicting someting on a place, and the three-dimensional reality which is depicted
The penetration of more worlds
Spatial anomalies (impossible figures)
Relativities
These categories make sense if you’ve seen a lot of Escher’s work. For those who haven’t and are interested, many of his works can be viewed online at the Escher Foundation’s Gallery. His complete graphic works are published in a book which is out of print, but used copies of which can be found at reasonable prices.
Today’s print, Reptiles, falls into categories 2 and 6 (Regular division of the plane, and Metamorphoses and cycles.) I hope you find it as pleasing as I do.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, the term the Three Sisters has been used to describe a number of very different things. Indigenous people of Northeast North America used this term to refer to the co-cultivation of corn, beans and squash (which support each other’s growth, as well as being nutritionally complementary). Interestingly, there are two sets of rock formations on opposite ends of the world which are each called the Three Sisters. One is in New South Wales, Australia; the other in Nova Scotia, Canada. The Nova Scotia rock formations lend their name to today’s print, though the picture does not itself portray the three “sea stacks” of rock, but rather a fishing shack in the area with a sign reading “3 Sisters”.
Today’s artist is again William Hays, Vermont painter-turned-printmaker producing incredibly detailed color prints using the technique of color reduction relief printing.
Looking for something appropriate for this day, I came across this by Helene Bautista. You may remember a somewhat similar print by her that I showed a couple of weeks ago during a brief snowfall with the faint outline of an evergreen in the falling snow. Today’s print shows a more definite tree, with an unobstructed view. The artist creates an unusual and interesting textured, mostly white, background, using the aquatint technique with a sandpaper ground.
A very merry Christmas to all my friends who celebrate, and a happy winter solstice to everyone!
I don’t think I’m particularly looking for it, but I have come cross a few places where poetry and graphic art intersect, either inspiring the other . It popped up again today. I was given a copy of a Jewish legend from the Zohar (one of the foundational texts of Jewish mysticism) called The Alphabet of Creation, adapted and illustrated with prints by the Lithuanian-American-Jewish artist Ben Shahn. My mom is a big fan of Shahn, but aside from one print hanging on the wall of our living room, I wasn’t really familiar with this artist. With the Alphabet of Creation in hand, I decided to explore Shahn’s print art. Some I liked, some I didn’t, but I discovered that Shahn had a particular fascination with the 19th/20th century Austrian poet-novelist Rainer Maria Rilke. I don’t know RIlke’s work well, but a particular quotation I had long ago encountered gave him a special lustre in my memory. (From his Letters to a Young Poet: “For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.”)
Shahn actually created a series of 24 lithographs (The Rilke Portfolio) inspired by a single long paragraph in Rilke’s only novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. The passage is beautiful, and the lithographs are interesting and beautiful riffs on the passage. Today’s print, however, is not one of those, but rather another Rilke-associated print called Birds Over the City. This print is “assembled” from 3 motifs found in the Rilke Portfolio: several doves together, shown above a representation of a city, with a minimalist figure of Rilke’s face superimposed. Doves are often a symbol of love. Cities can be places to meet people, but when unpartnered, can feel very lonely. Love and loneliness are important themes in Rilke’s writing. (The portion of the print which is just Rilke’s face and the doves was also used in a poster Shahn created for a gallery called Atelier Mourlot.)
Symbolism aside, I find this picture visually appealing–harmonious, even. Love predominates over possible loneliness in the feel. How does it grab you?
Birds Over The City (Lithograph, 1968) with comparison images by the same artist
“Onward, and nearer draws the sun of May, And wide around the marriage of the plants Is sweetly solemnized; then flows amain The surge of summer’s beauty; dell and crag, Hollow and lake, hill-side, and pine arcade, Are touched with genius. Yonder ragged cliff Has thousand faces in a thousand hours.” –from Musketaquid, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Andy Lovell, contemporary British print artist, has been growing on me. I’ve been looking at a lot of his recent prints. Today’s print represents Birling Gap, an area of cliffs located in the midst of the Seven Sisters, a series of famous white chalk cliffs along the southern coastline of Sussex which are a big tourist destination.. (Sussex is the region of of England, south and slightly east of London; notable for many reasons, including being a former Saxon kingdom, site of the Battle of Hastings, and the place to which Sherlock Holmes retired to keep bees.) These are absolutely gorgeous prints–their interesting color schemes have definitely gotten under my skin in the best possible way.
Name that artist! For those of you who are regular viewers, one glance at the picture will likely tell you who the printmaker is. We’ve looked at his work before, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen sailboats, birds only once, and rocks several times but not together with birds.
The look of the boats and the fact that there are two shown makes me think perhaps this is a race. I feel the motion of the bird and of the boats, and of course the texture of the rocks is marvelous.
SPACE
INTENTIONALLY
LEFT BLANK to avoid the spoiler
Who is it? Yes, it’s Stow Wengenroth. I could stare at his prints for hours…
