Ben's Passion for Prints and Miscellaneous Musings on Art
Prints and other visual art
Every time I hear any bit of A Rhapsody in Blue, George Gershwin’s magnum opus, I just have to stop and listen. It’s magical. And while I didn’t grow up with it, the segment set to it from the 2000 remake of Fantasia, feels very on target too. So here it is–Gershwin, as rendered by Al Hirschfeld. There was a gala done of his music in 1980 in NJ, for which Hirschfeld drew a cover for the program, with Sarah Vaughn and Thomas Michalak both participating.
How could I not commemorate this day with an image of MLK? Not surprisingly, there are numerous photographs of MLK, some paintings and drawings and a very few prints. After looking at numerous paintings, drawings and the handful of prints, I’ve chosen 3 images to present.
The first is a pencil drawing that I just love, by an artist named Willie Jones Jr, otherwise famous for paintings and drawings of military aircraft. The second is a lithograph by Ben Shahn printed together with a King quotation. The third is an engraving from the US Treasury Bureau of Engraving and Printing (yes, the people who design and make our paper money!)
Before presenting the images, I will share a less commonly found quotation from MLK which I like.
“If you can’t fly, then run
If you can’t run, then walk
If you can’t walk, then crawl.
But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward. “
A couple of months ago, I shared a pandemic-themed print titled “Isolation” by a contemporary German print artist. I thought it was inspired–a perfect visual representation. The artist doesn’t have a enormous output so far, but a decent number of prints, some of which are to my taste and some of which are decidedly not.
There’s one little print which I like, though the visual is not as striking as many I post. The artist often posts his preliminary sketches along with the prints. The preliminary sketch appeals to me a lot more than the print itself. I ask myself why. The print has quite a lot of solid black, which to me feels almost the same as looking at something in low light, where you can’t appreciate as much of the detail (or color when applicable). Also, the solid black is lacking the detail that I love in these classic black-and-white prints. The preliminary sketch is much lighter overall, partly because shading with pencil is intrinsically not as dark as solid areas of black ink, but also because the pencil shading is much more textured. There are also solid black areas in the print in which the corresponding areas of the sketch are barely shaded, including the windows on the right. The cobblestones are also barely indicated in the sketch, leaving a lot less pencil shading corresponding to areas of black ink in the print.
I think I would rather own and hang the sketch instead of the print, if that were an option.
I have chosen prints with social justice themes or messages a few times. Once, I picked something that I did not find visually interesting/stimulating, and regretted it., even though the message was compelling. As a result, I am making sure now not to allow my enthusiasm for the theme override my judgement about the visual impact of the artwork.
I’ve shown a print by Charles White before. The portrayal of the two people in that print is so detailed, and conveys so much. I really love his work, especially his faces.
Today’s mixed media piece portrays a somewhat less realistic face, but striking and appropriate to the social justice theme of the piece. People more knowledgeable than me murmur about cubism and Picasso-like influence. Please tell me what you think.
What do I like about what I keep callling “classic” prints? Black and white which focuses on the shapes, and lots of detail and texture. I recently came across an Edward Gorey pen-and-ink drawing and was reminded that his style is very similar to those “classic” prints. His style when illustrating his own books or creating for himself is quite distinctive. He also did book covers and illustrations for others and it’s remarkable how differently he could draw under those circumstances.
His own books tended towards the bizarre and macabre (e.g. The Gashlycrumb Tinies, a rhyming alphabet poem with each letter presenting a child who died in an unusual fashion). One of his most recognizable products was the opening sequence for the PBS Mystery series starting in 1980. (Gorey drew pictures and a sequence, but it ran for too long, so PBS turned it over to an animator to take Gorey’s drawings and animate them. There have been many versions over the years.)
I’ve chosen a couple of drawings that I like, as well as a few from the Mystery opening sequence.
While perusing prints online and in books looking for inspiration for today’s print, I was struck by a contrast between two pictures of maternal figures male children by two different African-American artists. I’m sharing this pair of prints today.
Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) was a visual artist best known for her prints, although later in life she turned to sculpture as well. She was married first to another African-American print artist (Charles White, whose work I will feature one of these days). She and her husband were both awarded a prestigious fellowship to study in Mexico, where she remained after divorcing White, because she found American art trending towards the abstract, whereas her avowed reason for creating was to transmit social messages. Most of her work was devoted to describing and commenting on the Black American experience, especially the experience of Black women. She had a distinguished career as an artist in Mexico, becoming the first female art professor at a national art school.
I have shown prints by John Biggers twice before, first a charming print of a young girl, and then a print of two Black men learning to read. Notably, he was awarded a UNESCO fellowship in the 1950s to visit Africa to learn about African culture and artistic tradition. He was profoundly influenced by this first trip (to Ghana) and several subsequent trips to Africa. He was impressed by the matriarchal nature of Ghanaian society, finding both similarities and differences to the matriarchal character of African-American culture.
On his first trip to Ghana, Biggers drew a picture of his host, art professor Patrick Hulede, together with Hulede’s mother.
Catlett, in 1979, created a print of a maternal figure and a child. It’s not clear if this is mother or grandmother, but the style of the hat suggests an older woman to me..
Two pictures, both of a maternal figure and child: not strictly comparable, as one is adult mother and son, the other likely grandmother and young grandson, and yet I was struck by a comparison and contrast. When I look at the Catlett print, I see on the grandmother’s face weariness, uncertainty and perhaps fear in both her and the child, and what I might characterize as a contracted tone.
In contrast, what I feel in the Biggers drawing is openness, pride, and an expansive tone. Perhaps I’m reasoning backwards from my knowledge of history, but this fits with the ongoing oppression of American Blacks versus (in some parts of Africa which avoided colonial rule) a long-standing tradition of dignified self-government. Am I alone in this? I’d love to hear your reactions.
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.
