screenprint

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:

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.

Mayoor (Peacock) (Screenprint, 1983)

“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.

Birling Gap (Screenprint, 2021)

For print artists from New York City, the subway (as a central part of the urban experience) is a frequent subject. I showed a look at an elevated subway station by a contemporary NYC printmaker named Deann Prosia, and I will feature some subway scenes by Martin Lewis (who did quite a few) in the future. Today’s print is a multicolored screen print of a London tube station by Andy Lovell, whose work I showed early on. The print is circular, bringing out the circular shape of the train tunnels as well as of the station itself.

Edgware via Bank (multicolored silkscreen print)