woodcut

The Ryogoku bridge–the Brooklyn Bridge of Tokyo? Week 15, Tuesday

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Bridges do seem to be particularly print-o-genic, judging by the number of prints that I have found of bridges. Of course, the Brooklyn Bridge is particularly iconic–and there are a lot more excellent pictures of it than of most of the other NY city bridges (which is why I picked it for the week-long series) . Some of that reflects its age, of course–it’s the oldest of the East River crossings and one of the oldest in NYC that’s still in use.

When flipping through images from Hokusai’s famous series The 36 Views of Mount Fuji, my eye was caught by the print Sunset across the Ryogoku Bridge from the bank of the Sumida River at Onmayagashi. With this print, as with many others, there were many editions, printed from reproduced blocks, with different inks, over decades. Not surprisingly, the colors vary tremendously. I looked at a number of editions of this print, and finally honed in on one that seemed to capture all the colors well. Almost all of the them had rich blues and greens, but the orange-pink of the sunset was barely visible in most. (Perhaps that color faded more quickly than the other colors?)

When I started reading about the Ryogoku bridge, there were many references and numerous pictures spanning the centuries. It is one of many bridges in Tokyo, but it dates back to the 17th century. I think it qualifies as a reasonable analog to the Brooklyn Bridge. I am not proposing to do a week of prints of the Ryogoku Bridge (though there are more than enough to do months!), but in addition to the one print that I was planning to share, I will include a few others.

In the original Hokusai Sunset print, I love the texture of the water aft of the boat, as well as how the sunset diffuses out behind the bridge, the mountain and the distant land.

If you have clicked through to the WordPress blog, then you can click on any of the images and get a magnified gallery with captions, which allows you to scroll through the images one by one, and you can zoom in on any of them as you would on any image on a web page.

The Sunken Cathedral–Escher: Wk15 of share-a-print-day, Sunday

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Today’s print is a visually striking piece with an interesting backstory. This is not one of Escher’s characteristic “crazy” pieces, but what might be called a pretty traditional kind of picture, albeit one that grabs my gut. Escher was inspired to write it by a piano prelude by Debussy. Debussy’s piece was, in turn, inspired by an ancient Breton myth called the Legend of Ys, about a sunken city or church that re-emerges above the water periodically. Of course, as with most ancient stories, there are numerous versions and variations.

The basic framework of the story seems to first be found in the sixteenth century, some elements can be found centuries earlier. The essential seems to be that the city was build on land reclaimed from the sea which could be flooded at high tide, so it was protected by dikes. The king’s daughter steals his keys, probably to admit a lover, and mistakenly opens the floodgates at high tide, allowing the city to be inundated, killing almost all of the inhabitants. Versions differ as to whether it was the palace/castle that was inundated, or the whole city, and in some later versions, it seems it was a church/cathedral, which was clearly what Debussy based his version on. The legened suggests that when the water is very clear, the city/palace/catherdral rises above the water transiently, and priests chanting and bells ringing can be heard.

Debussy’s prelude is very lovely, and very typical of his work. Some of the motifs definitely suggest church bells and priestly chanting. Escher’s print clearly hews to the cathedral version, and is very evocative.

La Cathedrale Engloutie (The Drowned Cathedral), (Woodcut, 1929)

Brooklyn Bridge Week Day 2 (Week 14, Sunday)

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After looking at the Wengenroth print I posted yesterday, of the Brooklyn Bridge in Winter, I was struck by the memory of how many bridge pictures I’d seen, and thought it might be fun to do a series of pictures of bridges. Then I remembered how many Brooklyn Bridge prints I’d seen by artists I was already in love with. Even allowing myself a week and limiting myself to the Brooklyn Bridge, I still have quite a bit more than a weeks’ worth. I think more than a week on one topic, though, is probably a bit much, so I’ll make this Brooklyn Bridge Week (with yesterday being retroactively designated as day 1).

Today I’m going back to Richard Bosman. The most recent print of his we’ve looked at was, in fact, the Manhattan Bridge with the Brooklyn Bridge in the background, done in black and white rather than his characteristic color. Today’s print is done in black, white and one color. Enjoy one of Bosman’s several portrayals of the Brooklyn Bridge (of which we’re only going to look at one this week).

The Brooklyn Bridge (Woodcut, 1996)

Dramatic weather from a Prairie Print Maker: Thursday

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Looking at prints is dangerous. It’s down the rabbit hole every time. Today while looking at many prints by an artist I was already familiar with, I lucked into a particularly dramatic print by an unfamiliar printmaker. Herschel Logan was a charter member of the Prairie Print Makers, founded in 1930 and based in Wichita, Kansas. This was the heyday of printmaking, and there were numerous printmaker organizations, local, regional and national. The Prairie Print Makers distinguished themselves from others by working in many different print media, as opposed to many other groups which were built up around one technique. (This group included among its more prestigious members none other than Stow Wengenroth, of Brooklyn and New England!) Most of Logan’s prints are lovely but pretty conventional–some bit of rustic outdoor scenery with a house or barn or some such. Today’s print is about as far from the serene and rustic countryside as you can get. Behold….

Tornado (Woodcut, 1937-38)

The beauty of bare trees in winter: Sunday

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We tend to think of the beauty of trees as being bound up with their leaves, especially the gorgeous colors of autumn. We’re now in the season of bare branches, which have their own beauty.

“Ages may have passed before man gained sufficient mental stature to pay admiring tribute to the tree standing in all the glory of its full leafage, shimmering in the sunlight, making its myriad bows to the restless winds; but eons must have lapsed before the human eye grew keen enough and the human soul large enough to give sympathetic comprehension to the beauty of bare branches laced across changing skies, which is the tree-lover’s full heritage.
In winter, we are prone to regard our trees as cold, bare, and dreary; and we bid them wait until they are again clothed in verdure before we may accord to them comradeship. However, it is during this winter resting time that the tree stands revealed to the uttermost, ready to give its most intimate confidences to those who love it. It is indeed a superficial acquaintance that depends upon the garb worn for half the year; and to those who know them, the trees display even more individuality in the winter than in the summer. The summer is the tree’s period of reticence, when, behind its mysterious veil of green, it is so busy with its own life processes that it has no time for confidences, and may only now and then fling us a friendly greeting.”
Trees At Leisure, Amanda Botsford Comstock, 1916

Today I share two prints created 60 years apart, emphasizing the beauty of bare branched trees in winter.

1991-V, Grietje Postma (Color reduction woodcut, 1991) and Winter Moon at Toyomogahara, Kawase Hasui (Woodcut, 1931)

Wishes for the New Year from Hokusai: week 12, day 6 (Thursday)

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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)

New York Noir–Richard Bosman in black and white: week 10, day 7

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Richard Bosman has been a favorite because of his bold colors, used in interesting ways. (Many of his prints use 1-3 colors, each in various shades.) I’ve shown four of his pieces including my very first share-a-print post!

He does do some exclusively black-and-white prints, and when idly scanning through some of hisB&W prints on his website, my eye was caught by a print I’d undoubtedly seen before but not really noticed. This is one of a series of five prints of New York City places, all with this “white on black” style (as opposed to typical prints which are “black on white”, i.e. white background with black ink printed on it). He calls these five prints “New York Noir”. This style appeals to me more now than the first time I saw it, and this one print in particular really stands out.

Today’s print shows a bridge with another bridge and a mass of lit buildings behind it. The twin towers are in this picture from 1998. if I’m reconstructing this correctly in my mind, the foreground bridge is the Manhattan Bridge and the background bridge is the Brooklyn Bridge, with the WTC towers behind it . Those of you who know the city better are welcome to correct me.

New York Noir Bridge (Woodcut, 1998)

A portrait of Duke Ellington: week 10, day 6

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As you may remember, Antonio Frasconi emigrated from Uruguay to the US in 1945. His son quotes Frasconi. ” Antonio used to say that the first thing he did when he got off the boat from Uruguay in 1945, in New Orleans, was go see Duke Ellington and his band play.” Perhaps hyperbolic, but makes a point.

Frasconi created prints of many types, including book covers and illustrations, children’s books of his own, social justice pieces (Pictures with a Point, you might say), and portraits of a number of well-known figures of the 20th century. I find the portraits of people I know about to be spot on. We looked at a portrait of Walt Whitman a while back and I felt he really nailed Whitman. He did portraits of several musicians, including Pablo Casals and Charlie Mingus in addition to Ellington.

Like the vast majority of his work, the Ellington print is a woodcut. He did something very unusual with this print–something I’ve not seen in any other print, of his or other artists. Ellington’s head is typical print art, formed of a complex mass of tiny lines, but the body appears to be plain wood with the grain quite evident. Meaning? Ellington was a sensitive and complex soul, based on a simple and completely natural foundation? Speculations gladly accepted. Ellington’s face is beautifully rendered, suggesting a life rich in emotion and experience.

[I can’t finish writing this without noting a delightful tidbit I came across when doing some research about this print. Frasconi and his wife (both artists, both having written and illustrated children’s books) were close friends with Crockett Johnson and his wife Ruth Krauss. Johnson is well known as the creator of the Harold series of children’s books, initiated by the famous Harold and the Purple Crayon. I only learned about the Harold books as a parent. My introduction to Johnson’s work was the delightful comic strip Barnaby which I came across as a tween just old enough to appreciate that there were multiple levels in the strip. “A boy named Barnaby wishes for a fairy godmother. Instead, he gets a fairy godfather who uses a cigar for a magic wand. Bumbling but endearing, Mr. O’Malley rarely gets his magic to work — even when he consults his Fairy Godfather’s Handy Pocket Guide. The true magic of Barnaby resides in its canny mix of fantasy and satire, amplified by the understated elegance of Crockett Johnson’s clean, spare art.”]

Portrait of Duke Ellington (Woodcut, 1976)

The Tower of Babel–M.C. Escher: week 10, day 3 (Monday)

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Escher did 240+ fairly conventional prints before starting to produce the kind of remarkable works for which he is famous. ‘… Escher dismissed his works before 1935 as of little or no value as they were “for the most part merely practice exercises…” ‘ Of these earlier works, perhaps half of them were accurate representations of existing buildings, in which Escher experimented with perspective and textures. The product towards which Escher was working with these “practice exercises” was the impossible architecture of pieces such as Belvedere, Up and Down, and Waterfall.

Today’s print depicting the biblical story of the Tower of Babel feels like a rare bridging example. The building itself is rendered with textures very similar to those he employed in dozens of prosaic prints of churches, schools, and other buildings. This print, however, is not a static figure of a conventional building. This print clearly tells a story. The perspective is looking down from above onto the very top floor under construction, where numerous figures (both dark and light-skinned) are engaged not in productive work, but mostly in heated conversation. Similar figures are depicted at several levels of the building further down.

The textures and perspective are interesting in and of themselves, and are visually pleasing in a rather low-key way. The action depicted is very much suggesting a story.

What do you think of this print? Do you feel the story? Do the angles and textures please your eye? It’s worth zooming in to see the details as long as the picture remains sharp.

Tower of Babel (woodcut, 1935)

In love with a new print artist, Giertje Postma: week 9, day 7 (Friday)

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I am continually awed by the seemingly infinite variety of human artistic expression, even when confined to one medium. I keep discovering new artists I like, whose work may have something in common with one or more artists I already know and love, but whose style is distinctive.

Enter Giertje Postma (1961-). She came to the Academie Minerva in Groningen in 1984 to learn to paint. She quickly learned that the clean lines of drawing suited her better than painting, but drawing wasn’t quite right. She found her way to printmaking, and left Groningen in 1989 a skilled printmaker.

Her chosen technique is color woodcut reduction, a complex method involving printing one color layer on as many pieces of paper as desired for final product, then carving away the block to leave the areas desired in the next color and printing the 2nd color on those same papers (very carefully aligned, of course), and so on. Postma crushes it with this technique, as you’ll see shortly. This is such a complicated process that I doubt my very brief explanation does more than give you a vague idea, so here are a few better descriptions with pictures, starting with the shortest and getting longer as you go down the list.

How does color reduction relief printing work?

Postma’s dazzling prints feel like a combination of the detailed, texture, almost photorealistic B&W prints of Martin Lewis or Stow Wengenroth , with the vivid colors of Andy Lovell. Again, you hear my cry of pain at having to choose one print among many amazing ones. In the end, as with many of these choices, I picked one that was not only beautiful, which felt appropriate to the circumstance (day, season, weather, etc).

2013-I (color woodcut reduction, 2013)