Archive for the ‘Prints’ Category

Meryl at the Rose

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

Hun­dreds of peo­ple came to MERYL BRATER’s Memo­r­i­al Exhi­bi­tion at the Rose Art Muse­um. We all believed that Meryl would live on at the Rose, and that many gen­er­a­tions to come would have the chance to know her through her art. To close the muse­um now would be a ter­ri­ble blow to every­one who loved her – to every­one who trust­ed their trea­sure to the Rose.

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The Inferno of Dante

Sunday, January 1st, 1995

Dan­te’s vision of Hell is filled with ter­ri­fy­ing images of trans­for­ma­tion, yet its ulti­mate hor­ror is its change­less­ness — the unre­pen­tant sin­ners whose pun­ish­ment is to embody, for­ev­er, their sins. Cen­turies after its obscure Flo­ren­tine vil­lains have been for­got­ten, the poem still rings true as a dra­ma of the inner life, because the heart of the poem is the hope that we can still be changed.

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Working Proof: Experimental Etching Studio

Saturday, November 21st, 1992

Ten years ago, I spent a very hap­py sum­mer work­ing at Exper­i­men­tal Etch­ing Stu­dio, so I was delight­ed when the Boston Pub­lic Library invit­ed me to help shape a con­ver­sa­tion among a group of artists from this extra­or­di­nary print­mak­ing cooperative. 

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The Unique Print

Sunday, December 9th, 1990

In mono­type, there is no fixed image on the print­ing sur­face. The artist paints or draws on a print­ing plate, makes changes, and prints again; the final proof is an accu­mu­la­tion of all the changes that have been made. Pale, fad­ed images of past impres­sions often cling to mono­types like shad­ows; they are called “ghosts.”

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Robert Rauschenberg

Tuesday, May 22nd, 1990

Great art cheats death of its vic­to­ry by trans­form­ing mem­o­ry’s frag­ile frag­ments into some­thing last­ing, pre­cious, and incor­rupt­ible. The ghost­ly white porch is a win­dow to a world beyond flesh and paint — a world with­out sor­row or sub­stance, col­or or weight. It is cool, pale, and white as a bone.

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American Screenprints

Tuesday, September 26th, 1989

Many of the most mem­o­rable images of the six­ties were silkscreen prints: Andy Warhol’s soup­cans, Mar­i­lyns, and Jack­ies, Roy Licht­en­stein­s’s day-glo brush­strokes on Ben-Day dots, Sis­ter Cori­ta’s Flower Pow­er mes­sages, Robert Indi­ana’s LOVE, and Ed Ruscha’s daz­zling 1966 Stan­dard Sta­tion, radi­ant and gleam­ing in the Cal­i­for­nia light.

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Mary Cassatt

Friday, July 14th, 1989

In many of the prints, a wom­an’s face is par­tial­ly obscured, either because of the way she has turned her head, or because she is hold­ing some­thing in front of her face ‑‑ a hand, a let­ter, a child. This con­veys a sense of mys­tery, a feel­ing that there are secret mean­ings and moments of tragedy and what Vir­ginia Woolf called “ecsta­sy” — hid­den in the tex­ture of a wom­an’s dai­ly life.

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Michael Mazur

Sunday, May 1st, 1983

In MICHAEL MAZUR’s hands, the Mono­type was the per­fect form to con­vey the mul­ti­plic­i­ty of life in the nat­ur­al world. The clear­est, most lucid flow­ers are sur­round­ed by a paler aura of oth­er flow­ers, oth­er sum­mers, oth­er inter­pre­ta­tions — a riot of reeds and flow­ers, organ­ic growth, con­fu­sion, and decay. Revenants of images repeat like ghost­ly, half-remem­bered things.

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