When Andy Warhol started painting on silk screen, the technology was mostly used for symbols. He had already painted by hand Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962) and was thinking about signs outside supermarkets that could advertise these sales. His first silk screens, however, were money. In his epic biography WarholBlake Gopnik points out that this may be inspired by an old Carnegie Institute of Technology professor who “spoke of the US dollar bill, with its Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington, as a work of art that we all carry in our pockets.”
“Deep Cuts: Block Printing Across Cultures,” a new exhibit at LACMA’s Resnick Pavilion, tries to make a similar argument about the oldest and most democratic form of image making. Curator Erin Maynes pulled more than 200 objects, many from the museum’s own collection, and organized them not by conventional geography or century but by the four things a block can do: convey, pattern, process and express. These four principles allow for a wide range of mediums, from a Japanese prayer scroll printed around 764 to contemporary wall-sized woodblock prints. Throw in an Albrecht Dürer, an Indian chintz and a German Expressionist Brücke Manifesto (1906) so rare that only five survive, and you’ll see that this exhibition shows the range from a very cheap way to produce.
The resulting work is often inherently exciting. Take Carl Otto Czeschka’s Textile Fragment, “Waldidyll” (Forest Idyll) (1910-11), a piece of printed linen depicting two deer hiding in a dense forest. The Jugendstil style treats the forest as a pure decoration, cutting off the dark violence. One feels centered in the viewed form of the design, and the fact that the curled leaves take up every inch of the design—empty space is a waste of a block! A 1916 photo shows Gustav Klimt wearing a dress made of this fabric at an artists’ event and one can see how he could live with this Dan Flashes level of sophistication.
That work was about “pattern,” and in “process” we have it Newspaper (1934) by Paul Landacre. The process is indeed ongoing in this work, because the press on display was found rusted in the ghost town of Bodie in 1929 and restored by Landacre, who insisted that the hand press powered the press due to the pressure he felt when he pulled the lever. It’s hard to argue with the results. His wood carving includes a deep texture, almost as if he needs to feel this great machine because it is otherwise very mysterious to him.
This is Alison Saar’s place High Cotton II (2018) shows that after so many years the medium still rewards innovation. The title refers to the best of times, the season of fortune, but it takes on a different meaning for the woman depicted. How better to show this disconnection than the wild contrast between the fluffy, classic texture of cotton and the tension within her skin?
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