Feb 20 Thu MORGAN Exhibits Woodcut Book Illustrations - Peak of Individual Book Production
Woodcut Illustration and the Art of the Modern Book—from William Morris to Wordless Novels—Is the Subject of New Exhibition at
The Morgan Library & Museum
Medium as Muse: Woodcuts and the Modern Book
February 21–May 11, 2014
**Press Preview: Thursday, February 20, 10-11:30 am**
RSVP media@themorgan.org; (212) 590-0393
New York, NY, February 4, 2014—For a small but influential group of European and American artists engaged with the art of the book, the medium of the woodcut became an inspiration for stylistically diverse and provocative works in the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. What many viewed as the detrimental and alienating effects of new illustration and printing technologies became a catalyst for artists to reinvent the book in creative expressions that elevated it to a work of art, and signaled the era’s meditative moments on the past and future of illustrated books and their makers. From the sublime Kelmscott Chaucer to the proto-graphic novels of Frans Masereel, woodcut illustration was integral to some of the most exquisite and innovative books of the modern age. These publications continue to delight the senses while prompting thoughtful explorations of the potential form and function of the printed book: how we read images and look at texts according to the hands that craft them.
Shakespeare_Die tragische Geschichte von Hamlet 3Artists associated with the Arts and Crafts movement, such as William Morris, Charles Ricketts, Lucien Pissarro and Eric Gill explored the woodcut’s decorative and typographic properties expressive of their interests in the early history of the book and contemporary ideas of social reform. William Nicholson and Edward Gordon Craig adopted the aesthetics of archaic inexpensive forms of illustrated publications, updating chapbooks and almanacs with their fin-de-siècle styles. In France and Belgium, artists with ties to Paul Gauguin and the Symbolist movement, such as Émile Bernard, George Minne, and Alfred Jarry, investigated the woodcut’s associations with religious imagery in books and popular prints, while Félix Vallotton, Edward Wadsworth, and Aristide Maillol cultivated the medium for original expression in artists’ books and avant-garde magazines. The medium’s semantic association with proletariat causes helped to shape the visual representation of American identity during the Great Depression in illustrations by Rockwell Kent and J. J. Lankes. In the final years of this period, often referred to as the woodcut revival, the medium’s democratic underpinnings and inscriptive properties were explored in works by Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, and others, who exploited its potential for narrative expression through the wordless novel.
The more than ninety illustrated books, drawings, prints, and wood blocks in Medium as Muse: Woodcuts and the Modern Book are drawn almost entirely from the collection of The Morgan Library & Museum. The exhibition, on view from February 21 to May 11, surveys illustrated publications from 1890 to World War II, contextualizing them within their idealized past—in precursors and touchstones of medieval and Renaissance book design—and mapping potential trajectories in experimental animation, fine printing, and works by graphic artists today.
“Artists involved in the woodcut revival worked outside the mainstream, creating works at a transformative moment in the history of the modern book,” said William M. Griswold, Director of The Morgan Library & Museum. “New technologies, which may have threatened the viability of the craft of wood engraving, ultimately inspired a range of creative responses that used the printed book’s earliest form of illustration as a means to think through the relationship between a medium and its message—an idea with continuing relevance to artists today.”
HOW IT WORKED OUT
Superb art show. Possibly the ultimate exhibition to introduce people to the art of woodcut, showing immortal examples of the hand crafted art in its leading role, its most artistic and expressive suitable use, illustrations on and in books, focusing on the peak of this art achieved in the final years of the nineteenth century, but including superb earlier and later examples.
There is a twenty minute video showing how a woodcut is done, every cut and scrape from drawing to final impression. What is especially marvelous is the degree of detail and fine line achievable in a process that one would think would chain the artist to crudity - one woodcut shown of a subway scene looks like a photograph.
The show makes the general point that a woodcut illustrated book with hand set type was at the last development stage in books where one individual artist could be responsible for the whole product, and that this wholly hand crafted book was rapidly being sidelined by the onward march of mechanization at the turn of the 20th century. The huge trend gave rise to worries that woodcut illustration would be stamped out, just as at the end of 20th Century very similar worries rose up about the end of the paper book, period.
But it didn't happen - woodcut illustration is alive today in the hands of artists, and these examples are inspiring.
Read MoreThe Morgan Library & Museum
Medium as Muse: Woodcuts and the Modern Book
February 21–May 11, 2014
**Press Preview: Thursday, February 20, 10-11:30 am**
RSVP media@themorgan.org; (212) 590-0393
New York, NY, February 4, 2014—For a small but influential group of European and American artists engaged with the art of the book, the medium of the woodcut became an inspiration for stylistically diverse and provocative works in the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. What many viewed as the detrimental and alienating effects of new illustration and printing technologies became a catalyst for artists to reinvent the book in creative expressions that elevated it to a work of art, and signaled the era’s meditative moments on the past and future of illustrated books and their makers. From the sublime Kelmscott Chaucer to the proto-graphic novels of Frans Masereel, woodcut illustration was integral to some of the most exquisite and innovative books of the modern age. These publications continue to delight the senses while prompting thoughtful explorations of the potential form and function of the printed book: how we read images and look at texts according to the hands that craft them.
Shakespeare_Die tragische Geschichte von Hamlet 3Artists associated with the Arts and Crafts movement, such as William Morris, Charles Ricketts, Lucien Pissarro and Eric Gill explored the woodcut’s decorative and typographic properties expressive of their interests in the early history of the book and contemporary ideas of social reform. William Nicholson and Edward Gordon Craig adopted the aesthetics of archaic inexpensive forms of illustrated publications, updating chapbooks and almanacs with their fin-de-siècle styles. In France and Belgium, artists with ties to Paul Gauguin and the Symbolist movement, such as Émile Bernard, George Minne, and Alfred Jarry, investigated the woodcut’s associations with religious imagery in books and popular prints, while Félix Vallotton, Edward Wadsworth, and Aristide Maillol cultivated the medium for original expression in artists’ books and avant-garde magazines. The medium’s semantic association with proletariat causes helped to shape the visual representation of American identity during the Great Depression in illustrations by Rockwell Kent and J. J. Lankes. In the final years of this period, often referred to as the woodcut revival, the medium’s democratic underpinnings and inscriptive properties were explored in works by Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, and others, who exploited its potential for narrative expression through the wordless novel.
The more than ninety illustrated books, drawings, prints, and wood blocks in Medium as Muse: Woodcuts and the Modern Book are drawn almost entirely from the collection of The Morgan Library & Museum. The exhibition, on view from February 21 to May 11, surveys illustrated publications from 1890 to World War II, contextualizing them within their idealized past—in precursors and touchstones of medieval and Renaissance book design—and mapping potential trajectories in experimental animation, fine printing, and works by graphic artists today.
“Artists involved in the woodcut revival worked outside the mainstream, creating works at a transformative moment in the history of the modern book,” said William M. Griswold, Director of The Morgan Library & Museum. “New technologies, which may have threatened the viability of the craft of wood engraving, ultimately inspired a range of creative responses that used the printed book’s earliest form of illustration as a means to think through the relationship between a medium and its message—an idea with continuing relevance to artists today.”
HOW IT WORKED OUT
Superb art show. Possibly the ultimate exhibition to introduce people to the art of woodcut, showing immortal examples of the hand crafted art in its leading role, its most artistic and expressive suitable use, illustrations on and in books, focusing on the peak of this art achieved in the final years of the nineteenth century, but including superb earlier and later examples.
There is a twenty minute video showing how a woodcut is done, every cut and scrape from drawing to final impression. What is especially marvelous is the degree of detail and fine line achievable in a process that one would think would chain the artist to crudity - one woodcut shown of a subway scene looks like a photograph.
The show makes the general point that a woodcut illustrated book with hand set type was at the last development stage in books where one individual artist could be responsible for the whole product, and that this wholly hand crafted book was rapidly being sidelined by the onward march of mechanization at the turn of the 20th century. The huge trend gave rise to worries that woodcut illustration would be stamped out, just as at the end of 20th Century very similar worries rose up about the end of the paper book, period.
But it didn't happen - woodcut illustration is alive today in the hands of artists, and these examples are inspiring.
