I haven't posted in a while, a problem with my foot has meant I haven't been in the studio much and so have little of my own work to talk about. For some reason this has also impacted on my other blogging. The hiatus has made me think therefore about the way in which this blog in particular is going.

Initially I had high intentions of creating a wide ranging resource for artists covering business planning, profiles of other artists and general posts on art matters. I recognise that was ambitious of course. The business planning work has gone no where - it is difficult to build up enthusiasm for a business plan when the business is moribund. I had some early success with profiles, but although I have had lots of acceptances, artists generally tend to be less good at following through. I haven't harassed people about this apart from a few gentle reminders, so they have fallen by the wayside. I have one still to post, so watch this space.

My own work is picking up again and I've made some new monotypes - all tiny - so although I do not want this blog to be about my own work exclusively there will be some posts soon on work in progress. This may rekindle the business planning work, we will have to see.

The music posts are fun to do, but in order to avoid copyright problems I want to use YouTube or Vimeo videos and I have had reports that these posts are causing problems for some people. I will come back to them, but I suspect I will only embed one or two and provide links to the rest. I will also experiment with embedding lower resolution versions.

Longer posts on art are more of a problem. I'm not sure how much interest there is in these but in any case writing them takes time and I need to be inspired and as ever inspiration has been in short supply lately.

So, for the future expect posting to be irregular and when it comes to be more about my own work than anything else. Thoughts and ideas on topics to be covered would be welcomed.

A little while ago I posted on the subject of 'cultural appropriation' (Pocahotties, Picasso and the Elgin Marbles). That post referred mostly to musical themes, but I want to come consider the broader topic of appropriation, that is the use of the work of others in some way, in our own art. Of course few, if any, artists can claim to be wholly original. Even the greatest of masters had influences and in Newton's famous phrase, “We are all standing on the shoulders of giants.

So, when a little while ago I found myself in a creative low spot, (In the desert), and inspired in part by the idea of theme and variations from music, I decided in the end to try and dig myself out by explicitly examining and using a work by Howard Hodgkin that I had seen in a book, and which had particularly drawn my attention. The work in question, which I have yet to see in real life, is 'Rain' in the Tate collection.

Using that painting as a model, I first of all made a print version. This wasn't meant to be an accurate copy, but more than something simply 'inspired' by the original.

Subsequent versions went further and further away from the original.

I'm not claiming any great artistic value in these tiny monoprints. They appear to me to be attractive in their own right and in making them I achieved my aim of getting out of a creative slump. I also learnt some things I hadn't been expecting. For example, despite Hodgkin's superficially loose style, the composition of his painting is actually very deliberate. The blocks of colour and their placement have great compositional significance. In part this is perhaps consequent on his stated view that his paintings are not abstract, but always about something very specific. I certainly found, as I moved further and further from his composition, that it was harder and harder to maintain the sense of completeness that I find in his work.

Since making these prints I have moved on a little and used the generic style, rather than a specific painting as inspiration. These prints have yet to be scanned so will be uploaded at a later date.

In the wider context of appropriation, it would be interesting to get your comments on the idea of using another artists work in this way. Obviously I'm not trying to 'pass off' these works as anything other than what they are and personally I found the process both useful and fun. Using the musical analogy again, I see the idea of 'theme and variations' as a positive thing, but what do you think? Have you ever used the work of another artist in this way? How would you feel if it was your work being used as the source?

I've been working on some small monotypes over the past few weeks. I started making these as a quick way to try out palettes and different ways of mark-making on the plate, keeping the size down for economy and to save time. I'm increasingly finding however that I like this size - the largest being no more than about 5" by 4" - especially the concentrated focus and the way in which marks have to be kept simple and graphic to show up. Despite that subtlety in shading is still possible.

I haven't put any of these in  my shop here. I'm not sure how much interest there would be in what are in effect studies. They have been uploaded to flickr however so have a look and if you think they have worth in themselves, please let me know. I would love some feedback.

I've included some examples below, but the full set, currently eight in number but with another half dozen or so still to scan, can be found here.

Some of the prints still to scan were made while trying to get out of my creative block that I posted about a few days ago. I'll put them into a separate post that will tie into the series of posts on 'appropriation' that I started here.

I didn't do any printmaking or painting over the Christmas holiday period. This holiday for me has always been about relaxing with family, reading lots of books and generally not doing a great deal.

However, trying to pick up again after the break has been hard. I seem to have hit a dry spell. Such few ideas that have struck have not worked out in practice. I've done some painting, but all of it so far has been picking up existing work. Getting inspiration for new stuff has been hard.

After a while I decided to stop trying to force things and do some writing instead, for here and for my other, politically focused, blog. For me though, writing anything over a few paragraphs takes time, because I need to build a logical structure to a piece even before I begin the process of editing and polishing.

So blog posts for here on the idea of 'Cultural Appropriation' and about my visit to the Gerhard Richter show at Tate Modern and for my other blog on a range of topics including the Occupy movement, pop up shops and galleries and on the increasing trend for political power to become increasingly concentrated in a small political class are all unfinished!

Advice for writers on beating writers block is usually to keep writing. It works because if all else fails the only thing you waste is time, and if you work your way through the blog block that isn't in the end wasted. Printing is something else though. My last three sessions at college have been a total bust, with nothing to show at all, while several days work in my own studio have been frustrating and depressing, with nothing produced worth keeping and many false starts, wasting ink and paper.

So how do you get through a creatively fallow period? Do you work on regardless, knowing much of what you do will be wasted or do you change tack, perhaps drawing or taking photographs instead of working in your usual medium? Please share your own experiences and practice - in the comments below rather than in the various fora to which I usually post links to blog posts.

When my press arrived, I started by taking some impressions from existing plates. After that I started playing around with papers, pressures and colours to make some very small monotypes. None of these are much bigger than about 4" on a side. They were fun to make and when I get going will make a nice set of small pieces at lower price points in the shop. In the meantime here they are on Flickr.

In order to set up my new press I did a series of test prints with some old plates.

An original print made on the presses at college is shown first.

These two are made on my own press.

I made a series of test prints also from a plate made on a solar etching course. Each one was made with varying levels of ink, wiping and pressure. It would have been better I suppose to use the same colour but by the time I realised that it was too late. The one shown is the best of the set. The others are on Flickr here

I'm in the process of setting up my studio to fit in my new press from Hawthorn. I'm lucky to have a dedicated room for it, but it is still essentially a spare bedroom so space is tight. The press is on a table with lockable wheels so I can move it into the corner when not in use.

To the left, out of shot, are shelves for paper, frames, card, art materials etc. The green trays behind the press hold inks, spatulas and more materials. The tray for wetting paper is stored on top of the shelves when not in use.

This is the work area. It used to be the place for my PC, two monitors, scanner, two printers and sundry other bits and pieces but these have now moved to an attic office (where I am a s I write this) and where my digital prints will be made. Underneath the work area are plastic waste bins full of cloths, coffee jar lids (for small quantities of paint used when glazing) and other containers. The pictures on the left hand side are screen prints (work in progress) sitting for the moment on the blotting paper for drying. Under the low table are more canvases, while on it is a wooden chopping board as a work surface plus several sheets of toughened glass on which to roll out the inks.

The three engravings on the wall came from Etsy by an artist called Valdas Misevičius, from Lithuania, while the small one just visible behind the light was a blog giveaway by the artist Leslie Avon Miller. Out of shot is a painting by Tina Mammoser (the Cycling Artist on Etsy) plus a studio easel and yet more storage and shelving..

Now I'm set up, I can't wait to get working. Having a press at home will I hope do wonders for my productivity, because I don't have to fit everything I do into a 2½ hour time slot in the college studio. I'm keeping up my attendance there too however - it gives me the chance to talk to others and also to use equipment I can't squeeze into my own studio, like vacuum bed screen printing frames, relief printing presses and a UV exposure unit for making photo etching plates.

This long post has grown out of an attempt to analyse why the idea of 'palimpsest' has become so important in my work. In it I attempt to trace a path from my previous life as a planner to my present one as an artist and to examine how ideas and people from my former existence still influence me.

Early in my career as a planner I developed an abiding interest in how towns and cities developed, especially the way in which the history of a place can be read in the world around us. I'm not just talking about buildings, although these obviously show their history too. I have always had a fascination for things like crumbling and patched brickwork for example.

Street patterns, building plots, even field boundaries can survive for hundreds, even thousands of years, all casting shadows into the present day and creating a richness and depth in our environment that we recognise, often can't define and almost always cannot replicate.

Many of the planning and architectural writers I admire, and who influenced me as a planner, seem to have had similar obsessions with growth, change and emerging complexity. The book that started it all, after realising that my maths simply wasn't good enough for chemical engineering, and which literally changed my life is Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, which I read in 1964/65. As the wikipedia article on the book puts it:

...modernist urban planning rejects the city, because it rejects human beings living in a community characterized by layered complexity and seeming chaos.

I found the ideas she espoused fascinating, especially the idea of places and communities emerging from small individual decisions. Much later in my working life, and still before I had any ideas of being an artist, a colleague introduced me to the work of Christopher Alexander, in particular his book A Pattern Language. (Also see his web site).

The language begins with patterns that define towns and communities. These patterns can never be designed or built in one fell swoop - but patient piecemeal growth, designed in such a way that every individual act is always helping to create or generate these larger global patterns, will, slowly and surely, over the years, make a community that has these global patterns in it.

Relatively recently I discovered two other books that helped crystallise my ideas. The first was by architect Camillo Sitte, called City Planning According to Artistic Principles'. Sitte analysed the growth of historic cities like Venice, showing how as buildings were modified and extended, the architects gradually created the superlative environment of the modern city. The many squares and piazzas did not spring into existence fully formed but are the result of perhaps hundreds of years of change and incremental growth. The second was How Buildings Learn, by Stuart Brand (of the Whole Earth Catalogue which looked at how buildings grow and adapt in response to changing needs.

I finally I got the chance to apply some of these ideas - with modest success - in my own work.

I referred at the beginning to palimpsest as an influence on my work as an artist. This was originally a term used to describe a manuscript page from a scroll or book from which the text has been scraped off and which can be used again. The historian studying such a document wants to separate the layers to make sense of each separate one. Her interest in the manner in which these layers have accumulated is incidental. Architects use the term to refer to signs of what once was on a site. Urban historians mean it to show how the complex environment of the present day has accumulated over time.

Other writers have taken it further still.

A palimpsest is a manuscript that has been re-used by writing over the original writing, often at right angles to it, and sometimes more than once. Frequently it's impossible to say which layer was first inscribed; and in any case any "development" ... from layer to layer would be sheer accident. The connections between layers are not sequential in time but juxtapositional in space. Letters of layer B might blot out letters in layer A, or vice versa, or might leave blank areas with no markings at all, but one cannot say that layer A "developed" into layer B (we're not even sure which came first). And yet the juxtapositions may not be purely "random" or "meaningless"....
Juxtaposition, superimposition, and complex patterning thus produce a malleable unity
(Hakim Bey http://hermetic.com/bey/palimpsest.html)

So we have three statements:

Bey - Juxtaposition, superimposition and complex patterning to produce a malleable unity.

Jacobs - layered complexity

Alexander - piecemeal growth, designed in such a way that every individual act is always helping to create or generate these larger global patterns

Although written from three very different perspectives these summarise very precisely the essential central idea in my art.

My images are not conceived as a coherent whole from the outset. They grow in front of me, whether physically or on the computer screen through a process of accumulation and accretion. Each intervention in the piece, each mark, each dab of ink on the plate, each stroke of the pen has to be made so as to build on what has happened so far and enrich it.

I have just had to produce a statement for a forthcoming show. In it I developed my thoughts slightly further about the idea of palimpsest that so fascinates me. I will be updating my "About" page soon, but for the moment here is the statement as written.

***

Artistically, I began some 45 years ago with photography and have been clicking away ever since. I have an archive now of perhaps 10,000 images. About 10 years ago I began to experiment with manipulating some of these photographs in the computer. I was keen to create new images that could not exist in any other way and I am still experimenting.
About 4 years ago I had the chance to look around an artist print studio, observing the process of making linocuts and other more traditional print forms. I was hooked and within days I had enrolled on a course. I’m now entering my fourth year of study, still learning and still experimenting.

My work has many themes. You will find images of the natural landscape, the city and of people - especially dancers - all in a range of styles from abstract to representational. I enjoy colour in all its forms from vibrant and intense, to soft pastels. So far I have concentrated on collagraph, monoprints and recently on screen prints.

A constant element in all my work is the idea of palimpsest.

A palimpsest is a manuscript that has been re-used by writing over the original writing, often at right angles to it, and sometimes more than once. Frequently it's impossible to say which layer was first inscribed; and in any case any "development" … from layer to layer would be sheer accident. The connections between layers are not sequential in time but juxtapositional in space. Letters of layer B might blot out letters in layer A, or vice versa, or might leave blank areas with no markings at all, but one cannot say that layer A "developed" into layer B (we're not even sure which came first). And yet the juxtapositions may not be purely "random" or "meaningless".

…

Juxtaposition, superimposition, and complex patterning thus produce a malleable unity

(Hakim Bey http://hermetic.com/bey/palimpsest.html)

I am now extending this idea by combining different print media in one image. In this show for example “Tree of Life” for example, uses manipulated photographs as the basis for a series of screen print stencils, building the image up in layers. “Dales Memories” uses two separate collagraph plates. The image is built up in thin glazes of ink, often over only part of the plate. Some variations of the image have required ten or more impressions. I have also printed digitally over a screen prints, digitally manipulated pastel sketches and used these to make stencils for screen printing over monoprints and used digital images to make etched plates in a process called solar etching. Because of this each image in an edition will show variations in colour and configuration, sometimes obviously so, but often in more subtle ways.

This is the balance of the prints from the lot.

This ploughing scene is I think my favourite of them all. A corny subject these days perhaps, but there is something about the way in which the ploughing team are walking into the picture against the stand of trees that makes for an attractive composition. Keeping them separate from the background is also well handled I think.

Another ploughing scene. I find this less successful, although a striking composition nevertheless. I'm assuming the ploughman is praying rather than collapsed with exhaustion, because of the handling of the sky. I still think however that the sky could do with a little more texture. It is possible however that the slightl;y grubby state of the print has caused a loss of contrast.

The next one is a cottage on a lane. A simple scene well executed. I especially like the texture of the tough grass at the edge of the track.

Fisherman with a beached boat. The style of their hats does not seem English, but hard to tell. I love the rendering of the sky.

This one is rather different showing two street musicians. The style is slightly cartoon like, but I think it works. This has been scanned in grey scale not colour so the colour of the ink and paper doesn't come through As far as I can tell all the prints are on Arches paper.

Finally two images that look like illustrations for a childrens' book. Any thoughts on the story would be welcomed.

I recently purchased at auction some engravings by two artists of the same surname, probably Halpenny. They appear to date from the 1920s. The auction house was unable to find out anything about the artists in any published sources, so they were probably talented amateurs. It isn't uncommon to see good work by amateur painters but printmaking involves a significant capital outlay so unknown printmakers suggests to me either affluence or links to other known artists. What may be significant is that they were in a portfolio case stamped with the name of Bertram Parke, a noted photographer of that time.

I've included scans of the signatures in case anyone recognises them. Any information about these artists would be gratefully received. I'm following up some leads from the 1911 census but have nothing concrete yet.

The prints themselves are very attractive. I particularly like this one of a party of bathers at a woodland pool.

The way in which the figures are suggested plus the ripples spreading out as they get into the water is wonderful as this detailed scan shows.

I'll post some of the others when I finish scanning them. They include rural scenes of ploughing, one very reminiscent of a Van Gogh pen and ink sketch plus fishermen, what look like illustrations to a childrens' book and a more cartoon like image of street musicians.

Things are still a bit disrupted, with my PC temporarily set up in my studio, because I'm busy laying floors at the moment in the office. To keep things going here are some examples of older work via Flickr.

These are photographs I took of Pagham Harbour near Chichester. I had hopes of using these images as the source material for some prints - it hasn't happened yet - so I was intrigued to see Tina Mammoser's take on the same location. Her work often looks abstracted even though it is inspired by real places, but this image looks pretty specific to me.

On a different tack, the screen prints I was working on have been abandoned for now. My usual problem of overworking has left them a bit of a cluttered mess. Still, lessons learned and I have high hopes for the restarted piece.

I came on Annamie's work via Etsy. This print caught my eye because I knew the location and had a photograph from a similar viewpoint. Looking at her work, I immediately wanted to include her in what was then only a planned blog as one of the Artist Profiles. I'm pleased to be able to do that now.

Annamie Pretorius was born in South Africa in 1971 and grew up in the suburbs north of Johannesburg. She is the daughter of an architect and grew up in a house filled with paintings and lino prints by her uncle. Annamie studied Architecture at the University of the Freestate, SA and qualified as an Architect in 1994. She has been living and working in Ireland since 2002, with her husband and 3 young children. Though currently working part time as an architect in the Public Sector, Annamie is slowly working towards establishing a full time career in printmaking and hope to move back to South Africa with her family in the near future.

www.inugie.etsy.com

www.flickr.com/photos/26552526@N06/

Do you consider yourself primarily to be an artist? >Yes, but in reality a lot of what I do daily is not creative at all.

Do you describe yourself as an artist to other people? >I did for the first time a few months back, it felt great.

For you, what is the best thing about being an artist? >Losing all sense of time and my surroundings when I am creating.

For you, what is the worst thing about being an artist? >Not having enough time – there are just so many other things that get in the way.

What media do you work in? >I work as a printmaker, doing both relief and intaglio hand pulled prints. I have also played around with oil pastels and oil and water paint and really enjoyed it, but I don’t think any of these will ever be my main medium, as my passion is for prints.

Have you had a formal artistic education (Degree/Diploma)? >Yes, if a degree in Architecture counts. Other than that I have completed several short courses in printmaking, both in South Africa and Ireland but have no formal training as an artist.

If not, have you considered training? >After school I seriously considered studying Graphic Design instead of Architecture, and I still think about going back to do a diploma or degree in Graphic Design or Fine Art.

If yes, but you didn’t do it, what prevented you from taking it up? >I picked Architecture thinking it would offer better career opportunities (that was just before the internet kicked off) Later it was mostly a lack of time as well as financial considerations that prevented me from going back.

What has been your best experience as an artist? >The positive feedback I received when I started selling my work on Etsy and posting on the printmaking forum at Wetcanvas.com. It came as a complete surprise.

What has been your worst experience as an artist? >Going through a few creative slumps.

Who are your artistic heroes? >My uncle, Hannes Pretorius, who was my first art ‘teacher’, a few South African artists like J.H. Pierneef, Walter Battiss and Gregoire Boonzaier, and then the usual suspects Turner, Escher, Munch, Miro Picasso, Renoir…

What barriers do you think you face in promoting your work? >I am very conscious of the fact that I have no formal art training and this does stop me from approaching local galleries and entering competitions or shows. Being a foreigner in Ireland also makes it harder to get into the art scene, I just don’t know the right people. The Internet has made it much easier to promote my work though and with the feedback and sales I get there I don’t really worry about promoting my work locally at this stage of my career. Through the web I have much more exposure as an artist in the US than in Ireland or South Africa, which is quite ironic as I’ve never even been to America.

How long did it take for you to develop a distinctive style? >I don’t think I have a distinctive style yet as I am still experimenting a lot, but some themes do keep repeating itself in my works and I guess this will lead to some kind of style in future. I don’t really think about this at all, I just do what I feel like doing at the time.

Where do you work? >At home, in a bedroom converted into a little studio. I have three tables, a small printing press, drying rack and my computer. It’s small, but nice and warm and close to the living area so I don’t feel too isolated when working.

Have you been in any shows? >No, but I like to believe that its simply because I haven’t entered yet.

Are you making a living from your creative work? >Not at all, but I make enough to buy supplies so it pays for itself.

Do you ever meet other artists? How? >In real life, rarely. The only artists I meet would be the ones doing courses with me. I have a colleague and friend who is into printmaking though and we work together and encourage each other a lot.

Are you a member of any arts grouping (on or offline)? >Yes, I participate quite frequently on Wetcanvas.com ‘s Printmaking forum. The other printmakers I met there feel like friends I’ve known for years. I am also a member of two groups on Flickr.com where we share our work and get some feedback.

If yes, has your membership helped in any way? > Oh absolutely. The other members are extremely helpful and always ready to give advice. I learned a lot from them and hope that the advice I’ve given helped a few others too. It’s always good to look at other’s work too, and the bigger the variety the better.

Do you ever go to shows, exhibitions, book launches, talks or other artistic gatherings? >Occasionally, about two or three times a year.

What was the last exhibition you saw? >A pinhole photography exhibition in a local gallery.

What other broadly ‘artistic’ activities do you enjoy (e.g. listening to or playing music, writing, singing, dancing)? >I love listening to music and have a wide-ranging taste, I also read a lot, both fiction and non-fiction, and like many people I dream of writing a novel one day.

What would be your most important piece of advice to an aspiring artist? >Don’t be scared of failing, keep going even if you think you are no good. It takes a lot of practice and hard work, and the real reward of any artistic or creative work is in the process itself. If anyone else likes it, or even buys it, it’s simply a big bonus.

Can you name a work of non-fiction that has had a major and lasting influence on how you think about the world? >Two books - Art & Fear by David Bayles & Ted Orland and War of Art by Steven Pressfield.

If you could own any painting or other work of art what would it be? >Any one of J.H. Pierneef’s (1886-1957) South African landscape paintings, particularly the one titled: Hermanus Harbour.

What are you reading at the moment (fiction or non-fiction)? >Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (again).

What otherwise popular activity do you regard as a waste of time? >Watching television – I only do when I want to waste some time.

What would be your ideal holiday? >A summer seaside holiday, camping in a secluded campsite behind the dunes, swimming and snorkelling and cooking mussels we pick off the rocks in a small fire on the beach.

What is your happiest childhood memory? >See above – we did exactly that, every summer of my childhood.

How, if at all, would you change your life were you suddenly to win or inherit an enormously large sum of money? >Stop working, move to a farm in the Karoo, South Africa and make art every day.

I realised when reading this previous post that my concluding paragraph doesn't really address the issues as clearly as I would have liked. Rather than edit that post - an edit would probably be missed by those who had already read it - I'm picking the topic up afresh here.

In essence I want to make two points:

First, the complex process by which these prints are made calls into question their conventional attribution to a single named artist. Decisions by the so-called 'copy artist' (hikko), by the carver and by the printer all had a significant impact on the aesthetic and artistic quality of the finished piece. Attribution to the 'artist' seriously devalues the contribution made by the other artisans involved.

Second, the multiple stages of production also call into question the narrow view of the original that surfaces from time to time and that I have already addressed in several posts here. Let's look at these stages and see where the 'original' might be found.

The conventional attribution might suggest that the original lies in the initial drawing by the artist. Setting aside that this drawing is done purely for the purpose of creating a woodblock print (what I called in this post the 'intention of the artist'), this causes immediate problems for the second, more elaborate drawing used to prepare the blocks. Despite being prepared by the so-called copy artist this second drawing (hanshita)  is in no way a straight copy. Woodblock printer David Bull in this discussion thread, included some examples that make this point very clearly.

Here for example is an initial sketch by Hokusai.

While here is the same section from the final print:

The step between these two is of course destroyed in the carving of the block, but it is clear that the making of the hanshita involved much more than simply tracing and required in its own right a considerable artistic input.

David Bull also provided an example of a surviving hanshita, which is as detailed as any final print:

David Bull's argument is that the role played by these other craftsmen (and they almost always were men) demands a much greater recognition. I agree entirely, but my point here is in relation to the identification of the 'original'. If the surviving example of a hanshita is typical of the great ukiyo-e prints, and I see no reason to believe otherwise, then those unknown artists should be seen as artists in their own right.

If on that basis we then argue that the hanshita is the original, the initial sketch becomes just a preliminary study - a concept drawing - and the attribution should go to the hanshita artist.

What about those who argue that the plate (or the photographic negative or the digital file) is the original? I have argued elsewhere that those few who attempt to make this argument do so either from ignorance of the process or from special pleading (ie they sell reproductions and want their product to be elevated to the same standing as 'handpulled prints') Nevertheless if we take the argument at face value, it still doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. A typical woodblock print may have 15 or more blocks and some may be used 2 or 3 times. Some prints require perhaps 100 impressions to get to the final image. There is thus no single block that can be pointed to as the 'original' .

Normally these prints were not produced in limited editions. Each print run would be quite small - perhaps 200 - to reduce wear and tear on the blocks, but there would be no overall limit. The same applies in fact in the West - prints by the master wood engraver Thomas Bewick were not issued in limited runs.

In summary therefore, if we try to place the 'original' anywhere but the final print, many problems arise. If we accept the defining characteristic as being intention, then regardless of the numbers produced, the original is the printed paper on which the image appears and all these other problems simply disappear.

I did, rather mischievously perhaps, consider the idea that these woodblock prints are perhaps the earliest conceptual art. After all the process starts with an idea - or concept - in the mind of the publisher, who then draws together the resources to realise his concept. That would make the publisher the 'artist' of attribution!

In the classic period of Japanese woodblock printing (ukiyo-e or floating world) the initiative for a project – whether for a print or print series - came almost always from a publisher, who would contract with an artist, normally paying an agreed sum per design, for the production of the preparatory sketches. The artist would then this drawing to a copyist, who would make made an elaborated final copy which showed the (usually black) lines which outlined everything in the image. After approval of the completed drawing by the official censors, it would go to a carver, who specialized in carving the blocks used to produce the print. A master would do the detailed work with the rest left to an apprentice. A third set of artisans then stepped in - the printers who both made and applied the inks to the blocks.

Conventionally the resultant prints are attributed to the artist who prepared the first sketch, but the role of the other artisans was critical to the final product. It could be argued that giving central importance to the designer actually says more about the acquisitive attitudes of the collector in Western culture than it does about the real ‘maker’. We appear unable to accept the idea of a collective product arising from the culture of the people.

The collector mentality also affects how we perceive these prints. As originally conceived they were mass-produced and transitory. It was the scale of the industry, producing everything from wrapping paper and food labels upwards that supported the work we now ascribe to the likes of Hiroshige and Hokusai. There was no attempt to artificially limit the numbers and over the years other carvers would cut new blocks and the same images would appear time and time again. My own collection includes a 19th century version of this print by Hiroshige.

My print is much smaller than the ‘original’, but given the nature of the production process it is in my view equally ‘authentic’, showing if anything much greater skill in the rendering of the graduated colours in sky and water (bokashi).

In essence I would argue that the collaborative nature of the process, especially the total dependency of the artist on the skills of the carver and printer make the concept of an individual ‘maker’ of these prints untenable. Furthermore, the lack of any concept of a limited edition places the value of the work produced squarely in the artistic merit and not in scarcity. Blocks for popular series would be printed again and again, being recut if they became worn. There is some indication that total runs of up to 20,000 were made for popular prints.

Useful links

The production of Japanese Woodblock Prints

Japanese Traditional Prints – Just who made them anyway?

Chats on Japanese Prints (Discussion forum for Shogun Gallery – now closed but still readable)

Mokuhankan – attempting to revive the traditional production of Japanese prints

Woodblock.com – web site of David Bull

I'm writing a post about Japanese Woodblock printing, or more particularly about just who 'made' them and in doing some web research I came across this site. I will be linking to it in the final post, but it is so wonderful I wanted to share it directly.

http://mokuhankan.com/index.html

Essentially this is a one man attempt to revive the traditional Japanese woodblock print in all its glorious subtlety of technique. Look at the site, the prints and follow the blog - all truly inspiring.

This is based on a post I made in an Etsy forum some time ago as a part of the continuing debate there about prints, originals and reproductions, hence the mock legal terms of the 'Disclaimer.'

Many years ago, I had an Irish friend who would, in the course of conversation, refer to the people he was talking about as "yer man". Unfortunately, "yer man" might in the course of even a single statement refer to several different people, so it became very difficult to follow what he was saying.

I think we have reached a similar impasse in on-line dialogue with words like 'print' replacing 'yer man' and being used inconsistently - and without any thought or recognition given to the meanings that might be attached to the word by others.

The rest of this post is an attempt to unscramble things by using neutral language in an exercise in logic not art.

Bear with me please, because it will be long.

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DISCLAIMER

Nothing said below shall be construed in whole or in part as criticism, denigration, or defamation of any person, art form or art medium or any combination thereof.

In particular any terminology used is for the purpose of logical differentiation between the various classes of objects referred to herein and the use of such terminology should not be construed as implying that the said terminology represents either current artistic or 'lay' usage, or that such usage is or has been applied, used or otherwise adopted by any other person or group of persons, named or unnamed in this or any other thread on this site or any other Internet site or in any written, broadcast or other format.

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So - to begin:

It is generally accepted by most people that there is a class or category of objects called prints. Because there are various types of prints let us call this overall category Prints_(cat).

It is argued by a very large group of people that terms like silkscreen print, woodblock print etc represent a class of objects also called prints, sometimes qualified as 'hand-pulled' prints. So, if we have a single category Prints_(cat), that would logically include 'hand-pulled' prints. For clarity let's call this sub-class, Prints_(h).

It is argued by a significant number of people that what I think of as a reproduction is validly called a print. So, Prints_(cat) would logically contain what I call reproductions. Let's call this sub-class Prints_(r).

Finally, it is also argued by perhaps a smaller but still significant number that the output from photomanipulations made using packages like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro or originated using packages like Corel Painter, Bryce etc - are also validly called prints, perhaps qualified in this case as 'digital prints'. So again, Prints_(cat) would logically include 'digital' prints. Lets call these Prints_(d).

So - we have a generic class of objects called Prints_(cat).

We also have various sub-classes described in various ways but generally as 'x' prints or in the form I have adopted here Prints_(x).

If we keep these logical labels it is clear what is going on. In other words:

Prints_(cat) contains Prints_(r), Prints_(h) and Prints_(d).                    {1}

When we remove the suffixes and state this proposition in plain English we get:

Prints as a category contains Reproduction Prints, Handpulled Prints and Digital Prints.          {2}

However REMOVE the qualifier and what happens - we are immediately unsure whether a tag 'Print' is referring to the top level category or the sub-category.

Prints contains Prints, Prints and Prints                           {3}

Not very helpful. That confusion could be removed easily if we used the terminology in the plain English statement at {2} above. It appears however that the terms Reproduction Print and Digital Print are unacceptable to many people, although those who object to the first may not object to the second - and vice versa. Others argue that they are in fact the same thing and should not be differentiated.

There are indeed of course similarities between the two sub-classes, but those similarities relate to the form of the output, usually but not exclusively ink jet/giclee printing. (Setting aside for the moment the uncertainties inherent also in those terms). The similarities do not extend to the question of artistic input.

In the case of Prints_(r) the artistic endeavour has gone into the creation of the source image. Some judgements have to be made in creating the print file in terms of issues like fidelity of colours to the source image etc, but in comparison to the artistic input to the source image proper that is minimal and the work to achieve it often delegated to print technicians or others.

In the case of Prints_(d), the artistic endeavour has gone directly into the creation of the digital file. Other issues like colour fidelity are of course relevant, but are incorporated in the whole process of making the image on-screen.

The argument that Prints_(d) are in fact equivalent to Prints_(r) is specious. It depends on a definition of the computer file as the original. This is false for two reasons.

1. We are talking about a visual medium and the computer file is not a visual artefact.
2. The argument conflates two uses of digital technology - as tool in the creation of the physical print and as medium in the creation of artwork like net installations, animation, virtual reality etc.

It would be possible I suppose to argue that the original of a digital work is the version seen on screen and that physical prints are reproductions of that screen display. That ignores the intention of the artist however. If I make a digital print with the intention from the outset of producing physical objects - ie the print, than I could argue (and to a degree I do so argue) that the reproduction is in fact the screen image.

This one is a part of what is intended to be a continuing series exploring the implications of digital technology for the artist. See these previous posts in the series. I hope you will join in the discussion.

One of the things that really gets my goat is sloppy use of language. I don’t mean slang – I mean where people simply use the first word that comes to mind without thinking of whether it is the right one for the circumstances. I don’t know why I’m so picky, although I don’t suppose my interest in philosophy has helped. I know it gets me into trouble from time to time, as for example when I comment on various fora about the way in which even established artists are happy to use of the word ‘print’ to mean ‘reproduction’.

I know of course that colloquially, ‘print’ is used to describe everything from a picture torn out of a magazine to a woodcut by Durer. Such a wide usage though means that without further qualification the term has almost no descriptive value. We could talk of a Durer print, but are we talking of one made from the original block in Nuremburg in 1515 or a cheap lithographic copy made in China in 2011?

When we talk of engravings or woodcuts we know these are of course prints but their defining characteristic is the fact of being an engraving or linocut, NOT that they are prints. Similarly while the lithographic copy I referred to may be a print, its defining characteristic is that it is a copy of a work if art in another medium. So, to provide full meaning we should talk about reproductions or reproduction prints, not just prints. We need the qualifying term to know properly what we are talking about.

Raising these issues in online fora almost always provokes outrage. I don’t know why, but the idea that if you are selling reproductions you should actually identify them as such seems to provoke the noisiest response from sellers of reproductions. Perhaps they are confused about the term ‘original’. I’ve seen at least one person take umbrage at a suggestion that the reproductions they were selling were not ‘original’ works of art, because they took the opposite of original to be not ‘copy’ or ‘reproduction’, but ‘un-original’ or ‘unimaginative’. Language is a slippery thing…

So that when I step on someone’s toes in future I have something to refer them to, I am setting out my position below.

1. I have no problem with other people producing reproductions, even though I don’t wish to do so myself.
2. A reproduction of a painting is not, OF ITSELF, a work of art - it is a copy of a work of art.
3. A reproduction of a painting is a print yes, but it is a reproduction print. Describing it as a print is a marketing tool, the acceptability of which will vary with your opinions on marketing. However when marketing to less knowledgeable members of the public accurate description is essential.
4. Reproductions sold as limited edition ink-jet or giclée prints are sold this way for marketing purposes. It has nothing to do with art and everything to do with creating artificial value.
5. Creating a limited edition reproduction print does not create genuine value. The true value of such a print depends not on the marketing hype of the original sellers but on the willingness of others to buy and sell that print. For 99% of such prints that secondary market does not exist. To be fair this probably applies also to the market in traditional ‘handpulled’ prints, although the numbers will be much smaller.
6. An original print is printed from a matrix on which the design was created by hand and issued as part of the original publishing venture or as part of a connected, subsequent publishing venture. For fine art prints the criteria used is more strict. A fine art print is original only if the artist both conceived and had a direct hand in the production of the print. An original print should be distinguished from a reproduction, which is produced photomechanically, and from a restrike, which is produced as part of a later, unconnected publishing venture.

(Definition from here: http://www.philaprintshop.com/diction.html)

That last definition begins to break down perhaps with photography, especially digital photography, and with digital art.Colloquially we talk of the photographic print, but in this case though so do most photographers. In the days when most photographs were produced using chemicals in a darkroom this wasn’t too bad, since many dark-room techniques – burning in and dodging for example – were craft skills and not precisely repeatable. A good darkroom technician would aim to get as much similarity as possible in a set of prints, just as a good print assistant would aim to get a consistent edition from say a linocut block.

Also, ...there are now many tens of thousands of individual photographers and artists, from amateurs to pros, who are able to print high-quality images in their own studios, homes, and offices. No longer constrained by the high costs of traditional printing methods, the production of "artistic" prints has been put in the hands of the greatest number of people--the artists and the imagemakers themselves.

This easy availability, this democratisation of the process of making reproductions is an example of the 'accelerated intensity' of the means of reproduction referred to by Walter Benjamin in his early paper, "The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction" (html  version here)

In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. Man-made artifacts could always be imitated by men. Replicas were made by pupils in practice of their craft, by masters for diffusing their works, and, finally, by third parties in the pursuit of gain. Mechanical reproduction of a work of art, however, represents something new. Historically, it advanced intermittently and in leaps at long intervals, but with accelerated intensity. The Greeks knew only two procedures of technically reproducing works of art: founding and stamping. Bronzes, terra cottas, and coins were the only art works which they could produce in quantity. All others were unique and could not be mechanically reproduced. With the woodcut graphic art became mechanically reproducible for the first time, long before script became reproducible by print. The enormous changes which printing, the mechanical reproduction of writing, has brought about in literature are a familiar story. However, within the phenomenon which we are here examining from the perspective of world history, print is merely a special, though particularly important, case. During the Middle Ages engraving and etching were added to the woodcut; at the beginning of the nineteenth century lithography made its appearance. With lithography the technique of reproduction reached an essentially new stage. This much more direct process was distinguished by the tracing of the design on a stone rather than its incision on a block of wood or its etching on a copperplate and permitted graphic art for the first time to put its products on the market, not only in large numbers as hitherto, but also in daily changing forms. Lithography enabled graphic art to illustrate everyday life, and it began to keep pace with printing. But only a few decades after its invention, lithography was surpassed by photography. For the first time in the process of pictorial reproduction, photography freed the hand of the most important artistic functions which henceforth devolved only upon the eye looking into a lens.

Quite how this will all work out is an unknown. The wide spread availability of easy and cheap printmaking capacity must of necessity change our attitude to the idea of the 'original'. Trying to argue for example that each print in an edition of linocuts is an original, but each print made from a digital file created entirely in the computer is not, requires some awkward semantic somersaults. I'll come back to that aspect in another post.

The idea of palimpsest - the layering and gradual accretion of material over time - has always intrigued me as a perusal of many of my images here and on Flickr will show. This image takes that idea further using several scanned pages from my notebooks overlain on each other and then added to an existing manipulated photograph, which has itself had faux aged edges added to it.

I suppose this obsession is why I am enjoying the making of the screen print so much and why my favourite collagraphs are built up similarly, with what are virtually glazes of thin oil pigment.

This one for example, from my Memories series, uses two plates and probably 10 layers of ink.

A short post this time after the last two rather long ones. The picture below shows one of the screen prints so far.

There are five layers in this image.

The first is the 'line' texture

The second and third are based on a texture file from the internet based on rust. I converted this to a monochrome image using the 'threshold' command in Paint Shop Pro. The third has been rotated by about 180° and printed in a different shade.

The fourth and fifth layers use the same screen, again rotated through about 180° but printed using the same translucent blue with lots of medium added to the paint (I use acrylic paints with silk screen medium added).

Later layers may involve more texture screens plus several more layers in blues. The final layer will be based on a scanned pastel sketch much like those that triggered this work, but constructed to fit the image as it evolves.