Question

Discuss some of the new directions in printmaking. Are artists incorporating nontraditional media in their work? Explain

Answer 1

• The 20th century saw the development of a more public role for prints, with the adoption of affordable processes such as linocut, and editioned lithographs made for public display.
• Even so print-making was rarely an artist's main focus. Instead it tended to be a peripheral activity, secondary to painting or sculpture.
• This changed in the 1960s and 70s with the rise of print studios such as Gemini GEL and ULAE in the USA, and Kelpra Studio in the UK.
• This development encouraged artists to explore the potential of printmaking and use it to produce works which represented major breakthroughs as creative statements, placing print, arguably for the first time, alongside sculpture and painting as a primary means of expression.
• No longer merely secondary, supplementary or reproductive, print is now a central part of many artists' activity, the equal of their output in other media, and conceived as integral or complementary to it.
• New technologies have been swiftly co-opted for fine art printmaking, and traditional techniques have been supplanted, modified by the photocopier, the fax, and the inkjet printer attached to a PC.
• At the same time, some artists have continued to explore the untapped potential of more traditional methods, whether it be by printing on surfaces other than paper, by working on an unprecedented scale or simply by working in a way which expands the definitions of 'print'.
• Artists have increasingly turned to cheap everyday printed material to exploit the democratic potential of printmaking as a means of putting art into the public domain in an affordable and accessible form.
• In recent years printmaking has co-opted painting and sculpture, dress and domestic furnishings, commerce and cyberspace.
• Dynamic and democratic, the world of printmaking now includes the billboard and the badge, the masterpiece and the multiple, the priceless and the give-away. Prints are a vital and vibrant link between the museum and the marketplace, the elite and the everyday.