Presses, Pop And Pomade: American Prints Since The Sixties

POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y.

:Focusing on the Twentieth Century renaissance of printmaking, "Presses, Pop and Pomade: American Prints Since the Sixties" is the subject of an exhibit currently open at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College. The succinct and comprehensive display focuses on printworks created by some of the giants of Twentieth Century art.

The exhibit explores the two separate and co-dependent factors that drove the midcentury resurgence of printmaking: the artists and their work, and the flowering of the art print presses that published their work. Comprising only 36 images, the exhibition is a highly concentrated look at the explosion of printmaking and the innovative mantles it assumed. The works on view are from the art center's permanent collection and, for the most part, are on view for the first time.

Printmaking's revitalization on these shores was triggered in 1940 with the arrival of British artist Stanley William Hayter from wartime Paris. He reopened the experimental printmaking workshop he ran in Paris, Atelier 17, in New York City. It established itself easily as a hub for emerging and recognized artists who took up the challenges of printmaking. One early devotee was Jackson Pollock. While Hayter returned to Paris after the war and Atelier 17 closed in 1955, other professional and academic print shops appeared where American artists continued to work. One such shop was Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) that Russian émigré Tatyana Grosman established in a cottage on Long Island in 1957, drawing such figures as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. The Tamarind Lithography Workshop that was founded in Los Angeles in 1960 also drew luminaries of the period.

Other art print presses as important as the artists whose work they published are Original Editions, Marlborough Graphics Inc, Cirrus Editions, Gemini GEL, Landfall Press, Parasol Press and Crown Point Press.

Curator Patricia Phagan observes, "For the artist, the presses are crucial to printmaking." Artists who make prints recognize the aesthetic of the print shop and understand the distinctions between printmaking in one's own studio and in the printshop. Each print is different; each shop lends its own character to the finished print.

The artists who took up the challenges of printmaking early on, particularly Pollock and Franz Kline, were known best for their idiosyncratic action paintings. Their efforts stirred other artists around the country to explore the same techniques. Adapting action paintings that often incorporated stray objects in the paint to the print format was complicated.

When Pop artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and James Rosenquist began producing their large-scale pieces, they turned to commercial processes like silkscreen and offset lithography for publishing their art. Warhol eventually founded Factory Additions to publish his own work; other artists patronized commercial publishers.

"Presses, Pop and Pomade" is arranged chronologically, beginning with work from the 1960s. The works on view reflect the culture of the decade, offering political and social commentary in humor, irony and the downright grim.