Exactness, Order and Meticulous Detail

 “In the art movement as every medium evolved, Printers sort of got left in the dust”

Lithography Press

                                                                                                     -Heidi









This is a comment from one of my wife’s classmates. My wife is an art major and as a result gets exposure to all areas of art and mediums. (Medium here refers to the material you express your art through; i.e., clay, oil paintings, stone, metal, colored pencil etc.)

Picture my wife and I took that she will make into a print

My wife has had two classes in printing. Not type printing, like newspapers or books but image printing. Two methods for printing an image are Lithography and Intaglio. The two methods are similar because they both use a very meticulous process of using chemicals to ‘etch’ lines into an object to create an image. Where the two methods differ is in the object where the image is etched. Lithography is etched into stone, usually a specific type of limestone. Intaglio is etched into copper.

My wife's etching on a copper plate

 

The process used to etch an image into a substance is excruciatingly meticulous. Chemicals have to be used in exact ratios, in some instances the difference between 2 drops and 3 drops can make or break a 2 hour process. Also, grease is used to protect the image. Grease is applied where the artist would like white space to appear, then the entire image is covered in chemicals that ever so slightly dig down into the surface thereby making a depression that can later be filled with ink to be transferred to paper.

Referring to the opening statement. In a majority of artistic areas, especially in Western societies, artists that expand horizons, upset established paradigms, break rules and write new ones and generally disturb the status quo, are rewarded.

Lithograph by M.C. Escher

The opposite however, is true in printing. To be able to operate with perfection within an established set of rules is the goal. Which, if you are familiar to Eastern philosophy, is the ideal that a large portion
of the world aspires to.

Christ and Lazarus by Rembrand

It is interesting to me that Guttenburg created a completely radical distribution system that relies on the ability to rigidly adhere to precise rules.

So from an ideological standpoint, does invention of the press belong in the West where breaking the rules is rewarded or does it belong in the East where perfection within a set of rules is rewarded?