Looking at Prints: Five Artists

Many important artists are included in the exhibition, LIMITED EDITIONS: 20th-Century Prints from the Ponderosa Collection, but five have been selected for further exploration in this educator resource. Their work is directly related to art that is on view in the museum’s permanent galleries, and as in the case of Jim Dine, the artist is an Ohio native.

- Robert Rauschenberg b.1925

Rauschenberg was born in Port Arthur, Texas. He briefly studied pharmacy at the University of Texas before being drafted into the service. In1947 he began his art studies, first at the Kansas City Art Institute, where he also did window displays and designed film sets. After a brief time in Paris, he studied under Josef Albers at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. There he met Merce Cunningham and John Cage, a relationship that would last over the years, resulting in numerous collaborative projects. He moved on to study at the Art Students’ League in New York in 1950. After spending two years traveling in Europe and Africa he returned to New York City sharing a neighborhood studio with Jasper Johns for a time.

By 1962 he first used the technique of silkscreen on canvas, mixed with painting, collage and attached objects and called these new works “combines”. During the early years he also produced a number of lithographs with United Limited Art Editions but his interest in the mechanics of commercial printing led him to Gemini in Los Angeles, known for their highly technical capabilities. In many of his complex compositions, Rauschenberg draws images from news layouts and magazine illustrations including sports, familiar works of art and portraits of specific interest. One who is familiar with his work will see images that are repeated again and again but for no apparent reason.

Rauschenberg lives and continues to work in New York City and on Captiva Island, Florida. An on-going project begun in 1981 called ¼ Mile or 2 Furlong Piece is an autobiographical work that includes every medium and process that Rauschenberg has ever used.

Star Quarters
Published by Multiples, Inc. in collaboration with Castelli Graphics, Star Quarters was produced in a limited edition of 45 sets, each set containing four prints signed and numbered by Rauschenberg.

Robert Rauschenberg
American, b. 1925
STAR QUARTERS, 1971
Screenprint on mirrored Plexiglass
Museum Purchase, 1987.113.1-4

The subject matter is based on constellation patterns visible during the four seasons of the year: spring, summer, fall, and winter. The images, some realistic, some abstract, have been screenprinted on the surfaces of mirror-coated plexi resulting in a multi-dimensional appearance. Some of the more obvious constellations are easily discernible: the Gemini twins, Pegasus, Leo, and Scorpio. Of perhaps more interest is the fact that the viewer becomes a part of the work. As you stand in front of the piece, you will see yourself reflected as part of the art. How does the addition of your reflection change the art?

- Claes Oldenburg b.1929

The son of a Swedish diplomat, Claes Oldenburg was born in Stockholm in 1929, moving to Chicago in 1936. Following a Yale education, he first worked as a reporter, but after taking some classes at the Art Institute of Chicago, he began to paint, influenced by the Abstract Expressionists. In 1956 he moved to New York and came in contact with Jim Dine and Allan Kaprow. In these early years Oldenburg focused on sculptural assemblages (in the tradition of his Surrealist and Dadaist predecessors) and environments. At this time he also started to make food replicas and “soft” sculptures and designed his “colossal monuments”. These objects grew out of his reactions to societal relationships, turning the consumer language of mass media inside out. He concentrated on an elementary idea and transformed it. His imaginative approach did not follow the dictates of the everyday commercial world but served his own artistic demands. The commonplace suddenly became an object challenging the viewer’s sensibilities. Things which otherwise seemed so important were deprived of their function.

Since 1976 he has worked in partnership with Coosje van Bruggen. Together they have executed over forty large-scale projects, which have been installed in urban areas around the world.

Untitled (Geometric Mouse)
In 1968, Claes Oldenburg went to the print house of Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles and spent nine months producing a handmade portfolio containing twelve original color lithographs and thirteen pages of text. The numbered edition of 100 portfolios entitled Notes, was printed from aluminum plates and stones under the technical supervision of Kenneth Tyler. It is interesting to note that Tyler devised a kind of ballpoint pen that would hold lithographic ink so that Oldenburg could make marks on the stone resembling the mark made by a ballpoint pen on a notepad.

It has been said that Oldenburg’s art studio was a haven for a rather large mouse population so it follows that a “mouse” theme was inevitable. His use of this motif first appeared in the form of a mouse mask used in a performance called Moveyhouse. In 1968 he visited the Disney studios in Los Angeles resulting in a return to this motif in the form of notes and drawings for a colossal mouse sculpture. These eventually became part of the Notes portfolio of prints.

Claes Oldenburg
American, born Sweden, 1929
UNTITLED (GEOMETRIC MOUSE), 1968
Lithograph on Rives BFK paper
Museum Purchase, 1987.103.4

In this lithograph, the mouse appears as a hilltop sculpture, a landscape design for a city park (where the eyes are swimming pools), and a floating sculpture. The inclusion of the small drawings “falling down” and “fallen down” suggest that if the mouse were placed in the hills overlooking Hollywood, it might experience the same fate as the giant letters and fall on its face.

- Roy Lichtenstein 1923-1997

A New Yorker by birth, Roy Lichtenstein studied under Reginald Marsh at the Art Students’ League. He also studied at Ohio State University between 1940-43 and 1946-49 where he completed his master’s degree. He then taught at Ohio State from 1949-51. His first one-man exhibition was held in New York in 1951, followed by work as a commercial designer. By 1960 he had met Claes Oldenburg and Allan Kaprow and his abstract approach to painting changed. He began to use typical elements of commercial art, comics and advertising in his paintings and drawings. In fact, Lichtenstein admitted that he owed his style to comics, but not his themes. His motifs reflect timeless yet impersonal narratives achieved through the use of a commercial technique called Ben-Day dots, a repetitive series of small dots used in commercial printing to produce tones. Giving his work this appearance of being mechanically produced, achieved his aim of making pictures anonymous and devoid of emotion. Lichtenstein continued to produce paintings, prints and sculptures throughout his lifetime, each suggesting an irritating contradiction and an understated humor that will continue to challenge what we see as art.

Bull III

Roy Lichtenstein
American, 1923-1997
BULL III, 1973
Lithograph/Screenprint/Line-cut on Arjomari paper
Museum Purchase, 1987.84.3

Displayed in the LIMITED EDITIONS exhibition, you will see the six prints of Lichtenstein’s Bull Profile Series (1973) depicting his transformation of the image of a bull from a realistic representation to an abstract linear construction. Lichtenstein's series recalls Theo van Doesburg’s Composition (The cow) 1916-17, as well as a lithographic sequence of prints by Pablo Picasso titled Bulls (1945), which similarly tells the story from representation to abstraction. By adopting Picasso’s sequence, Lichtenstein also tells us a little about the printing process. Bull I depicts a black and white linear rendering printed using the linecut technique, the simplest and least expensive of all the photoreproductive processes used in commercial printing. As it cannot register tone, it is used mostly to reproduce black-and-white line drawings. The linecut is similar to the woodcut in that both are used in relief printing. In Bull III, you can see how the image of the bull is slowly morphing into a flat field of bright colors printed with the modern techniques of lithography and the screenprint.

- Andy Warhol 1930-1987

Of all the Pop artists, Andy Warhol’s name is probably the most recognized. Born in 1930 of immigrant Czechs living in Pittsburgh, he studied for a short time at the Carnegie Institute of Technology before meeting Philip Pearlstein and moving to New York in 1949. Like so many other Pop artists, Warhol worked designing window displays and theatre sets, and creating advertisements for commercial businesses and magazines during much of the 50s. He had a few small exhibitions and traveled to Europe and Asia.

In 1960 he made his first pictures based on company trade names and comic strips. In 1962 he produced his silkscreen prints on canvas of dollar bill notes, Marilyn Monroe and Campbell’s Soup cans. Inclusion as part of an exhibition of “New Realists” at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York gave Warhol the impetus to produce an extraordinary amount of work. Between 1962 and 1964 he created over 2,000 pictures in his “factory”. During this time he also began to make films including “Sleep” (6 hours long). By the late 60s he was producing sculpture in addition to the paintings, prints and films and was invited to exhibit in Paris and Stockholm.

Characteristic of Warhol’s work was his ability to turn the ordinary and mundane into art and to make art itself appear ordinary and mundane. He not only transformed mass produced commonplace objects into art but he turned his own art into mass produced objects. He succeeded in knocking high art off its pedestal, bringing it down to the level of the ordinary and making it socially acceptable.

By the 1970s and into the 80s Warhol’s themes became saturated with personal, social and political tragedies exposing a sensation-hungry media supported by a thrill-seeking public audience. His films and visual creations became morbid and disaster oriented reflecting his constant interpretation of his surroundings. Interspersed with these themes we also find a number of portraits and self-portraits that he completed during these years. Unfortunately, Warhol died in 1987 of complications resulting from surgery.

Superman and Santa Claus

Left:
Andy Warhol
American, 1928-1987
SUPERMAN, 1981
Screenprint with diamond dust
Museum Purchase, 1987.155.3
Right:
Andy Warhol
American, 1928-1987
SANTA CLAUS, 1981
Screenprint with diamond dust
Museum Purchase, 1987.155.9

To both the novice and the expert, Andy Warhol is usually the first artist who comes to mind when asked to name a Pop artist. His uncanny ability to select the popular images of his time that would capture the imagination of his audience is unrivaled. In 1981 he produced a series of prints and gave it the title Myths. It consists of 10 imaginary characters gleaned from animated films, television and nostalgic childhood memories. The entire series will not be displayed simultaneously in the LIMITED EDITIONS exhibition but in two groupings, each for a limited time period. In each grouping the viewer will encounter an element of America’s past. As always, Warhol presents us with images that are bound to the culture from which they come. Viewers of Warhol’s generation will easily identify the images and revel in the nostalgic memories which they induce (as Warhol intended), but how many will the younger generations recognize? If Warhol were to produce the Myths series today, what imaginary characters would he include as contemporary American icons? Sponge Bob? Harry Potter?

- Jim Dine b.1935

Although Roy Lichtenstein lived and worked in Ohio for a time, Jim Dine is actually a native son, born in Cincinnati in 1935. He studied at the University of Cincinnati, the Boston School of Fine and Applied Arts and eventually earned a BFA at the Ohio State University in 1957. He moved to New York in 1959 where he staged his first Happening (a form of art “action” in which artistic ideas were confronted with elements of chance in a kind of theatrical performance setting) with Claes Oldenburg and Allan Kaprow. He remained involved with the creation of Happenings for some time, eventually deciding to do other things, painting and printmaking in particular.

In 1962, Jasper Johns took him to visit the workshop of Tatyana Grosman, Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) where Dine, in the years following, made numerous lithographs. The violence depicted in an earlier print series, Car Crash, disappeared from the prints he produced at ULAE. His images began to represent more mundane objects such as pliers, hammers and C-clamps, objects he recalled from his grandfather’s tool shop in Cincinnati. His signature “bathrobe” that appeared without a figure throughout his early work was, according to some critics, a kind of metaphor for a self-portrait. Eventually Dine also began to produce etchings with overtones of eroticism and personal fantasies. Today Dine continues to produce paintings, sculptures and prints although his work is now more representational in style and content.

Rancho Woodcut Heart

Jim Dine
American. b 1935
RANCHO WOODCUT HEART, 1982
Woodcut on Rives BFK rolled paper
Museum Purchase, 1987.46

Just as the bathrobe and tool images are seen as autobiographical, so the symbolic hearts have become a metaphor for Dine’s emotional experiences. Dine first became engrossed with the heart concept in the 1960s but he returned to it again in this 1982 woodcut in three colors. The somewhat simplistic shape of the heart adapted well to the technical aspects of the woodcut, but Dine was more influenced by his discovery that he could work on a large scale by using sheets of plywood and combining the use of traditional woodcut tools with the use of power driven tools, the electric Dremel tool in particular. He made elaborate drawings with brush and India ink on the wood first and then proceeded to meticulously follow the drawing with the Dremel tool. This particular print was created from two plywood blocks, one block printed the red and green, another printed the black.