NGS The Printmaker’s Art Rembrandt to Rego 29th November 2023 Review
The Printmaker’s Art : Rembrandt to Rego at NGS (Royal Scottish Academy Sat 02 Dec 23 to Sun 25 Feb 2024) features the all too often overlooked art of the printmaker and the many famous names in art that have, often to many people’s surprise, worked in the medium.
Prints have been with us a long time now and over the past 500 years have been created from woodcut blocks, steel engraving plates, copper printing plates and lino-cuts. All types are included in this carefully curated exhibition.
From Albrecht Dürer in the fifteenth century to Andy Warhol in the 20th century and contemporary artists working now in print making, the range of techniques used to achieve their artistic goals is as diverse as the images on display in this exhibition.
Here monochrome images of sinners cast down to eternal damnation in hell contrast with the simple simplicity of Japanese Ukiyo-e woodcuts and images of sacred Mount Fuji in Thunderstorm Below the Summit by Hokusai.
Many household names are here, and in a time where posters and prints are commonplace and design elements of millions of people’s homes, the art of Goya, Rembrandt, William Blake, Roy Lichtenstein, Elizabeth Blackadder, Paula Rego, Bridget Riley, Otto Dix, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso and many other names featured in this exhibition have become almost personal friends to us, a visual display on our walls to our once private and now public tastes in art.
These prints are also so often a reflection of both the religious beliefs and wider views of society at the time of their printing and, unlike a painting which is a unique one off work of art, the print can be reproduced as long as the printing block or plate lasts, and when that is no longer giving a good enough image, a new one can be made.
This exhibition celebrates not only the work of the artist, but also the skills of the print-maker. Sometimes artist and printmaker are one and the same person, but often the end product is a result of two or more different people’s skills, particularly in colour work where different blocks for each colour must line up perfectly on the print to be in colour registration. An informative film by artist Ade Adesina RSA demonstrates linocut, one of the relief printing methods (as opposed to a production method like Lithography).
Look hard enough in this exhibition and you will also find the print that some people think inspired Bob Kane to create Batman.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
Prints have been with us a long time now and over the past 500 years have been created from woodcut blocks, steel engraving plates, copper printing plates and lino-cuts. All types are included in this carefully curated exhibition.
From Albrecht Dürer in the fifteenth century to Andy Warhol in the 20th century and contemporary artists working now in print making, the range of techniques used to achieve their artistic goals is as diverse as the images on display in this exhibition.
Here monochrome images of sinners cast down to eternal damnation in hell contrast with the simple simplicity of Japanese Ukiyo-e woodcuts and images of sacred Mount Fuji in Thunderstorm Below the Summit by Hokusai.
Many household names are here, and in a time where posters and prints are commonplace and design elements of millions of people’s homes, the art of Goya, Rembrandt, William Blake, Roy Lichtenstein, Elizabeth Blackadder, Paula Rego, Bridget Riley, Otto Dix, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso and many other names featured in this exhibition have become almost personal friends to us, a visual display on our walls to our once private and now public tastes in art.
These prints are also so often a reflection of both the religious beliefs and wider views of society at the time of their printing and, unlike a painting which is a unique one off work of art, the print can be reproduced as long as the printing block or plate lasts, and when that is no longer giving a good enough image, a new one can be made.
This exhibition celebrates not only the work of the artist, but also the skills of the print-maker. Sometimes artist and printmaker are one and the same person, but often the end product is a result of two or more different people’s skills, particularly in colour work where different blocks for each colour must line up perfectly on the print to be in colour registration. An informative film by artist Ade Adesina RSA demonstrates linocut, one of the relief printing methods (as opposed to a production method like Lithography).
Look hard enough in this exhibition and you will also find the print that some people think inspired Bob Kane to create Batman.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com