Arts & Leisure
"The Imprint of Place - Maine Printmaking 1800-2005"
By Rose Safran
YORK - "Prints are in many ways the most dramatic visual medium..." David Becker, author.A book important to the history of printmaking in Maine has entered the collections of the York Public Library. Recently published by the Center for Maine Contemporary Art and Down East Books in conjunction with the ongoing print collaborative on view in museums and galleries throughout the state, "The Imprint of Place - Maine Printmaking 1800-2005," an illustrated hardcover 136-page book, fills an important gap in the literature and history of art in this state.
Written by Portland resident David Becker, a former curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Mass., and at Harvard University's Fogg Art Museum, the volume is the first chronological survey of a long-overlooked subject inspired by the Maine scene and experience.
Where considerable fuss has been made in exhibits and texts about oil paintings and watercolors linked to Maine's inviting turf, which has attracted countless noteworthy artists from afar, relatively little commentary has heralded the state's relationship to printmaking or to the contributions of Maine-based artists to the medium. A history of printmaking in Maine has never been written and the medium has never been featured in previous surveys of the state's arts.
Enter David Becker who says, "Maine has a rich tradition of printmaking, and the wealth of its history...will come as no surprise to people familiar with the role of printmaking within society."
He further elaborates in the Introduction to this fine compendium, "...they (i.e., prints) are found not only in museums, but also within historical societies, libraries, corporate archives, antique shops, bookstores ...private homes ... newspapers magazines, compact disc covers, and street posters."
In defining printmaking specifically attributable to Maine, David Becker had the usual problem of a decision about the extent or limit of inclusion, that is, about what might qualify as "Maine printmaking" for the state has always been a magnet for creative personalities from "away," especially in its summer colonies.
In general, the author decided that if sketches were made here, although the print might have been produced elsewhere, if printmakers worked here for any period, their work might be included with the proviso that "no print would be included that was executed before the artist had first arrived here."
Through five chapters, author David Becker elaborates on various printmaking aspects and trends in this state: Beginnings - The Nineteenth Century; Crosscurrents, Modern and Traditional from 1900 to 1930; Depression and the War Years, 1930-1945; New Directions, New Teaching, 1945-1980, and From Traditional to Digital, 1980-2005.
Seventy plates of images and other illustrations from resources such as the Maine Historical Society, Maine State Museum, Bowdoin College Library, Farnsworth Art Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Maine, Harvard University Art Museums and Portland Museum of Art, as well as from many private collections, enrich the author's text.
The earliest 19th-century documentation concerns "the establishment of commercial and advertising viability for the medium" and printmaking here at that time involved, first the creation of an artist's image, and then, its subsequent production by a trained engraver or lithographer.
Toward the end of the century, artist-printmakers, especially etchers, produced prints. Engraved business cards, early lithographs of scenic views, an advertisement in the Portland Directory and Reference Book of 1863, a wood engraving from the remarkable Jonathan Fisher's "Scripture Animals" along with Winslow Homer's etching based on, but different from, his famous "Eight Bells" painting indicate the variety of prints included in the first chapter.
In the early part of the 20th century, drypoints and/or etchings by such notables as Cadwallader Washburn, Frank Benson, Ernest Haskell, John Marin, Charles Woodbury, Gertrude Fiske, Edward Hopper, Walt Kuhn and lithographs by Marsden Hartley and Marguerite Zorach supply testimony to the quality of printmaking produced in Maine.
The chapter on the Depression and war years points to the role of the Federal Arts Project of the Works Progress Administration which commissioned public art works during the 1930s and helped keep artists employed as well as the growth of artist and collector groups to help foster art. Included here are reproductions of works by Stow Wengenroth, Rockwell Kent, Stevan Dohanos and Leo Meissner along with those of book illustrators such as Peggy Bacon and Barbara Cooney. Indications of "place" and some biographical material are included.
Post World War II chapters include the explosion of artistic innovation as applied to the print medium through European influences and modernist printmakers such as Louise Nevelson, Karl Schrag, Werner Drewes, Leonard Baskin and Will Barnet, the important contribution of summer programs such as those at Haystack and Skowhegan, the introduction of printmaking departments in schools such as Bowdoin College, the Portland School of Art, the University of Maine.
Not overlooked either is the association of serious Maine artists, such as John Muench and John Hultberg with some leading printmaking workshops elsewhere (e.g., Tamarind in Los Angeles) who returned here, bringing advanced ideas.
Of the last twenty-five years in Maine, the author says, "Reflecting a national trend, no longer can printmaking be marginalized as a secondary medium in Maine."
And here he points to the success of Patricia Nick's Vinalhaven Press (1985-1997), which attracted master printers such as Robert Indiana and Charlie Hewitt and produced over 130 editions, the emergence of fine book printers in Portland, the proliferation of print exhibits and the increase of prints in Maine museum collections.
The final chapter contains information about and illustrations of contemporary woodcuts, etching/drypoints, lithography, monotype, silkscreen, digital and other techniques and processes. A glossary of print terms and list of references finalizes this fine historical overview of the medium.
"The Imprint of Place" by David Becker is available from Down East Books for $35, hardcover, illustrated. For further information, call (800) 685-7962.
