Albrecht Dürer - Agony in the Garden (Christ on the Mount of Olives), 1508
detail of a print from the Engraved Passion series |
It can be easy to overlook printmaking as an art form,
especially in our current digital age, where a few clicks will get you a nice image
made of ink on paper. But two very different shows currently on view at the
Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown serve as timely reminders that it wasn’t
always so easy, and that it still takes vision to make easy into wonderful.
All fans of visual art know the name Albrecht Dürer,
but most of us probably didn’t know that Dürer “singlehandedly transformed
printmaking from a craft to a fine art” in the late 1400s and early 1500s, as
postulated and amply demonstrated by the traveling exhibition Albrecht Dürer:
Master Prints, on loan to FAM through Nov. 22 from Pennsylvania’s Reading Public
Museum.
Fall of Man from the Small Woodblock Passion, c. 1510
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Not that Dürer eschewed popularity – on the
contrary, according to the exhibition wall text, “his prints circulated throughout
Europe, making him one of the most influential artists of his age.” Something
like today’s YouTube or Instagram stars, he gave the people what they wanted,
providing his own special twists in the form of naturalistic curiosities, bravura
line work, and visual puzzles. The woodblock print Fall of Man provides one example of these strengths – whereas a
simple rendering of Adam and Eve with the snake would do, Dürer
adds other animals such as a bear (or is it a boar?) and a peeping lion, along
with his classic personal logo on a trompe
l’oeil metal tag.
Joachim and the Angel from The Life of the Virgin, 1504 |
All in all, with a little patience (and maybe a magnifying
glass, available for use in the museum), this display of Dürer’s
master works will greatly reward any visitor.
Kykuit Estate, Tarrytown, New York
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Gross and Daley work as a duo, and they built this collection of images over more than a decade (mixed in with other projects), by visiting numerous venerable parks and estates to capture their seemingly timeless outdoor spaces using digital cameras.
The resulting show of 22 prints, all of them transformed to the mellow blue tones of a cyanotype, provides both a document of these special places and a lush and pensive visual style that the pair have cultivated over many decades of photographing landscapes and gardens together. The beautiful consistency of this group belies the diversity of its subjects, ranging from South Carolina to Upstate N.Y.
Untermyer Park, Yonkers, New York
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In many of these pictures, the sky is a powerful
presence. This may have been part of the reason for printing in blue, or just a
happy byproduct of the decision to render the gardens themselves in blue, but the effect
of that choice works beautifully (I have tried to imagine these images in a classic
grey monotone instead, and it doesn’t seem to work at all). In any case, the
skies are crucial to the work precisely because, while the rest of the
subject matter is virtually unchanged from its inception a century or more ago,
the ever-changing sky captured in a fleeting moment firmly anchors the images as
photographs, timeless though they may seem.
Blue Gardens will
remain on view at FAM through Dec. 31.
Steve Gross and Susan Daley - Crane Estate, Ipswich, Massachusetts
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3 comments:
David: Thank you for the updates on these two shows. I often get a single color in a photograph. But the reason is mostly because of my lack of knowledge of digital camera settings, rather than an planned artistic strategy.
Are you going to cover the Everson's auction of their Jackson Pollock painting?
It's a story that has stirred things up as far west as the "Los Angeles Times'" arts page.
Hi John - Monochromatic photographs, whether on purpose or by accident, are always a good option!
Thanks for sharing the info about the Everson auctioning a Pollock.
I wasn't aware of it, but would say that's a little outside my purview here.
The LA Times article does provide a lot of interesting perspective on it.
With any luck, it will remain in some way on public view after it's sold ... as was the case with the Berkshire Museum's Rockwells.
I'll have to get down there.
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