USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute's 2020-21 Seminar "On Paper"

Part 1: Social Reading Group
Any time, September - October 2020

Participate in the asynchronous, on-going social reading group. Instructions for accessing and discussing the pre-circulated reading, “Handwriting of the Self: Leonardo da Vinci” by David Rosand, through at perusall.com will be sent to those who register.

Part 2: Roundtable Conversation
Thursday, October 29, 12:30 - 2 pm (PDT)

Moderator:
Lisa Pon, University of Southern California

Panelists:
Leslie Geddes, Tulane University
Andrea Kantrowitz, SUNY New Paltz
Morgan Ng, University of Cambridge
Nick Sousanis, San Francisco State University

For more information please email: emsi@dornsife.usc.edu

Please visit the 'External Link' below to register via Zoom for the synchronous zoom meeting and/or the asynchronous reading group.

Dear colleagues,

A friendly reminder that abstracts for the APS-sponsored panel "The Graphic Conscience" at CAA 2021 are due next week: September 16.

Please, submit a completed form (attached, inclusive of abstract), a CV (max. 2 pages), and, if applicable, documentation (max. 5 images) to me at ksenia.nouril@gmail.com by September 16, 2020.

The form, these directives, and additional guidelines are provided by CAA: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2021/webprogrampreliminary/meeting.html

Additional FAQs can be found here: https://www.collegeart.org/programs/conference/FAQ

Stay well and good luck,

Ksenia Nouril, PhD
Jensen Bryan Curator
The Print Center, Philadelphia
ksenia.nouril@gmail.com
@kaysenyah // @theprintcenter

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The Graphic Conscience
Affiliated Society or Committee Name: Association of Print Scholars
Ksenia Nouril, The Print Center
Email Address(s): ksenia.nouril@gmail.com

“The Graphic Conscience” calls for papers addressing transhistorical and transnational case studies of print as a tool for raising public consciousness. This session critically considers the ethics of print, inherent in the medium’s daily use-value beyond its function as a rarified fine-art object in a museum. Democratic in nature, print communicates through text and/or image as well as through its multiplicity. In considering the “graphic conscience” – or the social responsibility – of print, this session will celebrate the medium’s impacts on everyday life. The framework for this session responds to the thesis of the 2011 publication Philagrafika: The Graphic Unconscious, which reflected on the formal characteristics of print and argued for its assimilation within art at large. Papers can address a wide range of art historical as well as visual and material culture examples, including but not limited to Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses of 1517; the seventeenth century etchings of Jacques Callot’s Les Grandes Misères de la guerre; the didactic agitprop of Taller de Gráfica Popular in late 1930s Mexico; and the commercially-produced postcards mailed to Americans by the Centers for Disease Control in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Prints of all techniques – from Renaissance woodblocks to contemporary risograph zines – are eligible. Papers engaging post-colonial critique and/or topics from outside North America and Europe are strongly encouraged. Practice-based papers by artists, giving us a perspective from inside the studio or printshop, are particularly welcomed.

In its foundational years, The Block Museum of Art gained a reputation for groundbreaking exhibitions that considered the unique roles prints and printmaking have played within visual culture. The Block also began to build its collection around etchings, lithographs, screenprints, and other printed media. While the museum’s mission has evolved over time, prints continue to resonate with its aspiration to present art across time, cultures, and media and to inspire interdisciplinary discussions relevant to our lives today.

On the occasion of The Block’s 40th anniversary, For One and All: Selected Prints from The Block’s Collection celebrates prints and printmaking by bringing together a diverse range of artwork from the permanent collection. The exhibition will consider print production through various lenses layering complex histories of reproduction, circulation, collecting, and social activism.

Printmaking stands apart from other artistic media in its capacity for reproduction and dissemination and is an ideal medium for telling stories about human experience and visual culture to the broadest audiences. Because prints and works on paper are often paired with or incorporate text, they provide springboards for interdisciplinary ways of thinking about the past and present.

For One and All will place highlights from The Block’s collection, many of which have not previously been on view, into contemporary conversation with one another, and will provide an overview of the museum’s holdings in print media. The exhibition will include examples of works that have been in the collection since the founding of the Block, along with recent acquisitions and gifts. From reproductive engravings and early modern European prints, to Depression-era and social activist prints, prints by Chicago artists and those produced at print workshops throughout the United States, the exhibition surveys the depth and breadth of the Block’s print collection and showcases the vital role that prints serve within the context of an academic art museum.

Please join us at 2:00 p.m. on Friday, September 25, 2020, for the fifth in our series of live webinars highlighting material in the Graphic Arts Collection at Princeton University Library. Recently we acquired most of the rare letterpress editions printed by Anaïs Nin (French-Cuban, 1903-1977). Best known for her diaries, Nin also wrote fiction with themes of history, feminism and multiculturalism. Together with Gonzalo More, Nin ran a private printing press in Greenwich Village where she taught herself to set type, stood for hours pumping a treadle press, and distributed her books with the help of Frances Steloff at Gotham Book Mart. Many were illustrated with original etchings by her husband, Hugh Parker Guiler, a banker who used the pseudonym Ian Hugo so his colleagues would not discover he was also an artist.

They called the imprint Gemor Press (pronounced G. More) after Gonzalo, although it was Anaïs who raised the money and did most of the physical work. Located first on MacDougal Street and later at 17 East 13th Street where the small building she rented still stands. After a close look at the books and prints, we are fortunate to be joined by Andrew Berman, Executive Director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, who will update us on their efforts to landmark this building, as well as other Village homes and studios of writers we all know and love.

This session is free and open to all. To register: click here https://libcal.princeton.edu/event/6949414

Please visit the 'External Link' below for more information.

Helen Hardin (Santa Clara, 1943–1984) emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as a trailblazer for Native American women artists wishing to break from tradition. Although influenced by time-honored pueblo imagery as well as the work of her mother, renowned Santa Clara artist Pablita Velarde (1918–2006), Hardin strove to create a style all her own.

In high school, a drafting class introduced Hardin to architectural tools and processes that she then incorporated into her work. Repeating complex geometric forms based on the imagery she found in petroglyphs and ancient potsherds, she became recognized for her use of increasingly bold, vibrant colors and her affinity for iridescent paint.

In 1980, Hardin began using the copper-plate etching process, a printing technique that allowed her precise lines and detailed compositions to reach a broader audience. Spirit Lines consists of the entire first edition set of Hardin’s 23 copper-plate etchings, which at the Crocker will be accompanied by original paintings by Hardin, Pablita Velarde, and Margarete Bagshaw (1964–2015).

Relying primarily on rarely-displayed Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP) prints in KAM’s strong collection of twentieth century works on paper, the exhibition will include approximately 40 works organized into themes of labor unrest (exploitation, economic disparity, and gender inequalities), discrimination and racial violence, and reactions to the rise of fascism. Pressing Issues is especially timely in that it connects this past to the present, as the current political climate in the United States is revisiting similar themes of isolationism and nationalism, populism and fascism, and racial violence.

Pressing Issues will be on view leading up to the 2020 presidential election. Given the social and economic upheaval experienced in the United States in the last decade, including the revival of fascist ideologies and the refugee crisis in America, this exhibition provides a visceral and much needed reminder of how visual artists call attention to and combat various forms of oppression.

The exhibition primarily presents works from the KAM collection as well as significant loans. Artists proposed for inclusion in the exhibition are: Ida Abelman, Carlos Andreson, Phil Bard, Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry, Leroy Flint, Michael Gallagher, Minetta Good, Boris Gorelick, Harry Gottlieb, Riva Helfond, Jacob Kainen, Florence Kent, Chet La More, Joseph Leboit, Nan Lurie, Kyra Markham, Hugh Miller, Charles Ramus, Lillian Richter, Bernard Schardt, Herman Volz, Albert Webb, and Hale Woodruff.

A main thread in the history of art is the centuries-long conversation between artists. Artists often responded to one another’s work. Rembrandt was an avid participant in the discussion, tapping into a deep knowledge of historical art, and driven by a competitive streak. In this engaging talk inspired by the exhibition “Rembrandt in Conversation”, Tom Rassieur, Mia’s John E. Andrus III Curator of Prints & Drawings, will examine a sample of Rembrandt’s prints in the company of other works of art that piqued his interest.

This is a virtual event that will take place via Zoom.

Please visit the 'External Link' below for more information and to register.

An online exhibition celebrating Tamarind’s 60th anniversary. The exhibition includes lithographs by various artists who have collaborated at Tamarind Institute during the past sixty years. Tamarind is a division of the College of Fine Arts at The University of New Mexico. Exhibition online at https://tamarind.unm.edu, beginning September 1, 2020.

Two Etchings by Eva Hesse (1936–1970)
Hesse produced an extraordinarily inventive, influential body of work in her short career. Pioneering the use of unusual materials—including textiles, latex, and fiberglass—and individual sculptural forms, she ushered in a new conceptual era of sculpture and installation art in the 1960s. Although not known for her prints, Hesse produced at least 14 etchings, 17 lithographs, and two woodcuts early in her career.

The Gallery has acquired two etchings that show Hesse's early fascination with texture, versatility of line, tensions between positive and negative space, and the expressive, vulnerable qualities of material and structural form.

These works join one print, two drawings, and one sculpture by Hesse already in the Gallery's collection.

Five Works on Paper by Emma Amos (1937–2020)
The National Gallery of Art has recently acquired five works on paper (four prints and one collaged paper-pulp work) made from the 1960s to the early 2000s by the artist and activist Emma Amos. These works are examples of Amos's engagement with issues of feminism, racism, and power dynamics in imagery that does not always appear overtly political.

Amos was the youngest and only female member of the important New York artist collective Spiral, which was formed in response to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. Founded by Richard Mayhew, Romare Bearden, and Hale Woodruff, the collective served as a forum for African American artists to discuss their role in America's rapidly changing political and cultural landscape. They explored ideas such as whether "black art" can or should be defined—issues that continue to be debated today.

Amos went on to contribute to the important feminist art journal Heresies and purportedly participated in the Guerrilla Girls, an activist group of anonymous women artists who protest injustices in the art world. Throughout her career Amos faced prejudice against both her race and gender, and she primarily showed her art in exhibitions that featured black and/or women artists. Amos's employment and family life also limited her artistic production, contributing to her mostly small and often experimental printed editions that have slight variations, such as collaged or other unique elements, as seen in several of the works acquired by the Gallery.

These five works on paper join one print diptych by Amos in the Gallery's collection.

Please visit the 'External Link' below to view images of these recent acquisitions.

Congratulations to APS Director-at-Large Jan Howard and APS member Tatiana Reinoza, PhD on their appointments to the National Advisory Committee of Artura, a project of Brandywine Workshop and Archives. Howard is the Chief Curator and Houghton P. Metcalf Jr. Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at RISD Museum. Reinoza is Assistant Professor of Art History and Latinx Studies at University of Notre Dame.

About Artura
Over the past 47 years the Brandywine Workshop and Archives has produced a diverse collection of over 1,400 original artworks, hosted over 500 multicultural artists from the US and around the world, and now have more than 800 prints displayed in satellite collections at 14 institutions across North America. In additional to our visiting artist programs, BWA sponsors high school and college internships in printmaking, digital media and collections management.

Artura.org is the nation’s first free online database of culturally diverse artwork and artists, and an open educational resource for researchers, curators, educators and students. A free, interactive digital archive of culturally diverse art and artists, Artura.org gives visitors access to a wide variety of voices, experiences, and histories not found in any other single open-educational resource. Our platform allows users to interact with art that represents contemporary cultures, histories, and traditions from around the globe.

Please visit the 'External Link' below to learn more about Artura's collection, programming (including free teaching resources and webinars), and leadership.