Artists Deborah Roberts and Robert A. Pruitt discuss Charles White’s influence and legacy and their own interest in representations of black bodies in a conversation moderated by Dr. Cherise Smith, Chair of the African and African Diaspora Studies Department, the founding director of the Art Galleries at Black Studies, and an associate professor of AADS and Art History at The University of Texas at Austin, held in conjunction with the exhibitions Charles White: Celebrating the Gordon Gift at the Blanton Museum of Art and Charles White and the Legacy of the Figure: Celebrating the Gordon Gift at the Christian-Green Gallery on campus.

This event is free to attend. Seated is limited for this special event; register at the 'External Link' below starting September 16, 2019.

With their avant-garde style and rejection of artistic traditions, a new generation of rebel-artists known as the Expressionists came to prominence during the early 20th century. This was the time of empires and colonies, air raids and allied forces, nationalism and revolution that was particularly tumultuous in Germany and neighboring Austria—countries closely connected during the First World War (1914–1918) and the rise of the Nazi Party (1920–1945).

Labeled as “degenerates,” many of the Expressionists were drafted or otherwise affected by war. To express their personal reactions to the atrocities they experienced, they turned to boldly simplified line work, distorted forms, or clashing colors. Above all, they heralded printmaking—a quick, inexpensive medium rife with creative potential—as the premier form of artistic rebellion.

From lithographic posters to book illustration, this Focus Installation exhibition encapsulates the violence and defiance of European modernism through works from the Dallas Museum of Art’s permanent collection as well as works from Dr. Alessandra Comini’s generous gift to the Museum in 2018 and 2019.

Celebrating the 30th anniversary of Tsuruya Kōkei's first solo show in the United States, the exhibition will display 77 prints by this artist widely celebrated as one of Japan's leading contemporary print artists. The British Museum lauded Kōkei for producing Japan's "most notable Kabuki prints" in the post-war era.

Known for his bold portraits of Japan's leading actors in a dynamic theatrical form, Kōkei responds to the idiosyncratic late-18th century kabuki prints by the great Sharaku. A master in his own right, Kōkei captures the intense color, movement, and emotion of kabuki. Yet Kōkei diverges from tradition by designing, carving, and printing his own work. Because he uses extremely delicate paper, his works juxtapose emotionally dynamic images with fragile materials to create objects of extraordinary power.

The exhibition presents all of Kōkei's actor prints from 1984–1993. Because the artist limited his editions, such a complete collection is unprecedented and will represent a first in Texas. To explore the broader contours of Kabuki actor prints, Kōkei's work will be contextualized by actor prints by Sharaku as well as two dozen works by contemporary Japanese and western artists.

The exhibition utilizes the layered issues of identity in kabuki — where actors take on multiple roles and males take on female roles — to explore broader questions of self-definition and its representation. It includes several of Kōkei's emotionally complex self-portraits produced after he gave up actor prints in 2000. It concludes by examining how kabuki actor imagery has inspired pop images over the last 20 years, demonstrating the productive link between Japan's historic ukiyo (floating world) and our own culture.

Explore in close detail three of the greatest prints by one of the most important printmakers in history: Rembrandt’s The Hundred Guilder Print (1648), The Three Crosses (1653), and Ecce Homo (1655). Discover what was new and special about these prints and examine how and why Rembrandt manipulated the market in unusual ways, especially at a time of increasing financial desperation in his life.

Presented by Paul Crenshaw, associate professor of Art History, Providence College, and president, Historians of Netherlandish Art, this lecture is the third session of the MFA's multi-session course "Why Rembrandt?" (September 25–October 23, 2019). Tickets are required; attendees may take the full five-week course or choose one or more lectures of interest.

Japanese woodblock prints were met with an enthusiastic audience abroad in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. In Europe and the United States, tens of thousands of prints were bought and sold, exhibitions and record-breaking auctions staged, and a new passion kindled for private collectors. Most of what we know about early American print collecting has been focused on the East Coast—donations that were the basis for the world-class museum collections in Boston, New York, and Chicago. Lesser-known but just as significant was the donation of the Mary Andrews Ladd collection of Japanese prints to the Portland Art Museum in 1932. Drawing on the Museum’s archives, period records, and the collection itself, this lecture will explore this transformational gift of nearly 750 Edo-period (1603–1868) woodblock prints, and expand the story of early Japanese print collecting in the United States.

Titled after Wassily Kandinsky's 1922 print series Small Worlds, this exhibition comprises about 40 European drawings and prints made over the course of five centuries by artists ranging from Dürer to Picasso, using a wide variety of media and techniques. Roughly chronological in its arrangement, the exhibition begins with soft metal cuts for illustrated bibles dating from the early 15th century, moves to works by Dürer, Rembrandt, Callot, Piranesi, Manet, and Klinger, among others, and ends in the 20th century with works by Chagall, Picasso, Kandinsky, and Klee. While the exhibition features many well-known artists, it also highlights talented, but lesser-known artists and seldom seen works from the collection. These include works about which recent research has yielded important and exciting new insights. Small Worlds underlines the frequent role of prints and drawings as microcosms of experience intended to be seen close up.

This exhibition focuses on a gift from Dr. Gilberto Cárdenas, a leading collector of Latinx art, of prints produced at Self Help Graphics and Art. Located in East Los Angeles, this printmaking workshop and cultural institution has been a mainstay in the city’s arts community since 1972. Sister Karen Boccalero and two Mexican-born artists, muralist Carlos Bueno, and photographer Antonio Ibáñez, founded the institution to support the local Mexican American community through art classes and cultural experiences. They provided printmaking training and studio spaces for artists and organized an annual celebration of the Dia de los Muertos.

In late 1982, Self Help Graphics inaugurated their Experimental Atelier Program, still ongoing. They invite local and visiting artists to produce limited edition screen prints. Sometimes the ateliers focus on a specific theme or group of artists. Since its inception, the program has produced over a thousand prints by hundreds of artists.

Dr. Gilberto Cárdenas, former professor at the University of Texas at Austin, recently retired as Executive Director of the Center for Arts and Culture at the University of Notre Dame. He was one of the earliest supporters of Self Help Graphics. In 1986, he founded Galería Sin Fronteras in Austin, as a way of helping disseminate the output of the Experimental Atelier Program and supporting the work of Latinx and Chicanx artists. In 2017, Dr. Cárdenas donated to the Blanton Museum of Art over 350 prints from Self Help Graphics, spanning from the late seventies to the late nineties.

Arte Sin Fronteras celebrates the extraordinary gift from Dr. Cárdenas and focuses on the Experimental Atelier Program. The exhibition begins with a selection of works documenting Self Help Graphic’s history as a community organization. The next section addresses the artists’ complex construction of Chicanx/Latinx identities by articulating a visual and conceptual vocabulary based on cultural heritage, family relations, civil rights, and the American experience. The show continues with prints that challenge traditional gender roles and engage in an intersectional exploration into Chicanx/Latinx and queer identities. The exhibition also focuses on issues of migration and life at the United States/Mexico border. The final section includes works featuring Mexican-American religious traditions, ranging from Mesoamerican imagery to the modern commemoration of the Dia de los Muertos.

Landfall Press: Five Decades of Printmaking celebrates the history and innovation behind one of America’s most renowned printers-publishers on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary year. Founded in 1970 by Jack Lemon, in Chicago, Landfall Press has cultivated a uniquely collaborative environment and produced work for many artists at different points in their career. The press has operated out of Santa Fe, New Mexico, since 2004.

The exhibition features approximately 100 editioned prints and printmaking materials from the Museum’s Landfall Press Archive, established in 1992, and reveals the various and often complex processes that go into printmaking at Landfall.

The Forum offers an afternoon of illustrated talks on the history, process, and expressive qualities of aquatints. The talks expand upon WAM's exhibition "Charles Capps: Prairie Print Maker". Capps was devoted to aquatint as a print medium and celebrated for his mastery of the technique. The Print Forum speakers will explore the special abilities and contributions of Charles Capps and the Prairie Print Makers.

1:30 pm: Director's Welcome
1:40 pm: Sarah Bane, PhD candidate, University of California, dissertation on the Prairie Print Makers
2:40 pm: Reuben Saunders, print dealer and owner, Reuben Saunders Gallery, Wichita
3:30 pm: Barbara Thompson, independent art historian and granddaughter of C.A. Seward
4:30 pm: Forum Q & A discussion with audience and speakers
5 pm: Print Forum Reception, Dr. S. Jim and Darla Farha Great Hall
5:45 pm: C.A. Seward Dinner and Birthday Salute to Charles "Chili" Capps, The Muse Cafe

The afternoon Print Forum is free and open to the public. Galleries close at 5 pm.

About the Prairie Print Makers Group
The Prairie Print Makers group was formed on December 28, 1930, when 11 of the best artists in Kansas gathered in the Lindsborg studio of artist Birger Sandzén. Planning to offer affordable artwork that would appeal to collectors, the Prairie Print Makers created etchings, silkscreens, linoleum cuts, block prints, and lithographs. The group boasted 47 active members and over 100 associate members. The collective continued until 1965--creating 34 gift prints between 1931 and that year.

Leading the formation of the group was artist C.A. Seward (pictured at left). Seward settled in Wichita in 1907 and soon after established one of the few fine printing services outside of New York City, wrote a foundational text on lithography, organized low-cost traveling exhibitions, and helped to establish the Prairie Print Makers. His efforts fostered a vital arts community in Wichita with a singular goal--to bring art into everyone's life.

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

Surveying Sheldon’s collection of works on paper from the late eighteenth to the late twentieth century, this exhibition presents selected instances when printmaking and photography are in dialogue with one another. With focus on moments in which the two practices intersect—in terms of function, aesthetics, and technique—Convergence on Paper highlights their affinity for one another and the rewarding results of experiments and innovations by artists including Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, and James McNeill Whistler