From Soup to Abstraction

An exhibit at the Zimmerli Museum in New Brunswick traces the history of fine art printmaking.

By: Matt Smith
   As Dr. Dorothea Dietrich meanders through the Zimmerli Art Museum’s new printmaking exhibit, it seems difficult for her to restrain from talking about each and every one of the 130 works — from 87 artists spanning more than 100 years.
   Dr. Dietrich, curator of prints and drawings at the Zimmerli, hits the highlights, pointing out some of the bigger names and representative pieces. She reluctantly skips a number of striking works just to keep the tour of From Whistler to Warhol: A Century of American Printmaking under an hour and a half.

"Andy
Andy Warhol’s screenprint "Vegetarian Vegetable" from Campbell’s Soup II, 1969.

   The graphic arts — prints, posters, illustrated books, watercolors and drawings — account for nearly 90 percent of the New Brunswick museum’s holdings. When the Zimmerli received a substantial donation of prints from art collectors Ruth and David Eisenberg, curators began integrating the museum’s current holdings and new arrivals into one ambitious exhibit tracing the evolution of printmaking from a specialized artistic endeavor to a wildly popular art form.
   "The goal was to look at the development of American printmaking as a process that had its roots in 19th century illustration," says Dr. Dietrich.
From Whistler to Warhol first traveled around Japan and then to St. Petersburg, Russia, before coming home to the Zimmerli. The exhibit, which runs through Nov. 25, presents the history of printmaking in all its diversity: etching, traditional lithography, wood engraving, drypoint, photorelief, woodcut, aquatint, offset and photo lithography, photo-etching and cast paper.
   Two other printmaking exhibits are running concurrently with From Whistler to Warhol. One, Motherwell: Abstraction as Emphasis, presents a selection of that artist’s prints from the last two decades of his life. Boxed In: Plane, Frame, Surface highlights a small group of works from the Rutgers Archives for Printmaking Studios.
   As visitors enter From Whistler to Warhol, they’re greeted by six of Andy Warhol’s bright-colored "Electric Chair" screenprints and James Rosenquist’s lithograph "Hey! Let’s Go For A Ride." Dr. Dietrich says the Pop Art works offer a sense of how printmaking developed over the course of a century.
   The first official section dates back to the 1870s and the etching revival led in Paris by expatriate artists James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Mary Cassatt, both associated with the Impressionist movement in the City of Lights. Whistler’s work in particular inspired other artists to take up printmaking, helping it gain acceptance as "high" art. He stressed the artist’s personal involvement in all aspects of the print’s creation, crafting painstaking, expressive etchings with new approaches to space and sparseness of line.
   Whistler’s work and much of the fine art printmaking in the last quarter of the 19th century were inspired by the Japanese woodblock prints coming out of the Land of the Rising Sun after Japan opened up to the West in 1854 following 200 years of isolation.
   Paris in the 1870s and 1880s was also the center for advances in the field of color lithography, permitting artists to make a seemingly infinite number of prints without a reduction in quality. This new technology, combined with the rise of the middle class as the Industrial Revolution took hold, helped stimulate the collecting of large, colorful art posters. In America, Will Bradley and Edward Penfield were among the best-known art poster designers.

"James
James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s "The Thames," 1896. Whistler helped popularize printmaking as a fine art pursuit.

   The art poster movement declined in the early 20th century, but a number of poster artists turned to magazine and book illustration. This commercial art, seen in popular publications like Collier’s and the Saturday Evening Post, also was strongly influenced by the Japanese woodblock prints that had flooded the market.
   Dr. Dietrich says the "real world" tie-ins of fine art printmaking are central to From Whistler to Warhol.
   "It’s a constant dialogue between fine arts study and the world at large — commerce, government sponsorship and the need to find an audience."
   One of the most pivotal moments in the printmaking evolution was the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art in New York City, unofficially dubbed the "Armory Show." The show introduced America to European modernism and permanently stimulated American interest in modern art.
   Work in the teens and 1920s from artists like Edward Hopper, known for his "Night Shadows" etching, showed new styles and subject matter. Much of these works depicted the modern urban, industrial landscape in a realistic but simplified geometric style.
   In the 1930s, printmaking thrived under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration programs. Also, at that time, many artists began to experiment with abstraction, and with the influx of European émigrés like Max Ernst and Piet Mondrian prior to World War II, surrealism and abstraction were embraced.
   After the war, New York City became the international center for modern art, particularly the Abstract Expressionist movement of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.
   As America enjoyed the postwar boom, people collected prints en masse, and a number of workshops opened up to meet the public’s desire for contemporary works, particularly by artists like Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.
   Next came the Pop Art movement of the 1960s and 1970s, in which artists like Warhol gave their own twisted take on mass-media culture. Pop artists all experimented with printmaking, acknowledging it as a valid means of creative expression.
   From Whistler to Warhol ends at the dawn of the 1980s, giving viewers a 100-year span of works to enjoy.
   You can stand between two adjacent walls and look at the similarities and differences between posters from the 1880s and more adventurous Pop Art pieces, for example.
   "It invites you to look back and forth to make comparisons, to make suggestions about subject matter," says Dr. Dietrich, "to see things are the same and things are different.
   "You can follow a strictly linear path to see how printmaking has progressed," she says, "but can also turn around and see how it doubles back on its past, playing both with the style and substance of past works."
From Whistler to Warhol: A Century of American Printmaking is on view at
the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, 71 Hamilton St., New Brunswick, through
Nov. 25. Boxed In: Plane, Frame, Surface runs through Dec. 2. Robert
Motherwell: Abstraction as Emphasis runs through Dec. 9. Museum hours:
Tues.-Fri. 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Sat.-Sun. noon-5 p.m. Admission costs $3; free
to children, members and Rutgers University students, faculty and staff; first
Sunday free. For information, call (732) 932-7237. On the Web: www.zimmerlimuseum.rutgers.edu