If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
Unclassified Reflections, 1994, portfolio of seven photolithographs (computer-generated images printed in waterless lithography), ed. 15, comprised of six prints and title page, with transparency and photocopy of one computer-generated image, and printing plate for one print
Gordon Gilkey is Curator of Prints at the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR, where he heads the Vivian and Gordon Gilkey Center for Graphic Arts. He is also a printmaker and teacher of printmaking.
He made this suite of photolithographs to commemorate the 200th anniversity of Senefelder’s invention of lithography by utilizing late 20th-century computer technology.
The portfolio of seven photolithographs (a title page and six prints, A-F) are computer-generated images. They are printed using an ingenious process developed by Jeff Ryan—waterless lithography. Since water is not used in the process, the paper is not dampened as in traditional lithography, thus avoiding problems with paper stretching that make perfect registration a challenge. The printing process is simple and fast. As well, the method avoids using chemicals that harm the environment.
In waterless lithography, the image can be either hand-drawn (on a transparent or translucent surface such as paper, glass, or plastic film) or developed photographically (from a photograph, drawing, painting, or collage to form a positive or negative film). The image is placed on a zinc or aluminum plate that has been coated with a light-sensitive silicone rubber coating. Where light strikes the plate, a chemical change allows the light-affected silicone to be removed with liquid developer. Ink will adhere to those areas, while the areas that were not exposed to the light and thus remain covered with silicone reject ink.
Gilkey’s gift also includes a transparency and photocopy of the computer-generated image for print C and the printing plate for print C.
Of the edition of 15, the portfolio owned by the University of Michigan Museum of Art is one of six suites each with one of the six printing plates; the others are at The Vivian and Gordon Gilkey Center for Graphic Arts at the Portland Art Museum, The Cincinnati Art Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Fogg Museum at Harvard, The Division of Graphic Arts of the Smithsonian. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, has a set of the prints only.
The suites were printed at Mahaffey Fine Arts, Portland, OR, by Mark Mahaffey, master printer, on Rives BFK white paper.
Inscription
verso: inscribed in graphite, l.l. : Title Page - Unclassified Reflections; l.c. : ed. 15; l.r. : GordonGilkey 1994
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
The Color Black is an exchange suite of original prints by faculty and students of the University of Michigan. Each print exists in an edition of 30. The editions, title-page, and colophon were printed by students at the School of Art, Ann Arbor, Michigan during Spring Semester, 1982. The title-page and colophon were printed in Bodoni Bold and Old English Regular on Rives BFK.
Title page: The color black occurs when air & water are throughly burnt by fire. -Aristotle
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
The bowler hat often sported by conventionally dressed men in Magritte’s paintings appears by itself in this etching. This print is one of seven that accompany a volume of Alain Jouffroy’s earliest group of poems. Written when Jouffroy was nineteen and twenty, the poems first appeared at Breton’s insistence in the Surrealist journal Néon in 1947–1948. They were published in book form only in 1966. For Jouffroy, Magritte was the only artist who could produce images that would capture the sense of reality of the poet’s dreamlike visions. The image of a tall hat ("Chapeau très ‘haut de forme’. . .") in one of the poems in the volume may relate to Magritte’s image. In a deeper sense the artist may have been responding to the strong sense of malaise and anxiety that pervades these poems, written when the young poet was undergoing a period of psychological crisis. The words "Usage externe" (external usage), inscribed on the hat, may relate to the theme of suicide in these poems. At the same time the words seem to contain a witty reflection on the use of hats as external covering. The title of Magritte’s image, Le Bouchon d’Epouvante (The Terror Stopper), may suggest the salutary effects of conventionality on fears that have the potential to incapacitate.
Editions du Soleil Noir in Paris published this illustrated volume. Magritte himself did not etch the printing plates, but he oversaw the work of the master printer at the Atelier Rigal, who translated the artist’s pen and ink drawings into etchings.
Label copy from exhibition "Dreamscapes: The Surrealist Impulse," August 22 - October 25, 1998
Inscription
Signed, in pencil, l.r. margin: Magritte Notation, (title?), in pencil, l.l. margin: H.C. B/O
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
In the Carpathian Mountains of East Galicia in Austria, Chaim Gross grew up amid woodcutters, which set his ambition to become a sculptor. He came to the U.S. in 1921, settling in New York. There he studied at the Educational Alliance on the Lower East Side, where he met other artists such as Adolph Gottlieb, Moses and Raphael Soyer, and Ben Shahn. He also studied at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design under Elie Nadelman, and later at the Art Students League with Robert Laurent.
As a mature artist he worked in wood, stone, and bronze, melding influences from Cubism, Surrealism, Non-Objectivism, as well as African and Northwest Coast Native American art. He also worked in other media such as printmaking and made designs for stained glass, ceramics, and synagogue doors. A figurative artist, his favorite theme was the female nude figure, especially the mother and child.
In the Carpathian Mountains of East Galicia in Austria, Chaim Gross grew up amid woodcutters, which set his ambition to become a sculptor. He came to the U.S. in 1921, settling in New York. There he studied at the Educational Alliance on the Lower East Side, where he met other artists such as Adolph Gottlieb, Moses and Raphael Soyer, and Ben Shahn. He also studied at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design under Elie Nadelman, and later at the Art Students League with Robert Laurent.
As a mature artist he worked in wood, stone, and bronze, melding influences from Cubism, Surrealism, Non-Objectivism, as well as African and Northwest Coast Native American art. He also worked in other media such as printmaking and made designs for stained glass, ceramics, and synagogue doors. A figurative artist, his favorite theme was the female nude figure, especially the mother and child.
In 1968 he made a lithograph to memorialize Martin Luther King, Jr. The artist was watching television as the news of the assassination of the civil rights leader was announced. The Museum’s print records images that the artist saw as they appear on the T.V. screen; he combined them in a collage-like fashion with a portrait of King. Our print is from a small edition of 45.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
This work is a brown rectangle that contains a yellow circle and a yellow hexagon shape with red stencil lettering. At the bottom edge of the rectangle, below the yellow circle, is the word "hexagon". Within the the yellow circle are the words "external" and "hexagon" and within the yellow hexagon shape is a large "6".
Subject Matter
This work is one of ten prints published within a portfolio, “Ten Works + Ten Painters”, commissioned by Samuel J. Wagstaff from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum in 1964. This portfolio was one of the earliest to have several artists published together to make major American artists accessible to a wider audience and range of collectors. Each print in this portfolio was based on a painting the artists had previously created. Some of the artists represented, in addition to Robert Indiana, are Robert Motherwell, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, Ellsworth Kelly and Roy Lichtenstein, who were associated with the Pop and Minimalism art movements in the 1960s.
Label Copy
Various Artists
Ten Works x Ten Painters
1964
Gift of Graham and Marianne Smith
George Ortman (born 1926)
Untitled
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.1
Frank Stella (born 1936)
Untitled
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.2
Ellsworth Kelly (born 1923)
Untitled
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.3
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991)
Untitled
Screenprint and collage on paper
1986/1.194.4
Andy Warhol (1928–1987)
Birmingham Race Riot
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.5
Stuart Davis (1894–1964)
Untitled
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.6
Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997)
Sandwich and Soda
Screenprint on mylar
1986/1.194.7
Larry Poons (born 1937)
Untitled
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.8
Robert Indiana (born 1928)
External Hexagon
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.9
Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967)
Untitled
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.10
In the early 1960s there was a widespread printmaking revival in the United States. During this time numerous studios and workshops were established on the East and West Coasts, including Tamarind Workshop, Universal Limited Art Editions, Gemini G.E.L., and Crown Point Press. This revitalization of printmaking coincided with the rise of Pop art and Minimalism, two modern art movements that shared with printmaking an interest in modern technology, reproducibility, and mass production. Further support was generated by newly formed professional organizations and publications devoted solely to the medium and art of printmaking. Galleries and museums began to acquire, exhibit, and commission limited edition prints and print portfolios. One particularly popular strategy was to publish the work of several artists together. Ten Works x Ten Painters is one of the earliest examples of this type of portfolio and is especially notable because it was the first to be published by a museum. Samuel J. Wagstaff, the curator of paintings at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, who commissioned the portfolio, wanted to make work by major American artists accessible to a wider audience and range of collectors. Many of the ten prints express a Pop sensibility, either in subject or color choice, but the selection of artists was still diverse. Each of the prints was based on a painting the artists had previously created, and for Wagstaff, the unifying bond among the prints was their flatness and the ease in which the painting was translated to ink on paper.
All of the works in the portfolio—printed by Norman Ives and Sewell Sillman at Sirocco Screenprints in New Haven, Connecticut—were silkscreen prints on paper with the exception of two: the Lichtenstein, which was printed on mylar, and the Motherwell, which had additional paper collage elements. In both cases, it was the first time the artist had employed these techniques.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
This is a black and white photograph of the side of a rocky cliff. There is some scrubby vegetation at the base of the boulders and graffitti on the rocks. This is a close-up and cropped view.
Label Copy
Gallery Rotation Fall 2011
Joe Deal
United States, 1947–2010
The Fault Zone
1978–80
Gold-toned gelatin silver prints
Gift of The Morris and Beverly Baker Foundation in memory of Morris D. Baker, a graduate of The University of Michigan School of Architecture, 1952, 2000/2.130
Joe Deal was part of a new generation of American photographers who pioneered an approach to landscape photography that came to be known as “new topographics.” Rejecting the romanticism of photographers such as Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, they instead turned their attention to the effects of human activity on the Western landscape. In place of sweeping, pristine vistas, Deal and his contemporaries presented views of tract houses, industrial sites, and other nondescript scenes of suburban sprawl. By shooting the photograph from a high, distant vantage point, Deal eliminated the horizon line and the clues it gives to scale and orientation. The result is a pictorial space in which each element is given equal weight, each detail is just as important as the next. This almost clinical approach reflects Deal’s desire to minimize the effects of his own personal preferences and moral judgments on the work; he has stated he wants each photograph to serve “as a plate on which to serve up the subject matter.” Yet despite their seeming neutrality, there is an underlying politics to these deadpan views of various points along the San Andreas fault line in Southern California, which juxtapose the hasty activities of human beings with the long, slow processes of geologic transformation.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
This is a line drawing on white paper. It depicts a ladder with the word "Mother" below it. The word is followed by a small letter "c" within a circle.
Label Copy
Gallery Rotation Fall 2011
Jean-Michel Basquiat
United States, 1960–1988
Thousands of Dollars
1981
Graphite on paper
Gift of Arthur Cohen in honor of Ben and Yetta Cohen, 1985/2.17
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
In exile in New York during World War II, Masson typically worked in Hayter’s Atelier 17 in the city. However, for this print he prepared the plate at home in Connecticut, bringing the plate into the city for proofing. The print evinces his love of experimentation with unusual materials, including elements from nature. Into the soft-ground medium Masson impressed leaves, cloth, and a small fish. The collage-like effect relates to works the artist was making at the time using found objects. The image in the upper right of a man with arms outstretched is that of the "emblematic man" and reflects Masson’s belief that "[M]an is the mirror of the universe." Other signs include the labyrinth in the lower left.
This print accompanied deluxe copies of Masson’s illustrated book Anatomy of My Universe, the first of four such works that dealer Curt Valentin published. The artist’s text, which enunciates his credo, was translated into English by the art historian Meyer Schapiro. The book was dedicated to psychiatrist and philosopher Jacques Lacan, Masson’s brother-in-law and friend.
Label copy from exhibition "Dreamscapes: The Surrealist Impulse," August 22 - October 25, 1998
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
