Printmaking

From Edouard Manet’s portrait of naturalist writer Émile Zola sitting among his Japanese art finds to Van Gogh’s meticulous copies of the Hiroshige prints he devotedly collected, 19th-century pioneers of European modernism made no secret of their love of Japanese art. In all its sensuality, freedom, and effervescence, the woodblock print is single-handedly credited with the wave of japonaiserie that first enthralled France and, later, all of Europe―but often remains misunderstood as an “exotic” artifact that helped inspire Western creativity.

The fact is that the Japanese woodblock print is a phenomenon of which there exists no Western equivalent. Some of the most disruptive ideas in modern art―including, as Karl Marx put it, that “all that is solid melts into air”―were invented in Japan in the 1700s and expressed like never before in the designs of such masters as Hokusai, Utamaro, and Hiroshige in the early 19th century.

This book lifts the veil on a much-loved but little-understood art form by presenting the 200 most exceptional Japanese woodblock prints in their historical context. Ranging from the 17th-century development of decadent ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” to the decline and later resurgence of prints in the early 20th century, the images collected in this edition make up an unmatched record not only of a unique genre in art history, but also of the shifting mores and cultural development of Japan.

From mystical mountains to snowy passes, samurai swordsmen to sex workers in shop windows, each piece is explored as a work of art in its own right, revealing the stories and people behind the motifs. We discover the four pillars of the woodblock print―beauties, actors, landscapes, and bird-and-flower compositions―alongside depictions of sumo wrestlers, kabuki actors, or enticing courtesans―rock stars who populated the “floating world” and whose fan bases fueled the frenzied production of woodblock prints. We delve into the horrifying and the obscure in prints where demons, ghosts, man-eaters, and otherworldly creatures torment the living―stunning images that continue to influence Japanese manga, film, and video games to this day. We witness how, in their incredible breadth, from everyday scenes to erotica, the martial to the mythological, these works are united by the technical mastery and infallible eye of their creators and how, with tremendous ingenuity and tongue-in-cheek wit, publishers and artists alike fought to circumvent government censorship.

Three years in the making, this XXL edition presents reproductions of the finest extant impressions from the vaults of museums and private collections across the globe―many newly photographed especially for this project. Some 17 stunning fold-outs invite us to study even the subtlest details, while extensive descriptions guide us through this frantic period in Japanese art history.

Features:

The work of 89 artists, from the world-renowned to the unfamiliar

7 chapters organized chronologically to trace the history of the medium from 1680 to 1938

17 fold-outs, hand-folded due to their size and specifications

Exclusive reproductions from museums and private collections

An appendix listing all artists and works

Read more

The most extensive collection of nature printing ever assembled, featuring 43 different printing techniques.

Hailed as the earliest precursor to photography, nature printing is the practice of using impressions from the surface of a natural object such as leaves, flowering plants, ferns, seaweed, snakes and more to produce an image.

The Zucker Collection is the most extensive collection of nature prints ever assembled, with more than 13,000 images across 120 rare and seminal works, including journals, published books, unique manuscripts, American Currency, and instructional texts related to nature printing from 1733 to 1902. For the first time, readers will be able to see these nature prints presented side by side, enabling unique comparisons while creating a visually stunning journey through the developments over a 150 year period in printing methods including photography with examples of cyanotypes.

Capturing Nature is the ultimate guide to Nature Printing, and a beautiful reference work for scholars, artists, designers, botanists and anyone interested in nature, botanical illustration and printing.

Read more

Discover Japanese art like no other. Originally created by the artists of the ukiyo-e ‘school of the floating world’ to advertise brothels in 17th-century Yoshiwara, these popular ‘spring pictures’ (shunga) transcended class and gender in Japan for almost 300 years. These tender, humorous and brightly coloured pieces celebrate sexual pleasure in all its forms, culminating in the beautiful, yet graphic, work of iconic artists Utamaro, Hokusai and Kunisada. This catalogue of a major international exhibition aims to answer some key questions about what shunga is and why was it produced. Erotic Japanese art was heavily suppressed in Japan from the 1870s onwards as part of a process of cultural ‘modernisation’ that imported many contemporary western moral values. Only in the last twenty years or so has it been possible to publish unexpurgated examples in Japan and this ground-breaking publication presents this fascinating art in its historical and cultural context for the first time. Within Japan, shunga has continued to influence modern forms of art, including manga, anime and Japanese tattoo art. Drawing on the latest scholarship and featuring over 400 images of works from major public and private collections, this landmark book sheds new light on this unique art form within Japanese social and cultural history. Shunga: sex and pleasure in Japanese art is published to accompany an exhibition at the British Museum from October 2013 to January 2014.

Read more

An intensely intellectual painter, Robert Motherwell is renowned for his distinctive Abstract Expressionist style. The seminal artist permeated his gestural works with an expressionism and austerity reflective of the human psyche; at the same time his oeuvre addressed political and humanitarian themes. Robert Motherwell: Pure Painting is an in-depth exploration of his artistic practice. Leading art scholars examine the American artist’s turn from Surrealism to abstraction and analyze the major series that developed over his fifty-year career. The catalogue studies the dialogue between Motherwell’s art and the nineteenth-century French painting tradition, investigates his relationship to Spanish techniques and processes, with an emphasis on their underlying political significance, and delves into Motherwell’s use of ochre pigment, with its evocation of both deep geological time and avant-garde practices.

Read more

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) is best known today as a painter, but his reputation was in fact established through his prints, which were central to his creative process. His printmaking was experimental and innovative, and he continually revisited the subjects of his paintings in striking prints, in which he evoked a wide range of emotion and mood through the use of varied techniques.

Munch’s early life in the industrial town of Kristiania (renamed Oslo in 1925) was marked by sickness and poverty. His first works centred on the expression of deep emotional experiences, specifically the deaths of his mother and teenage sister when he was growing up, as well as passionate yet unhappy love affairs of which his deeply religious father disapproved. Encouraged by his encounters with a Bohemian society of artists, writers and poets, he developed a visual landscape that was a radical deviation from the slick society portraits and grand Scandinavian landscapes then so much in vogue. His efforts attracted considerable attention and much criticism, and he practised with little financial success as a painter for ten years before he started to gain his reputation as a profoundly innovative printmaker.

Written by a team of acknowledged experts, and with an interview by writer Karl Ove Knausgaard, this book will shed new light on the production of some of Munch’s most remarkable works.

Table of Contents

Foreword by the directors of the British Museum and the Munch Museum; Sponsor’s foreword • Introduction • 1. Transfigured continent: Impressions from Munch’s Europe • 2. The inner soul of an artist: Munch’s background and the development of his Frieze of Life • 3. Munch and the world of printmaking • 4. Munch and the theatre in Paris • 5. ‘Is art influenced by too much business?’: Cultural capital and the market for Munch • 6. Plates, stones and blocks: Munch’s printing matrices • Reflections on Edvard Munch: an interview with Karl Ove Knausgaard • Checklist of works in the exhibition • Chronology; Checklist of exhibited items; Notes; Selected bibliography; Prints by Munch in UK public collections; Acknowledgments; Picture credits; List of contributors; Index

Read more

In the winter of 1886–87, during his stay in Paris, Vincent van Gogh bought 660 Japanese prints at the art gallery of Siegfried Bing. His aim was to start dealing in them, but the exhibition he organized in the café-restaurant Le Tambourin was a total failure. However, he was now able to study his collection at ease and in close-up, and he gradually became captivated by their colourful, cheerful and unusual imagery. When he left for Arles, he took some prints with him, but the core remained in Paris with his brother Theo. Although some prints were later given away, the collection did not disperse. This book reveals new analyses of the collection, now held in the Van Gogh Museum, given as a long-term loan from the Vincent van Gogh Foundation. The authors delve into its history, and the role the prints played in Van Gogh’s creative output. The book is illustrated with over 100 striking highlights from the collection.

Read more

The art of Japanese woodblock printing, known as ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”), reflects the rich history and way of life in Japan hundreds of years ago. Ukiyo-e: The Art of the Japanese Print takes a thematic approach to this iconic Japanese art form, considering prints by subject matter: geisha and courtesans, kabuki actors, sumo wrestlers, erotica, nature, historical subjects and even images of foreigners in Japan.

An artist himself, author Frederick Harris–a well-known American collector who lived in Japan for 50 years–pays special attention to the methods and materials employed in Japanese printmaking. The book traces the evolution of ukiyo-e from its origins in metropolitan Edo (Tokyo) art culture as black and white illustrations, to delicate two-color prints and multicolored designs. Advice to admirers on how to collect, care for, view and buy Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints rounds out this book of charming, carefully selected prints.

Read more

The most essential, indispensable resource for todays art school and university students, master printers and fine artists who work with printmaking media. This book provides the latest never-before-published advancements in the three major printmaking mediums of etching, lithography and screen-printing. With its focus on health safety practices, green sustainability goals and on the new benign bio-based, non-carcinogenic solvents, the groundbreaking information detailed in this book will make it possible for every college and university art department to embrace green, petroleum-free, non-toxic materials and practices that comply with EPA and OSHA requirements without sacrificing the quality of fine art prints.

Read more

Screenprinting is in the midst of a popular revival among beginners, students, hobbyists and experts alike, but there are very few recent publications that give actual fundamental information on its techniques and processes. This book provides the missing manual on this very popular practice. It includes iInspirational step-by-steps with leading artists, illustrators and designers, including Ben Eine and Rob Ryan. In each step-by-step original work is created to showcase a key process or technique such as hand-cut stencils, colour blending and monoprinting. The information on materials and techniques, along with tips, insights and troubleshooting, will ensure today’s creatively minded screenprinters will be able to produce eye-catching work of their own. The book also gives valuable advice to the budding screenprinter on how to organize an exhibition or screenprinting event and promote and sell their work.

Deliciously fresh and visual, with specially commissioned photographs and written by a vibrant, innovative group working and teaching at the very epicentre of the contemporary screenprinting scene, this book is the complete modern guide for screenprinters of all levels of knowledge and skill, and will have a vital presence in their studios and workshops.

Read more

The artist Angie Lewin has a unique vision of the natural world. Her hugely popular prints depict in intricate detail the native flora of a variety of environments, from salt marsh and Highland loch, to flower-strewn meadow and wild garden. Lewin finds beauty in each landscape, whatever the season, and is particularly inspired by plant forms: slender reeds, stately goatsbeard, spiky teasels and sculptural seed heads. ‘Plants and Places’ presents over 70 of Lewin’s beautifully crafted linocuts and wood engravings. The works are grouped according to habitat such as coast, woodland and hedgerow, and garden together with drawings, paintings and collages from Lewin’s sketchbooks of grasses, seed pods, seaweed, shells and other objects that she has collected on her walks. In an engaging introduction, Leslie Geddes-Brown meets Lewin in her studio, discusses her artistic inspirations and her fascination with plants, and describes how she creates her prints.

Read more

From Edouard Manet’s portrait of naturalist writer Émile Zola sitting among his Japanese art finds to Van Gogh’s meticulous copies of the Hiroshige prints he devotedly collected, 19th-century pioneers of European modernism made no secret of their love of Japanese art. In all its sensuality, freedom, and effervescence, the woodblock print is single-handedly credited with the wave of japonaiserie that first enthralled France and, later, all of Europe―but often remains misunderstood as an “exotic” artifact that helped inspire Western creativity.

The fact is that the Japanese woodblock print is a phenomenon of which there exists no Western equivalent. Some of the most disruptive ideas in modern art―including, as Karl Marx put it, that “all that is solid melts into air”―were invented in Japan in the 1700s and expressed like never before in the designs of such masters as Hokusai, Utamaro, and Hiroshige in the early 19th century.

This volume, derived from the original XXL monograph, lifts the veil on a much-loved but little-understood art form by presenting the most exceptional Japanese woodblock prints in their historical context. Ranging from the 17th-century development of decadent ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” to the decline and later resurgence of prints in the early 20th century, the images collected in this edition make up an unmatched record not only of a unique genre in art history, but also of the shifting mores and cultural development of Japan.

From mystical mountains to snowy passes, samurai swordsmen to sex workers in shop windows, each piece is explored as a work of art in its own right, revealing the stories and people behind the motifs. We discover the four pillars of the woodblock print―beauties, actors, landscapes, and bird-and-flower compositions―alongside depictions of sumo wrestlers, kabuki actors, or enticing courtesans―rock stars who populated the “floating world” and whose fan bases fueled the frenzied production of woodblock prints. We delve into the horrifying and the obscure in prints where demons, ghosts, man-eaters, and otherworldly creatures torment the living―stunning images that continue to influence Japanese manga, film, and video games to this day. We witness how, in their incredible breadth, from everyday scenes to erotica, the martial to the mythological, these works are united by the technical mastery and infallible eye of their creators and how, with tremendous ingenuity and tongue-in-cheek wit, publishers and artists alike fought to circumvent government censorship.

As part of our 40th anniversary series, this edition compiles the finest extant impressions from museums and private collections across the globe in a lightweight, accessible format, offering extensive descriptions to guide us through this frantic period in Japanese art history.

About the series

TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program―now more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production.

Read more

Inspirational and authoritative, The Printmaking Bible is a complete guide to this traditional art practice that constantly evolves through the creative input of each new generation of artists.

This guide has been created to reflect developments in different techniques and to showcase examples of new work by leading international artists across a range of print styles.

Broken down into five chapters, each focuses on a major print medium: intaglio, relief, lithography, monotype/monoprint, and screenprinting. This definitive volume presents the tips and tools needed to create great artwork at any level. A brief overview of each medium is followed by illustrated step-by-step instructions, detailed historical information, troubleshooting tips, an extensive resource section, and interviews with working artists.

This comprehensive guide is ideal for students and professionals alike.

Read more

Expressive Printmaking goes back to first principles to rediscover the full potential of printmaking. Through introducing a tantalizing array of techniques, it shows the artist how to communicate stories and emotions through dynamic prints that sing off the page. It covers printing by hand and by press and techniques range from paper dry point to Mokulito and from monoprint to plaster cast impressions. It also explains how to combine techniques and gives advice on line, tone, form, colour and texture. Along with step-by-step projects and some 500 illustrations, this exciting book leads you to create unique prints that challenge you technically, inspire you visually and encourage you to try more.

Read more