YEARBOOK 2006

INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY PRINTS, BOOK AND PAPER ART

"-oo~ Rembrandt at 400 - Gertsch - Perilli - Hofman - BnF - Hollar Association-o

Gm heion

(over: AlhillePerilli,Blue Labyrinth, 1998, aquatint, etching,700 x 493

Gmpheion, international reviewof contemporary prints,book and paper art

YEARBOOK 2006, NINETEENTI-I ISSUE

Published in Czech and English

l>ubHshed by the Central EuropeanGallery and Publishing House Ltd.MelanLrichova 5, 110 00 Prague 1,Czech Hepublic

editor:Sirneona l loskova

editors:Sirneona l loskova (editor-in-chief)and Olga Frfdlova

graphic design:David Dubec

print:Decibel Production, ChoiouchovPrinted on IleUo silk paper 115 g/m2

Orders accepted at:P. O. Box 30CZ-110 01 Prague 1Czech RepublicPhonc/fax: +420224212 139e-ntail: galerie@mbox.vol.czwww.grapheion.czforeign correspondents:Lynne Alien, USA; Catherine de Braeke-leer, Belgium; Alicia Candiani, Argentina;Benoit Junod, Switzerland

Submission of primed matter perrniuedby Ceska posta, s. p., branch office Pragueno. novo6149/96 on 17 December 1996

ISSN 1211-6904

Please note:The dimensions of all prints are given inmilimeters.

EDITORIAL

Dear readers,The year 2006 was marked by the heritage of Rem brand t, especially important for the

graphic art. This genius always devoted as much as two thirds of his activity to prinnnaking,which allowed him to express what was not possible in painting. In honour of this event ofworldwide significance practically all the important world galJeries and museums joined inwith exhibitions focussing on the most varied creative aspects of this artists, with his nativeLeiden and the Amsterdam Rembrandthuis taking the lead. Martin Royalton-Kisch, Cura-tor of the British Museum, in his article on Hcmbrandts printmaking follows up not onlythe creative a pects, but also another side, no less interesting, of the existence of the graphicsheet - its circulation, the ways in which it was sold and collecting, The article acquaintsus with Hembrandt creating for the widest possible distribution (in the 17th century printsin general were unu ually popular and in the case of Hcmbrandt they were particularly indemand), but also from the most essential creative impetus. He deals in detail with thequestion of why his early etching, this .,work of pure chomistry'' with a Self-portrait withopen mouth from 1630,is considered to be one of the most important works of all. Hem-brandt's art, the icon of modern exisicntiality (want leure became a supreme benchmarkfor the humanly committed testimony, challenging every further great artist to a dialogue.Undoubtedly one of these is also Picasso, to whom the Vienna Albertina devoted an admi-rable exhibition at the turn of the year - Picasso - Painting Against Time. In the conceptof \Verner Spies it re-evaluated the hitherto "completely erroneous" view of the close of theartist's Lifein Mougins. Against the idea of the violent eruptive painter he sets the pictureof Ihe reflective artist, strictly mcting out his time between painting and graphics; he revealstwo quite different artistic styles relating to the different "use of time as a revolt" againstage and death, and finally he explains the reason why towards the end of his life Picassodevoted such attention to the print. The thus established phenomenon of time in contextwith graphics is perhaps the answer to the question of why Swiss prinrrnaker Franz Certschexerts physical effort for a year to create a graphic portrait that be could capture throughpainting or even photography in a far shorter time. It is not, of course, only a matter of thegraphic craft, technical innovation and creative discipline, but also the manner of existen-tial reflection made topical at present by theories of the acceleration, multiplication andalienation of our own biological time, the pathological dimension of which was understoodthirty years ago by Andy Warhol with this ,,15 minutes of fame". In the phenomenologicaldimension of graphic arr, in its memory and the possibility of the struggle against forgetting(Louise Bourgeois) there is an immense challenge to which universal creative personalitieshave always reacted particularly sensitively. The Czech architect Vlastirnil Holrnan, an im-portant representative of the Czech Cubist avant-garde, verified the expressively spiritualvalues of the Cubist morphology i.n linocut in the twenties of last century. A few decadeslater the founder of t he Italian modern avant-garde, painter, publicist, editor, writer andl'hornmc de lcure Achille Perilli (who celebrates his 80th birthday this year), found in etch-ing and in coloured aquatint an especialJy suitable medium for his geometric magic,

As always, Crapheion devoted considerable attention to the creative background ofthe print workshops, to which we arc introduced by the "live appearances" and notableauthentic statements about human creativity, physical persistence and especially immenseenthusiasm overcoming considerable material and social obstacles. Klaus Buscher de-scribes the history of the establishment of his Berlin Lithographic workshop Tabor Prcsseand acquaints us with everything he did to prevent it ending up as a commercial printingplant. Elizabeth Hankin describes the activities of the Iew Zealand PaperGraphica andalso how important and decisive the personality of the master printer is for the quality ofthe graphic workshop, The same author, together with PhiJippa IIobbs, then gives an amaz-ing testimony of the fate of the art centre in Horke's Drift, the only school for black artistsin the time of South African apartheid, and we discover with amazement that there are stillplaces on this planet where printmaking functions as a primary instrument of committedsocial statement, forced to defend the most basic values of human dignity.

Many of the contributions in this miscellany, especially in the column on exhibitions, showthat printmaking was quite a burning issue in 2006, judging by the extensive exhibitions in themost varied established museums and galleries - for instance in MoMA, the Albertina, La Lou-vier and many others. Lnthis connection we decidedly also note the article on the new weave ofinterest in the print in the youllger Japanese generation by \\7ayne Crothers and the struggle toimplement printmaking in Malaysian universities from the pen of Rahman Mohamed.

First and foremost optimistic with regard to the future of printmaking is the splendidintroductory article by Hichard Noyce, \Vhere Is Print Coing, which 1 recommend that allthe sceptics and the weak-minded study,

J wish you pleasant moment with Grapheion.Simeona Hoskova

3

Grapheion's theme / Rembrandt -tOO vcars of Hcrnluuuclt and his prints / ,liar/in Royalton-Kisch / P"I'(' ;")-t

The history of the Hembrundt house / pal'" 60,\ )'car of Hcmhrunch - exhibitions guide / pag" 66

art associations The Associatiou of Czech Cruphic: Artists IIOLLAH / Ilona Aulicka / ~ag(' 82

workshops Prirumaking £II PapcrCraphica, a collaborative fine print studio ill New Zealand // Elizabetl: Rankin / pag!' 88The Berlin Lithography \X'orkshop Tabor Presse / Klaus Buscher / pag!' 92

art schools

international periodicals

chronicle

exhibitions - news

audions

Rorkcs Drift: Imprints of Resistance / Philippa Hobbs and Elizabeth. Rankin / pag" 96

Printmaking in .\Ialaysian Univcrsiries / Rahman Xloharned / pal'" 102Young, "'e\\', Old, Traditions reinterpreted in the Japanese hybrid / tioyne Crothers / page 105

Print Quarterly / Martin Hopkinson / pag!' 108

The Print of the Year 2005, Iaroslava Scverova / pag(, 112

Mucha's Floating Visions / Jitko Illav6.ckov6. / ~"g(' 122Space-Plane-Body / Greta Orendaite - Vosyliene / pag(, 12-tA Ccruurv of Maine Prints 18805 to 19805 / page 125

pag!' 126

pag" 1-+8

This project is realized with the financial helpof the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic

and the Czech Art Fund Foundation

ART SCHOOLS

PRINTMAKINGin MalaysianUniversities

Malaysian art historians believeand agree that modem visual artin Malavsia only started quite rc-

cemly during the 1930s. Before this therewas no evidence of a gallery tradition inMalavsia. In his essay for the 25 Years ofXlalavsian Art Exhibition, Sycd AhmadJamal slated that Malaysian Modern artgoes back to the thirties. in the pioneeringworks of Abdullah Ariff. Yong '\lun Senand others.

W'hi.!eprintmaking introduction 10 Ma-laysian art was traced to the early 19-+05when a group of students and teachers from~anyang Academy of Art, Singapore (ulllil196.5 Singapore was still part of Malavsia)were fascinated and influenced b), the re-productions of woodcuts from the booksthai were imported from China, they taughtthemselves the technique, as at that time noclass on woodblock printing was offered.

In 19-+7 a book entitled "WoodcutPrints from the S-Year /Val' against The In-oaders was brought into Singapore fromChina and caught the attention of mallYartists in Singapore and Malaysia. ,,"'iththe guidance of these books. the studentsand reachers learnt and produced wood-cut prints. even though the)' had no formalcourses 011prinunaking. The)' make do intheir printmaking processes using basic cs-sentialtools such as carving knives 10carvethe wood blocks and a wooden ladle astheir barren to rub the back of the rice pa-per to uausfcr the image. Their tools andmaterials were improvisations. There wasstill no proper printmaking workshop illexistence.

In the years of the 1950s to 19705 Chi-nose newspapers in Singapore used theseprints [rom Ihc artists of the Nanyang Acad-cmy as illustrations in the papers espcciallyfor the-ami-colonial articles. For these wood-block prinunakcrs, the dailv newspaper wasthe only outlet for their works. The publica-tion of the-ir works served as recognition oftheir artistic abilities. A woodcut printmak-ers dub was formed in 1955 at the Nanyallg

Rahman Mohamed was born in lohor, Moloysio. He

hos a Bachelor of Arts [Honours J degree from Universiti

Soins Moloysio. He eorned his Master of Science degree

in Communications Design from the Pratt Institute in

New York, USA, and Master of Fine Art degree in Graphic

Design from the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee,

USA. Currently he is a senior lecturer in Graphic Design

at the School of Arts, Universiti Sains Malaysia. An artist

printmaker, Rahman works mainly in etching, collograph

and woodcut. As an artist he has participated in

numerous art exhibitions in Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore,

Bangladesh, France, United States of America, Germony,

Italy and Poland. Besides printmaking, he alsa produces

works in digitol art ond interactive multimedio.

A solo show by Juhori Soid, 2003

Acade-my. Foo Chee Sail, Lim Yew Kuanand See Chen lee were among the activepractitioners of woodcut prints and enjoyedthe support of the dailv newspaper.

The very first formal art training insti-tution formed by the go\'e)'Jlment in themiddle of the 1960's was not uctuallv anart school. rather it was t he Art Depart-mr-nt at the Specialist Teacher TrainingInstitute in Kuala Lumpur. The institute's

function was to offer a olle-year supple-Inelltary course for t11('secondary schoolart reachers, A 1l10d(,51prilllll1uking work-shop was set up with uihlr-top pri"lll1akingpresses for all of t hr- prilllll1aking processsuch as intaglio muchincs for crchings,a lithographv press for aluminum and zincplates, and a small lcur-rpress machine fortypc-seuing using lead Iyp('. as well as silk-screen facilities hoth (i)l' fahric design andprintmaking purposes,

The sixties saw the return of several 10-cal painters who had their formal trainingin print making in Jllany different part of theworld. Some had one or two years trai n ingwhile others had received solid training fora few years. These artists were pioneers inestablishing graphic workshops and teach-ing print making in Malaysia. Abdul Latifand Chew Teng Beng studied printmakingin the Uniled States of America. Kok YewPuah ill Australia, Lee Joo For, \~'illiamLau and Sulaiman Esa in England andLong Thien Shih in France.

In 1967 the School of ArL and Designof MAHA Institute of Technology (nowknown as MAHA Univcrsiry of Technologv)was established, offering [our-veal' coursesin Finr- Arts, Craphic Design, Photography.Cerurnic, Textile, Fashion and IndustrialDesign. A prinunaking studio workshopwas S(,I up as part of the Fine Arts Fac-

IrII

I

ulty. A complete studio and workshopsfor printmaking with all the facilities forintaglio printmaking were available for thestudents and lecturers of the institute. Atthis time printmaking was introduced asa major course. Students may take print-making as their major, while other studentswho are not taking it as major may take thecourse as a minor or elective course. It wasthen the only higher learning institution inMalaysia where printmaking was available.Among the printmakers from this universi-ty are Ismail Latif, [uhairi Said, BahamanHashim, Awang Damit and Ponirin Arnin.

In 1974 another printmaking studiowas set up in the Department of Humani-ties, Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang.Chew Teng Beng, a printmaking professor,started a workshop with full facilities forintaglio printmaking, relief printmakingand stone lithography. Today students andteachers are expanding their usage of print-making techniques to include many of thelatest developments in printing technology,including but not limited to digital prints.Ismail Hashim, Othman Mansur and Rah-man Mohamed are among others who hadtheir training in this workshop.

After that there were several other pri-vate art schools that introduced printmak-ing as a course in their curriculum and pro-vided printmaking studios and workshops

for their teachers and students. Amongthese colleges the Central Academy of Artin Kuala Lumpur was the prominent one.Under the guidance of Loh Foh Sang, whohad his training in the Ecole Nationale Su-perieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, printrnak-ing became one of the popular choices ofcoursesin the coUege. AU the hard workof Loh Foh Sang was paid off when theacademy organized an Annual Interna-tional Printmaking Exhibition successfullyfor three consecutive years from 1996 until1998. The exhibitions stopped then. Unfor-tunatcly the academy was also defunct.

Other universities that have an artdepartment that teaches printmaking asa course include the Universiti MalaysiaSarawak in Kuching, Sarawak and Uni-versiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris in Tanjungmalim, Perak.

From the 1940s until now the develop-ment of printmaking is still in a moderatestage and hasn't come up to certain expec-tations. There were many factors that led tothis situation. All ofthe factors are linked toone another. One of the major problems isthe lack of printrnaking facilities or work-shops to cater specifically for the artistswishing to work and to produce prints.

rn the 70s, there was a grou p of artistsin Malaysia who called themselves 'AnakAlam' [The Sons of nature] under the lead-

lI

Jaafar Selamal, Agony, etching

ership of Abdul Latif Mohidin. This wasthe only atelier with the print machine fa-cilities to permit a fewartists to make theirprints outside of the universities and col-leges. This group was active and conduct-ing graphic prints exhibition regularly un-til the 80s. Besides that, there were a fewartists who had their own press for theirpersonal use.

Many students who studied printmak-ing in these universities or art schoolsstopped their printmaking activities soonafter graduating, as these schools are theonly places that provide the facilities andonce they go out into the real world theydon't find such facilities for them to realisetheir enthusiasm in print. There are a fewexceptions who still continue their inter-est and enthusiasm by switching to lowertech printmaking such as woodcut or silk-screen.

Despite these problems, the mobil-ity and the ease of transporting the printsfrom one place to another gives the stu-dents of art schools and the public alikethe opportunity to view internationalprintmaking exhibitions, especially thosebrought by embassies and other agenciesfrom foreign countries. The British Councilis the main agent in bringing printmakingexhibitions to Malaysia. These exhibitionsinclude those by pop artists such as Pe-

Yusuf Sharif, Maloy Heritage Series, etching

Rahman Mohamed, Tropiko, wllogroph

ter Blake, Richard Smith, Joe Tilson andDavid Hockney. Lithographs by HenryMoore and others were also presented. Ex-hibitions, usually in the form of travelingexhibitions, took place in major cities inMalaysia such as Kuala Lumpur, Penangand Kuching, Sarawak.

Printmaking exhibitions from othercountries also always make Malaysia oneof their exhibition destinations. Exhibi-tions of Japanese printmaking were regu-larly held in Malaysia. Artists presentedincluded Shusaku Arakawa, Shouichi Ida,Akira Komoto, Tetsuya Noda and others.

Works by American artists such asHobert Hausenberg, Donald Sultan anda special collection of recent Tamarindlithographs were also brought to Malay-sia by the US Embassy. Prints by Picassowere also exhibited at the Balai Seni LukisNegara (Art Gallery of Malaysia). Besidesthat, the Embassy of Germany in Malaysiaalso brought in print exhibitions, especiallythose by the German expressionist group.Recently an exhibition of prints by GeorgBaselitz visited the cities of Malaysia witha stopover at the Museum and Gallery ofUniversiti Sains Malaysia.

Printmaking exhibitions and competi-tions were held from time to time. Althoughnot on a regular basis, there were severalprints exhibitions and competitions heldto encourage printmakers to produce andexhibit their works. Many of these exhibi-tions found their participants were mainly

Jamillsa, Bowang Merah 2, silkscreen

students and teachers from the universitiesmentioned.

One of the major national printmak-ing competitions and exhibitions washeld in 1974. "Seni Cetak Crafik 1974" or"Graphic Print 1974" was organized by theNational Art Gallery. After almost twentyyears another major printmaking exhibi-tion took place at the National Art Gal-lery in 1993 entitled "Communication inGraphic - Printmaking" with Long ThienShih as the guest curator.

The latest printmaking exbihition was"Print in Malaysia", held at the NationalArt Callery Malaysia in January 2006 inconjunction with a traveling exhibitionbrought by the British Council entitled"British in Print".

Besides these exhibitions, as men-tioned earlier, the Central Academy of Artin Kuala Lumpur also organized a seriesof printmaking exhibitions for three con-secutive years that was known as the Ma-laysian Annual Exhibition of InternationalContemporary Prints. The first exhibitionwas held in 1996, then 1997 and the thirdand last of the series of exhibition was heldin 1998. Several other exhibitions wereheld either by private galleries or by the artschools.

The nineties mark the influence of thecomputer in the making of the prints. Priorto this, the usage of the computer was lim-ited to image generating and manipulatingonly, and the actual pulling of the prints

were still done in the more traditional waysuch as silkscreen, photo etching and evenlithography. 'Vith the easy access to table-top printers and large format printers, stu-dents and teachers at universities started toexperiment in producing prints direct fromthe computer to the printer without trans-ferring the images to other traditional print-making processes. Innovative printrnakingthat tried to go beyond the convention ofwhat is a print was also being explored bythese students. Students and teachers wereexperimenting to push the limit by produc-ing limited edition prints.

Bibliography1. Long Thien Shih, Original Print - Graphic Art,Communication in Graphic Printmaking. Kuala Lumpur:National Art Gallery, 19932. Exhibition of Prints, Kuala Lumpur: National Art Gallery,19823. Chew Teng Beng. Graphic Print 1974. Kuala Lumpur:National Art Gallery, 19744. Masahiro Ushiroshoji et AI., The Birth of Modern Art inSoutheast Asia: Artists and Movements. Japan: FukokaArts Museum, 1997.5. See Yee Wah et nl., See Cheen Tee: Artist Extraardinaire.Singapore: Raffles Avenue, 2001.6. Syed Ahmad Jamal, 25 Years of Malaysian Art. KualaLumpur: National Art Gallery, 1982.7. Tan Tee Chee, Selected Woodcut by Tan Tee Chee.Singapore; Nanyang Academy of Fine Art, 1975.