Ever since printmaking became an art form over 500 years ago, it has been used as a quick, easy and cheap form of communication. Just as other publications like newspapers and pamphlets flourished with the introduction of the printing press, the means for communicating among artists, between social movements, between the maker and the viewer were made so vast that artistic prints entered a realm oil paintings were incapable of.
In our world, artwork usually finds its place in museums, small galleries and private collections, stored away in places viewed as elitist, with museums' admission prices rising and art's daily social value waning. But the Fogg Museum at Harvard makes a case for the refreshing medium of print in its exhibition, "Dissent!"
As an exhibit focusing specifically on art with a social or political motive, printmaking is inherently the best mode for conveying the central theme of "Dissent!," as this medium spreads the message of the artist with the option of copies - sometimes in the thousands - that defy and transcend the limits of the precious and vulnerable original paintings and drawings.
At the entrance of the exhibit, a large-scale, black-and-white offset lithograph by Richard Serra combines all of the themes of the show. With the minimalism of black ink, the image stands on the page, seemingly carved into the paper, expressing printmaking's nature of pressing the ink into the page, essentially becoming a part of it.
Serra included text, a technique employed by most of the artists in the exhibit, communicating an explicit message that works dynamically with the image, or is the subject of the piece itself. Entitled "Stop B S" (2004), the large print is a manipulation of the oil stick drawing Serra had done, originally called "Stop Bush" (2004) and printed on a t-shirt mounted to the left. The simplicity of the demand reflects that of the silhouetted image: a hooded figure with outstretched arms, reminiscent of the abused prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. Serra claims that he doesn't consider this piece artwork, but rather "a way just to get the message out."
Most pieces in the exhibit oppose such a view, as the artwork and the message get thoroughly entangled in dissenting printmaking. The images in Goya's "Caprichos" series, printed in 1799 in opposition to the oppression of the Spanish monarchy, speak his views through art with vague, satirical inscriptions meant to dodge governmental persecution and censorship. The message is undeniably connected to the art, as it is in K?¤the Kollwitz's "Uprising" (1899), similar to Goya's work in its visual power, its controlled line and force of meaning.
All the pieces form a cohesive whole, though they span from Jonathan Mulliken's reproduction of Paul Revere's misleading "The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King Street, Boston on March 5, 1770" (1770) to a string of pieces reacting to the Vietnam War to Charles Philipon's hilarious caricature of Louis Philippe as a pear (which became a derogatory kind of remark, with poire - "pear" in French - eventually made synonymous with "fathead."
Most artists reacted intensely to censorship, so prints became both the cause and the effect of oppression. Those who were devoted sold their prints secretly; Goya sold his out of a perfume shop rather than a bookstore. Charles Philipon and Honor?© Daumier were jailed multiple times, persistent in their wit and sarcasm in the court and their art.
Manet's "The Barricade" (c. 1871) is an intense lithograph showing anonymous soldiers of the French Army firing into a mass of the Paris Commune, but it was not published until 1884. Picasso evaded persecution for his etchings of General Fransisco Franco as a cancerous, hairy, fleshy lump destroying Spain by choosing to work out of France.
"Dissent!" compiles example upon example of artists at their prime of determination, at their most excited and incited, at their most powerful and most widely heard. Though the worlds of Andy Warhol and Edouard Manet seem to have had more pressing social issues than our contemporary life, there is a trend in these pieces that speaks to the self-righteousness of the artists themselves, of their sense of moral responsibility that makes their works meaningful, not the relative intensity of their political turmoil.
In May of 1968, student protests against the Vietnam War in Paris led to the closing of the University of Paris. The outraged students of the ?cole des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) took to the school's printmaking workshop, creating thousands of simplistic, clear prints, establishing an organization called Atelier Populaire in support of French students and workers. In June, the police shut down the presses, but as prints were taken off the walls, more went up.
There is a drive and power constantly available to artists, and the cause is always there. "Dissent!" makes it clear that it is a risk many great artists and unknown printmakers have made successful and lasting.
