Learning Outcomes
On completion of this module students should be able to:
- develop the ability to evaluate and categorise the different ways in which artists use print;
- recognise the qualities and marks that are specific to each process;
- identify syntax and distinguish between the various manners in which artists draw for process;
- demonstrate an understanding and sure handling of the technical terminology;
- explain the socio-historical and art historical contexts of the printmakers and their work.
Brief description
This 20 credit lecture and seminar module examines the relationship between image and process, the use of print as reproduction and the notion of `fine art' print. Prints are discussed against their social and historical context through the work of key exponents of the media. The course will concentrate on European and American printmaking
following a roughly chronological framework from the fifteenth to late- twentieth century. There will be opportunities to study original prints from the School of Art Collection and National Library of Wales.
Content
1. Introduction. Course objectives and overview. The Nature of the Print: `Original' versus `Reproduction'. The importance of process for the artist. The Print as a Means of Mass Communication.
2. Medium, materials and techniques. Origins and historical outline [1]: The Relief Print - woodcut, letterpress, wood engraving, line block and the linocut. [2]: The Intaglio Print - engraving, etching, drypoint, aquatint and mezzotint. [3]: The Lithograph and The Screen Print.
3. The Development of Syntax and Impact of Early Printmaking: Mantegna and Marcantonio Raimondi in Italy, Dürer and his contemporaries in Germany.
4. Naturalism: Rembrandt and his contemporaries.
5. Inner Visions: Francisco Goya and William Blake.
6. Prints with a Point: William Hogarth.
7. The Landscape Observed and Transformed: Samuel Palmer and the Romantic landscape tradition in Britain 1870-1930.
8. The Limited Edition: James McNeill Whistler and the Fine Art Print.
9. Experiment and Expression: Printmaking on the Continent:France and the Lithograph, Germany and the Woodcut.
10. Avant Garde British Printmaking 1914-1960: Nash and Nevinson to Stanley Hayter and experimental printmaking at Atelier 17.
11. Hopper to Warhol: from Ash Can to the Pop Print.
12. Continuity and New Departures: David Hockney, traditions revived or discarded in the late 20th Century