Leonard Baskin: Foreshadowing a Street Aesthetic
Has anyone else noticed the similarities between the large-scale figurative woodcuts of Leonard Baskin and many of today’s most popular street artists? Swoon, Gaia, and Elbow-Toe are just a few of the artists using antiquated print media to disseminate their imagery across the metropolitan landscape. And that imagery is strongly reminiscent of Baskin’s monumental prints (pictured above Baskin’s Hanged Man & one of Swoon’s paste-ups).
Baskin has been attributed with “almost single-handedly reviving the monumental sized woodcut as an art form.” His famous holocaust-influenced prints depict singular figures unravelling almost as if they were being pulled apart by some other-worldly power. Prints like the below-pictured Hydrogen Man were made in the 1950’s but seem current in content and form. If only Baskin had been using wheatpaste!
From the R. Michelson Galleries…
For expression of a more direct political nature, in the late 40’s Baskin turned to printmaking, the perfect medium for a young man with Communist sympathies. Prints were cheap, easily distributed, and their message could be plain. Text might even be cut directly into the block as was done with many of Baskin’s earliest works.
With its intricate network of sinewy anatomical lines, delicate and twisted, Baskin found in wood engraving a way to depict both the inner maelstrom and the outer physicality of the human form at once. As his command of the medium grew, Baskin allowed his line to speak for itself, but he has never abandoned his political commitment. “Art,” he has said, “is content, or it is nothing.” The artist must be committed to making a statement. “Photorealism is the same thing as minimal abstraction. Both are unwilling to say anything about the nature of reality, about their own involvement with reality…” Baskin is nothing if not willing to offer his own opinions.
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The money quote: “prints were cheap.”
NOTE: the money quote is in the PAST TENSE.
Yes, I can agree that there are some similarities, as well as with many other artist who have studied Leonard’s work. We tend to mimic compositional constructs from other masters in our own work, we use the ideas of others to enhance or improve our own product. I think our “minds eye” recognizes the sense of craftsmanship used by others then we reinterpret the skill in our own work.