BOOK REVIEW: Prints Now
Dynamic and democratic, the world of printmaking now includes the billboard and the badge, the masterpiece and the multiple, the priceless and the give-away. Prints are a vital and vibrant link between the museum and the marketplace, the elite and the everyday, and this display (and the accompanying book) is intended to explore some of the new directions in printmaking today, and to show a selection of the many original and innovative works of art that fall within the ever-expanding definition of ‘print’.
It is with the above mission statement that Prints Now: Directions & Definitions authors Gil Saunders and Rosie Miles, curators at the Victoria & Albert Museum, approach what may currently be the best collection of forward-thinking printmaking in print. Saunders and Miles establish a theme for each chapter and then provide artist examples. While not as broad in scope as Linda Weintraub’s In the Making, there is a similarity in that categorization isn’t guided by technique but by idea. Chapter themes include Print in 3-D (Lynne Allen, Rachel Whiteread), Print as Public Art (Julian Opie), Multiples (Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Damian Hirst), and Community-based Workshops (Virgil Marti, Willie Cole). By breaking up the work thematically, this book gives some framework for viewing current trends in the ever-expansive discipline of printmaking. It’s been an invaluable tool in the classroom.
Published in 2006, my one criticism of Prints Now is that I think the title could be better. Like Printmaking Today by Jules Heller (1972), it’s too generic and the adverb of time -Now- seems shortsighted. Sounds great on the day of release but with each passing day it becomes less accurate.
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I too use this book as a teaching resource, although I have some complaints to add to your review:
‘Prints Now’ opens with a whimper. The initial chapter, “New Media,” was really disappointing even two years ago (when I first read the book). The chapter mostly stresses printed digital images, rather than the theoretical or aesthetic implications of fundamentally new technologies like, for example, rapid prototyping. To borrow your words, “with each passing day” the tech angle becomes less interesting as more compelling issues quickly come to the fore: Internet, anyone? This chapter reads like a hasty add-on by authors who felt obligated to include “digital art,” but had too little to say about the field. Also, the authors clearly had few exemplary works to share: the artwork selected for this chapter is much weaker than the examples in the rest of the book.
The exception is the great piece by Julian Opie, which makes use of lenticular lens technology. But Opie’s piece is a good example of my other complaint about this book: the design of ‘Prints Now’ makes good work look bad. Admittedly, Opie’s piece, given its 4-D properties, is not easy to represent on the printed page. But many of these works are poorly documented, and the designer has done little to overcome this limitation. Often one must read the full text to appreciate a piece that could be represented by a single adequate photograph. Granted, this is not uncommon with books about recent art. But it’s a flaw that bothers me, anyway.
I have some other quibbles that are barely worth mentioning; the book is a little Brit-centric, for example. I could go on, but I won’t because I do like this book quite a lot. It’s really the only recent work of its kind, and therefore fills a unique niche. Perhaps because of its unique role, I just wish the book could be a bit better.
Right. I agree with all of this. The New Media section is weak (or incomplete) as are a few others. And the images in the book could be much better and the book relies heavy on the Brits (but it is a British book so not that surprising).
What we need to augment this book is a collection of the Vitamin P, D, & Ph variety. A Vitamin Pr: New Perspectives in Printmaking- are you listening, Phaidon?