Author: Caroline Olsen-Van Stone
Daring lines, stark contrast, deft craftsmanship and striking composition seduce the viewers’ eyes, only to challenge their minds as well with themes of isolation, pride, inconsequence and exuberance.
“Pressed In Time: American Prints from 1905-1950” opened October 6 at the Huntington in San Marino. The 163 prints in this exhibit are organized by theme rather than chronology and represent many voices from the era. Themes range from isolation and desperation of the industrial worker to the exuberance of nightlife.
This is exactly what the curators intended. They chose to show the pieces in which the “medium and the message come together,” Jessica Todd Smith said, curator of the American Art and co-curator of the show.
One of the most important themes of the era and the show is “the dignity of labor—labor as having value in the depression and the 1920s, contrasting people who built the city and the bystander without work,” co-curator Kevin Murphy said. This value is illustrated in both rural and urban environments, featuring factory workers and hay harvesters alike. In Bernard Steffen’s “Haying,” the workers’ faces are not visible, but their seemingly menial task is glorified with color and dynamic motion.
Charles Turzak’s “Man with Drill” exemplifies this sense of respect for the laborer as well. The man with the drill stands hunched over his task, in the foreground of the piece, while the skyscrapers and bystanders are affected by jagged lines emanating from his drill. The laborer’s centrality identifies him as an essential part of the city, while well-clothed onlookers are secondary.
Pieces juxtapose each other and seem to engage in intimate conversations about the topics that are listed above them: the city, work, entertainment. This effectively provokes the viewer to engage in this discourse as well.
The first piece with color one sees is in the second room, which begins with a focus on new forms of entertainment in the early 1900s. Though the pieces with color stand out, they do not overshadow the black-and-white works, which make up the majority of the show.
Though many pieces express similar ideas or themes, they do so using different print techniques and composition elements. In Miguel Covarrubias’ “The Lindy Hop,” dynamic dancing figures are depicted using thin lines and cross-hatching to highlight the vibrant nightlife of the 1930s. Two paintings over, Harry Shokler’s “Coney Island” illustrates excitement with wild, broad lines and bright colors.
The prints illustrate serious themes with striking craftsmanship and aesthetic quality. Pieces in this exhibit “express the dichotomy of beauty and terror,” Murphy said. Paul Landacre’s “Death of a Forest” couples the fear of a hillside fire with crisp lines and stark contrast. This piece is stunning because of Landacre’s wood engraving skill. Wood engraving is one of the most difficult printmaking techniques because it entails carving against the grain of very hard wood. This gives wood engravings their characteristic sharp, detailed appearance.
The Artists and Art section featured how-to explanations of the various processes of printmaking—intaglio, woodcut, woodblock, etching and lithograph, to name a few. Every step of various kinds of printmaking techniques is clearly explained with examples especially made for this exhibit, so viewers can compare the processes side by side.
The time and craftsmanship involved in printmaking often goes unnoticed, as the final pieces look much like other mediums. “People sometimes compliment the American prints in our collection, mistaking them for drawings. The hands-on experience is an excellent way to explain such diverse methods of printmaking,” Smith said.
The pieces in this temporary show were chosen from three collections: the Huntington’s Virginia Steele Scott American Print Collection and two promised collections from Gary, Brenda and Harrison Ruttenberg and Hannah Kully. The show runs through January 6, 2008.
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