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— November - December 2009
Dorothy Cross, Rugby Ball, 2005, on diplay at IMMA
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distinct impression that print
makers were the wide boys of the Renaissance
art world. All too often, they come across as
parasites, pirates, and even criminals and
perverts. Mantegna, the first great artist to
make prints, paid to have an engraver mur-
dered for stealing his drawings and engraved
plates. When that failed, he accused him of
sodomy, a crime punishable by death. Vasari,
who saw printmaking as a purely reproductive
medium, relates how Parmigianino’s print-
maker stole all his woodcuts, drawings and
engravings while he slept. Durer complained
that his fellow countrymen regarded him as
a parasite, but even that pales next to Roger
Fry’s stab at his “perverted technical ingenu-
ity”. The last century saw a steady rise in the
status of prints. They were a crucial element
of German Expressionism and Pop Art, largely
because the medium seemed more democratic
and down-to-earth.
Whilst the term “print” in its broadest
sense can be used to refer to virtually any
image which has been transferred from one
surface to another, an “original print” is an
image produced from a surface on which the
artist has actually worked, such as a stone,
wood block or copper plate. The original work
of art is the print itself rather than the block or
plate - the “matrix” - from which it is printed.
Although artists can sometimes make mono-
prints, typically somewhere between twen-
ty-five and pne hundred original prints are
produced by each matrix.
Since , when Enrique Juncosa the
director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art
(IMMA) began the practice of inviting artists
to make a print edition in the context of their
exhibitions, artists responded by either
making a new edition or presenting an existing
one. The editions, which have grown to thirty-
one prints and multiples (i.e. sets of identical
prints) to date, represent a tangible gesture
of goodwill by artists for IMMA, as the sale
of the editioned prints directly benefits the
Museum’s programmes. This has also given
rise to a striking body of contemporary prints
for the IMMA Collection, which receives a copy
of each work in the series. It is this collection
of prints which is presented in Traces, an
exhibition that brings to the public eye for
the first time, this new strand within IMMA’s
expanding collection of prints.
The series began with Psyche, , by
British artist Gary Hume, presented in
to coincide with his solo exhibition at IMMA.
This year, the Museum has extended the reach
of the editions series by inviting contributions
from a number of Ireland’s most long-estab-
lished and respected artists, including Louis
le Brocquy, Patrick Scott and Camille Souter.
Louis le Brocquy presents an intaglio print (in
which the image is incised into the surface), a
portrait of the writer Samuel Beckett, while
Patrick Scott creates a signature print work,
drawing from imagery and motifs from his
long career. Combining two subjects, aviation
and war, which she has frequently explored,
Camille Souter’s We Don’t Want to See Blood,
is a very personal project for the artist, a jour-
ney into print-making that she did not make
until this, her eightieth year.
The so called “perverted technical ingenu-
ity” is the major pulling point of Traces. A vari-
ety of printmaking and editioning processes
are shown off here. These range from the tradi-
tional intaglio or engraved forms from etching,
aquatint, and carborundum - seen variously
in the works of Louis le Brocquy, William
McKeown, Hughie O’Donoghue, Elizabeth
Peyton and Sean Scully - to silkscreen and
screen prints by Michael Craig-Martin, Alex
Katz and Gary Hume. McDermott & McGough
employ letterpress with handset type, while
Anne Madden works with archival inks.
Some of the prints are exquisite photog-
raphy-based cibachrome and giclée (a print-
ing method using sprayed ink), such as those
by Dorothy Cross, Candida Höfer, Janaina
Tschäpe and Jack Pierson, while others are
pigment printed on watercolour paper or
card, as seen for instance in the prints of João
Penalva and Isaac Julien. Multiples in the col-
lection include a collaborative work by Liam
Gillick and Philippe Parreno, which takes the
form of D letters laser-cut from comocell
to be arranged by the owner, and Ulla von
Brandenburg’s deck of playable tarot cards
in a presentation box. If Traces is about any-
thing, then it’s about the experimental nature
of creating an artwork as an edition. It’s about
the fact that the cheapest and surely the most
visually exciting art form continues to create
an aesthetic sizzle.
Traces: IMMA Limited Editions continues at the Irish
Museum of Modern Art (www.imma.ie) until 3 January 2010.
Admission is free.
“The last century
saw a steady rise
in the status of
prints. They were
a crucial element
of German
Expressionism
and Pop Art…”
Perverted technical ingenuity on display at IMMA
l o r r a i n e c o u r t n e y
Prints at IMMA // Ricky Gervais // Carlow Arts // Roman Polanksi
village_oct_09.indd 73 27/10/2009 15:40:14
