A Strange New Beauty

About two weeks ago I went to the Museum of Modern Art with my friend Ariel.  Of course I went on a Friday...because, let's be honest, it's free Friday 4-8pm.  Side note check out this list for free admission museum days in New York.  I'm willing to brave the crowds for that $20+ dollar admission waiver (hashtag #artistlife).  The exhibit that I went for is called "A Strange New Beauty" and it highlights printmaking work by Edgar Degas who we all know and love for his blatantly voyeuristic paintings of dancers (more specifically ballerinas), prostitutes, and bathers.

I studied printmaking throughout college and graduate school so I love any exhibit that will highlight prints.  What a lot of people don't know is that many artists utilize printmaking as a way of thinking through ideas and by editioning (creating multiples) of their images.  Also these prints often supplement their incomes as "painters" because they're more affordable to purchase than say a 10 million dollar painting.  Why printmaking's importance gets shoved to the background baffles me. Seriously, how often do you see a show dedicated to printmaking at a major museum that's actually interesting??

Also, I believe in affordable art but what I don't like is how the current art market creates a hierarchy with painting and sculpture at the top and printmaking far below.  In fact a print takes many trials and often painstaking work to create I can tell you from personal experience a print takes just as much work as a painting. So why is a print priced at $1,200 and a printing at $12,000 for example? And if you say it's because a print is a multiple and therefore not as unique... here's news: a print doesn't have to be a multiple.  Case-in-point the Degas monoprints shown in A Strange New Beauty.

A monoprint is generally created by adding and subtracting marks with oil based inks on a copper or zinc plate, placing the paper face down on top, and running through an etching press which exerts massive amount of pressure to transfer the inked image onto the heavyweight damp paper. A monoprint produces on main print (hence the name) and then one "ghost image" (great name right?) by running the same plate through with new paper which picks up the residual ink and looks lighter than the original. If you ask "why not just paint the images, why make a monoprint at all?" let me tell you that the image quality for a monoprint is totally different than a painting, and honestly more interesting. Imagine all that weight from the printing press rollers on the copper plate creating a deep impression onto the thick satisfying printmaking paper. And the ink just reacts to the pressure and becomes integrated into that paper...  a print becomes a totally satisfying object in itself.  It's hard to describe but it just feels special.

And so Degas would generally try to get multiple ghost images to play around with by adding different pastels and markings on top.  These prints are a direct line into his thought process and decision making. I would argue his prints are more interesting than his paintings.

One more thing before I ramble on too much: another thing I loved about this show is the level of specificity on the labels. Often museum labels will say something like "title of work/ art/ print" but what I really want to know is WHAT KIND OF PRINT! There are so many methods, monotype, lithograph, aquatint... museum take note: please get more specific when describing prints.  Each method of printmaking is so TOTALLY different it would really help if you could differentiate. I want to know how things were made!

Go see the show! And let me know what you think.

A Strange New Beauty
Museum of Modern Art
Through July 24th

image titles from top: Les Cap Ferrat, Paysage Vert (Green Landscape), Pas Battu

-Amanda