20/20 Vision

The Art of Contemporary University Printmaking

Kristin Casaletto

Curator's Statement

How many times has the line, Those who can, do.  Those who can’t…teach!  been thrown at academics, and how many the prickly retorts involving words like “You ignorant Philistine”?   Is there any validity on either end of this exchange?  Can professors really be artists when so much of their energy must go to the classroom?  And are artists-who-teach really managing to produce anything good in the studio?  This show tries to take an objective look at those who teach and their imprint on the next generation.  

And what does this exhibit, a sampling of the nation, reveal?  There are some very healthy indicators.  The student artwork holds up strongly.  (It should be noted that the students are undergraduates or graduates, and in a few cases, recently graduated.)  You can’t peg a student piece from a faculty work without checking the written documentation.  The students’ art also does not bear much resemblance to the teachers’.  That speaks well, both for the students for having refused to be derivative, and the teachers, who presumably have encouraged aesthetic independence.   

The level of craft is high throughout.  There is fine use of expressive marks unique to printmaking; mastery of what’s great about the print tradition while avoiding what’s persnickety about it.  There was a time, or at least a school of thought, in which integration of non-print techniques was considered a lapse in print’s ability to stand alone as complete artistic expression. Many artists in this show are using printmaking as a base and involving other means freely: hand coloring, found objects, installation elements, etc.  Apparently there’s no feeling of protectiveness of print’s territory—at least overtly. 

Given the difficulty of achieving grand size and complex color in printmaking, the medium has long been cast by some as having an inferiority complex compared to painting.  It is worth noting that there is almost no black-and-white work here--the historic roots of print.  One-color prints are not being particularly rewarded on the national juried art show scene lately, it seems.  This show trends toward the large-scale and colorful—acknowledging, perhaps, an ongoing rivalry with painting.

The computer’s role here is worth noting.  That print has been shaken up by the computer is certainly true, just as painting was with the advent of photography in the nineteenth century.  In both instances, one could see the stressful flurry of reaction in the weaker artists and action and innovation in the stronger.  Both forced rethinking of the traditional medium’s purposes and range.  By now, most printmakers seem to be over the panic and deftly to be folding digital means into their art.  There’s a tendency to build an image by utilizing many layers.  Layering is indigenous to printmaking, but it seems to be reinforced strongly in recent years by Photoshop software.  There’s also some evidence of the pace and look of electronic/time-based media and even advertising affecting the prints.   Digitization has become another means to an end (being art), not the end of the print, though we should all thank Steve Jobs (and Henry Fox Talbot, et al.) for forcing a hard look at a medium’s relevance.  It’s likely the best shot in the arm to printmaking in a long time.