PRESENTATION: Life in Print-William Kentridge & Pablo Picasso
As a major collecting museum in Saskatchewan-Canada, Remai Modern holds in trust more than 8,000 artworks in a wide variety of media. The museum’s collecting focus is on art produced from around 1900 to the present moment and aims to strike an optimal balance between local, regional and global interests.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Remai Modern Archive
The exhibition “Life in Print: William Kentridge and Pablo Picasso” brings together two of the most prolific and innovative artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, highlighting parallels between the two artists, including their shared interest in printmaking. The exhibition presents works from Kentridge’s expansive “Universal Archive” alongside selections from Remai Modern’s collection of Picasso’s linocuts, the most comprehensive of its kind in the world. This is an extraordinary opportunity to explore, side by side, the two artists’ work in this captivating and accessible printmaking technique. Kentridge and Picasso not only share an inventive approach to the linocut medium, but absolute trust in the potential of collaboration and experimentation in the print studio. The Picasso Collection at Remai Modern includes editioned prints, working states, and experimental proofs. Picasso became serious about making prints in 1904–05, and, over the course of his career, he tried out many printmaking techniques. It was in the period between 1951 and 1968, working with Master Printer Hidalgo Arnéra (1922–2007) in the south of France, that Picasso committed himself to linocut. William Kentridge’s “Universal Archive” began at the David Krut Workshop (DKW) in 2012 and is made up of linocuts printed onto non-archival 1950s dictionary and encyclopaedia paper. The series contains over 70 individual images, many of which represent recurring motifs commonly seen in Kentridge’s art, ink drawings, sculptures, and stage productions. They depict everyday images such as coffee pots, trees, cats, female nudes, typewriters, horses, and birds. Kentridge is known for his work in printmaking. In this series gestural marks are achieved in linocut with a remarkable likeness to an ink drawing. The prints began as simple Indian ink drawings, for which Kentridge used what he calls a “good brush” and a “bad brush”. The former refers to the pristine new brush, which gives perfectly intentional lines. The latter has damaged, splayed bristles which gives a less certain mark. Artists tend to discard the worn, mistreated brush but Kentridge embraces its individual qualities. Creating editions from multiple overlapping sheets of paper requires complex registration, technical skill, and planning. The project culminated with two large-scale tree images. The first made up of 30 sheets of dictionary paper and the second 104 sheets all overlapping. The sheer scale of these final prints demonstrates the level of technical perfection that the team had reached in order to accomplish this task. The decision to use non-archival paper is an unusual one in printmaking but was deliberately chosen by Kentridge for its unfixed nature. The dictionary paper resists the ink, which creates a glossy glow on its surface. The dictionary paper serves as a reference, a tribute even, to a forgotten “old-world” method of accessing information now that the Internet has become so prevalant. The images in “Universal Archive” are familiar but abstracted – resembling a person and a coffee pot simultaneously. This merging of objects relates to the artist’s skepticism towards certainty in creative processes. Image mis/identification is core to Kentridge’s practice and is richly explored in this series. If the printed image is not rendered overtly ambiguous, like the ‘coffee pot man’, varying depictions (or deconstructions) of one image, such as a typewriter, are grouped together. In this instance, the recurring image moves from an unquestionable portrayal of the object to a collection of loose lines, that merely suggest the original form. The process by which the viewer projects meaning is sincerely rattled. The drawings were initially converted to linocut prints through meticulous hand-carving methods, requiring a dedicated team over a four-year period with each plate taking 20-30 hours. The near-identical replication of Kentridge’s free-hand brush strokes makes for unexpected nuance at the level of technical achievement. Jillian Ross, former Master Printer at DKW points out the influence of Japanese art in terms of line quality. When the series expanded, a photo-transfer process was adopted. Ross speaks of the exacting process as “a giant puzzle constantly solving”. Ross, who has worked with Kentridge since the early 2000s, headed the printing process. She stresses that an in-depth understanding of the series requires knowledge of the multiplicity of Kentridge’s projects where the same imagery recurs in varying forms. “Because he often works on a number of projects at once, his ideas for one project tend to fuel another. Images that you see in Universal Archive overlap considerably across many mediums.” Ross adds that she sees the title as a reference to his personal ‘universal archive’ – the themes and images that he repeatedly draws on to animate his work. Ross indicates that it is important to note that while most artists approach printmaking as a secondary medium, Kentridge treats it as a fundamental tool to continually develop and improve his practice. It is difficult to get a sense of the staggering volume and variety of work encompassed by this series. The “Universal Archive” is compiled of over 70 works made using linocut, printed in black ink on dictionary paper and mounted onto a sheet of Velin Arches Cover White 400gsm. The final prints range in size from single dictionary pages to larger works which are assembled from multiple dictionary pages. The subject matter and complexity of the works are a reflection of a project that naturally grew and developed over time. As the project grew in the number of works Kentridge produced, Ross gave the works individual reference numbers corresponding to when the images were produced. Kentridge enjoyed the technical terminology as well as their link to his subject matter as reference. Concurrent to “Life in Print”, Remai Modern is presenting “Live Editions: Jillian Ross Print”, which has transformed the museum’s Connect Gallery into a working print studio. Jillian Ross Print is showcasing the editioning of their latest collaboration with Kentridge, a large-scale and highly complex photogravure series consisting of over 30 plates. This exhibition explores and celebrates the significance of Ross’s work as a collaborative printmaker in the production of the yet unpublished series by the internationally renowned South African artist. “Live Editions” also demonstratse Ross’ collaboration with artist Wally Dion during an intensive two-week residency in the gallery in July. Jillian Ross Print began working with Dion in 2022 on the artist’s first printmaking work. Ross and Dion showcase the experimental and technical aspects of developing a work together, which brings together diverse elements of Dion’s practice including drawing, painting, sculpture, and textile. The exhibition includes recently published works by Jillian Ross Print with a focus on Kentridge’s Studio Life Gravures series created in response to COVID lockdown, the short film A Guided Tour of Etching by Joanna Dudley and William Kentridge, and Dion’s Prairie Braids.
Photo Left: William Kentridge, From the Universal Archive series. Linocut printed on non-archival pages from Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Courtesy of The Gund at Kenyon College and David Krut Projects, Johannesburg/New York. Photo Right: Pablo Picasso, Portrait de femme à la fraise et au chapeau, 1962. Linocut, Collection of Remai Modern. Gift of the Frank and Ellen Remai Foundation 2012
Info: Curator Michelle Jacques, Assistant Curator: Bevin Bradley, Remai Modern, 102 Spadina Crescent East, Saskatoon Saskatchewan, Canada, Duration: 10/5-29/12/2024, Days & Hours: Wed & Sat-Sun 10:00-17:00, Thu-Fri 10:00-21:00 http://remaimodern.org/
