American Monotypes from the Baker/Pisano Collection | Page 38

Red Grooms (American, b. 1937)
Corot, 1976

Color monoprint, 9 11/16 x 7 7/8 in.
Chazen Museum of Art, gift of D. Frederick Baker from the
Baker/Pisano Collection, 2014.6.7

Though the terms monotype and monoprint are sometimes
used interchangeably, there is a distinction between the two
print types. A monotype is a one-of-a-kind piece of art in
which the image is transferred from a support to paper though
sometimes a ghostly second image, called a cognate, can also
be printed. A monoprint refers to a unique impression from
a plate or block that carries a permanent image. Here, Red
Grooms made an etched plate with the outlines of his portrait
of Corot. The lines of that etching are printed in black and
are visible around the eyes mouth, hair and scarf of the figure.
However, Grooms also painted colored inks onto the plate each
time it was printed, creating twelve variations on the theme of
his original etching. Grooms’ art is a jazzy, sometimes goofy
rendition of places and people, recreating current scenes as well
as those from centuries past. In this case Grooms recalls one of
the titans of mid-nineteenth century French art, Jean-Baptiste
Camille Corot who has been given the rather dubious honor of
being the most faked artist in the history of art.
NOTES:
Cantor, Fine Arts from the Collection of Meyer & Vivian Potamkin, 44,
cat. no. 89, illus.
Knestrick and Katz, Red Grooms, 86, cat. no. 49, illus.

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