American Monotypes from the Baker/Pisano Collection | Page 8

the monotype printmaker is the necessity of working quickly. The ink used for monotype, whether black printer’s ink or oil paint thinned to suit the task, will stay wet on the plate long enough to be applied and worked, but not for hours at a time. The time limits that the medium places on the artist encourage spontaneity, though they may threaten thoughtful composition. The monotype does provide great latitude for changes before printing. It is very simple, after a stroke of the brush has been made, for the artist to alter it by pushing the ink around on the plate with the brush’s bristles or by drawing into the ink with the brush handle’s tip. Some artists prefer to start by covering the plate with an even coat of pigment. The artist can then work back into that solid field, clearing some areas with a cloth, and thinning or reapplying ink to other areas with a brush or fingertip. Since all of these tools and approaches leave distinctive marks in the final work, monotypes often show very clear traces of their making. The marks of wiping cloth, brush, and fingertip bear witness to the creation process even as they merge to create an overall image. For instance, the very figural Georgia O’Keeffe (American, 1887–1996) monotype in this exhibition (page 46) has one of the artist’s fingerprints at the middle right of the figure—quite literally, the artist’s touch. For audiences as well as artists, the immediacy of the artist’s hand is part of the attraction of the monotype process. At the 4 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN MONOTYPE end of the nineteenth century, when the earliest prints in this exhibition were made, Europe and America were in the midst of a lively transformation in art that saw the rise of Impressionism. Many of the American artists who dove into the milieu of European art were braced and challenged by the freedom of new styles abroad on the continent: looser brushwork and the conscious expansion of painting beyond traditional portrait, history, and landscape subjects. These along with the exploration of the art of other cultures and novel techniques were a heady mix, and American expatriates brought back with them a mélange of fresh approaches to the work of making art, including the monotype technique. Foremost among the American artists who popularized the monotype were William Merritt Chase (American, 1849–1916) and Frank Duveneck (American, 1848–1919). More than an important portraitist of his day, Chase was a teacher and avid explorer of art. Though his own professors at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München (The Munich Academy) espoused a solid, didactic historical painting style, Chase explored the less-academic Barbizon School painters’ style before eventually embracing the colorful, modern subjects and novel compositions of Impressionism. Like many of his European contemporaries, Chase was intrigued by non-Western art, and his New York studio was famous for its eclectic collection of interesting objects from distant cultures. It is probably inevitable that an artist with