WELCOME
Welcome to the third edition of our occasional newsletter. We hope you find it both informative and entertaining. We would really like to hear from you. Comments, corrections and suggestions are all welcome. Please contact us at customer@chancellorsart.com
Warm regards
Amy Taylor
Peter Taylor
SOME OF OUR NEW ACQUISITIONS
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Gerald Laing
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David Hockney
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Peter Blake
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John Piper
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The picture, in order to move us, must never merely remind us of life, but must acquire a life of its own.
Lucien Freud
CONTEMPORARY CHINESE WOODBLOCK PRINTS
Incomparable happiness for me is wandering in the colourful world of black and white.
Dong Jiansheng
In recent years, enthusiasm for Chinese prints has greatly increased. This has coincided with a number of important exhibitions (for example, at the British Library, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Ashmolean Museum) and the 2008 “China Now” festival, the U.K.’s largest celebration of Chinese culture. Another important catalyst has, of course, been this years Olympic Games.
In response to this, we are delighted to be able to mount a small exhibition of contemporary Chinese woodblock prints.
In 1998, the Muban Foundation, which has a distinguished collection of such work, commissioned a portfolio of prints from contemporary Chinese artists. Artists were selected by an expert panel because they represented the wide range of talent working in the contemporary field and a wide variety of printmaking practice. It is from this portfolio that our prints have been chosen.
WOODBLOCK PRINTS IN CHINA NOW
The woodcut is the most graphic of graphic techniques.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
The woodblock print developed in the Far East several centuries before it first appeared in Europe (in the early 1400s). It remains the most widespread approach to printmaking used by contemporary Chinese printmakers.
During the cultural revolution, printmaking was subsidiary to politics and artists were expected to act as a mouthpiece for the party. In recent years, political constraints have relaxed and artists, whilst drawing on tradition, have also been able to transcend it. They have been able to adopt a more individual approach and to pursue self expression through a personal style, concerned with moods and feelings and with expressing the spiritual and mental world.
ABOUT WOODBLOCK PRINTS
I find the humblest woodcut, with its broad patches of colour, as admirable as a Rubens or a Vermeer.
Vincent van Gogh
Woodblock prints, also known as woodcuts, are a form of relief printing. The essential process is to draw the image on a wooden block and to cut away the wood around this until only the image is left raised. Ink is then applied to the raised part of the block, paper is placed on the block and the back of the paper rubbed with a special tool (a burnisher or baren), thereby printing the image on the paper.
Within this overall process, the skilled artist can achieve a wide range of outcomes, for example, the choice of inks and paper can produce very different effects. In addition, the wood used for the block and the degree of finish, can generate different textures. Variations in the amount of local pressure applied with the burnisher produces variations in tone. Different coloured inks can be applied to different areas of the block to produce a multi coloured print. Alternatively, a coloured image may be created by using several blocks, each inked in a different colour. In the “lost block” method, some parts of the block may be cut away and several impressions taken. Then further sections cut away and this image superimposed on the first. Thus, by a sequence of cutting and printing, a complex and subtle image may be produced.
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YOU COULDN'T MAKE IT UP!
Peter Blake spent two years as resident artist at the National Gallery and among the works he produced during this period was “The Nine Prettiest Bottoms in the National Gallery”. The paintings were derived from pictures by Rubens, Renoir, Velasquez, Boucher and others. He said “A lot of people, like me, must have wandered through and looked at the nice bottoms….and been cheered by them. That is something I thought worth concentrating on and celebrating”.
At one point visitors were going to be able to buy a watch with the bottoms on the face and strap or even a silk “bottoms” scarf but Blake’s idea was apparently vetoed by the Gallery Director, Neil MacGregor.
PERFORMANCE ARTISTS
Sidney Nolan, the Australian painter was a racing cyclist in his youth.
Maurice Vlaminck left home at 16 to earn a precarious living as a racing cyclist, night club violinist and writer of pornographic novels.
Larry Rivers, an important contributor to the development of Pop Art in the USA, was a professional saxophonist between 1940 and 1945 before taking up painting.
Yves Klein was also a jazz musician. He lived in Japan for a year, obtained a black belt in Judo and wrote a standard text book on the sport.
Suzanne Valadon became an acrobat in a Parisian circus at the age of 15 but was forced to abandon this after a fall. She modelled for, among others, Renoir, Lautrec and Degas and was the mother of Utrillo. She became an accomplished artist in her own right.
Walter Sickert spent three years on the stage before studying at the Slade and going on to work with Whistler and Degas. He became an important link between the French and English avant garde and the leading light of the Camden Town Group. He was also a renowned teacher.
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Li Shaoyan
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Wu Jide
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Song Yuanwen
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