New Chuck Close edition: Phil (Spiral)

Chuck Close - Phil (Spiral), 2014. Etching on Arches Cover Cream. 15.37 x 11.87 in. (paper 30 x 22 in.) Edition of 50
Magnolia Editions’ latest edition from Chuck Close is a tour de force of contemporary printmaking, but its origins lie in a masterpiece of engraving created almost three hundred years ago. Phil (Spiral), a portrait of Close’s friend and longtime subject, the modern composer Philip Glass, was inspired by the 17th-century French painter and engraver Claude Mellan’s print The Sudarium or Veil of St Veronica, which owes its fame to Mellan’s remarkable use of a single line to engrave a realistic human face.

Claude Mellan - The Sudarium or The Veil of Veronica, 1649. Copper plate engraving.
Photo by John R. Glembin.

Detail of Mellan's Sudarium. Photo by John R. Glembin.
As an artist who has created groundbreaking etchings for more than thirty years, Chuck Close was naturally touched by the singular achievement of Mellan’s Sudarium, even acquiring his own copy of the famous print. During a recent visit to Close’s New York studio, the artist proposed a challenge to Donald Farnsworth: could the contemporary printmaking wizardry of Magnolia Editions convincingly recreate the famed and reputedly “inimitable” technique of one of the great French engravers?

An early plate experiment for Phil (Spiral).

Naturally, the route to a successful Phil (Spiral) etching was an indirect one, with many twists and turns: at first, Close and Farnsworth used a combination of digital engraving tools and algorithms to generate a series of largely unsatisfactory tests and to roughly identify areas of light and dark where the line would need to change shape. Ultimately, the single line making up the print had to be manipulated and adjusted entirely by hand over a period of several months.

Detail from Phil (Spiral), 2014
“The existing algorithms and programs can turn your image into a series of concentric circles,” explains Farnsworth, “but they give you none of the depth that makes Mellan’s print so impressive. To achieve that kind of dimensionality, the line has to traverse the topography of the face at angles that demand a radical departure from the spiral. Even the smallest single hair on Phil’s head required a corresponding, minute undulation in the line.”

Nicholas Price pulls a proof of Phil (Spiral) on the etching press at Magnolia Editions.

Printed at Magnolia Editions by master printer Nicholas Price in an edition of 50 and signed and numbered by the artist, Phil (Spiral) reflects an ongoing dialogue between printmaking’s past and future, into which Chuck Close and Magnolia Editions continue to introduce unexpected and exciting possibilities.

For more information and detail views of both Close and Mellan's prints, please see this press release:

More artwork by Chuck Close from Magnolia Editions

Artists at Magnolia: Guy Diehl, Claudia Marseille

Local artists Guy Diehl and Claudia Marseille were at Magnolia Editions this week, employing both brand new and time-honored processes to create artwork.

Claudia used our freshly installed UV-cured acrylic flatbed printer to print enlarged versions of her layered encaustic paintings, using panels layered with modeling paste and gesso to create a richly textured surface:

Claudia Marseille at Magnolia with prints on textured panel, with a tapestry by Masami Teraoka

Claudia's impressive socks!

Master printer Tallulah Terryll prepares panels for printing on Magnolia's new UV-cured flatbed printer

Detail of prints on panel by Claudia Marseille

Claudia Marseille with print on panel and Nick Stone's dog Shelly

Detail of print on panel by Claudia Marseille

Shelly admiring a print on panel by Claudia Marseille

Meanwhile, still life master Guy Diehl used another marvel of modern technology – the paintbrush – to hand-color a series of small etchings, scrutinizing each print through a loupe to perfect the tiniest details:

Guy Diehl hand-colors etchings at Magnolia

A view of the world through Guy's eyes

The tools of Guy Diehl's trade
More art by Guy Diehl from Magnolia Editions

Claudia Marseille (Artist's website)

New Guy Diehl edition

Guy Diehl - Still Life with Yves Klein Blue, 2012
Etching with acrylic, 22 x 25 in. Edition of 18
Looking at the virtuosic precision on display in Guy Diehl’s latest print edition Still Life with Yves Klein Blue, one might never guess that the acrylic painting which served as its source was created amid personal turmoil. It’s one of my favorite paintings of the last decade, says Diehl: I was making a lot of changes in my life, and the painting somehow secured what I was doing: there was a conspiracy between my life and this image, but a good conspiracy. As if in response to this personal flux, the work’s composition suggests a powerful sense of harmony and intentionality: the movement from the complicated reflections and curves of the bottles on the left to the angular certainty of the postcard and gift box on the right echo the emerging personal resolve that Diehl experienced during its creation, as does the passage from dark to light as one’s eye passes across the print’s surface.

Diehl’s work typically takes as a point of departure his heroes and inspirations from art history – in this case, the French painter, sculptor, writer, performance artist and provocateur Yves Klein. Klein is perhaps best known for working with a chemist to develop his own patented color, International Klein Blue, which he used almost exclusively to create his monochromatic works in various media. Colors have a very specific effect on people, Diehl notes: decades ago, a painting instructor told me, ‘If your painting isn’t working, just put some red into it.’ To me, Klein’s is a seductive blue. This striking ultramarine pigment is on display in Diehl’s print in the form of a postcard reproduction of one of Klein’s monochromatic canvases; it also functions as an emotional cipher, connoting intensity and ‘the blues’ even as its warmth and saturation draws the viewer in.

Diehl’s great affection for his eponymous 2007 Klein Blue painting led him to revisit its composition in 2012 as an intaglio print at Magnolia Editions, where he digitally recomposed the colors and values of the image to fit the new medium. He also incorporated a lace-like pattern into the background, created by layering pencil strokes on mylar for hours to build up a unique, hand-drawn texture. The print was proofed and revised with printer Nicholas Price over the course of several months: a close look at the extraordinary blue reflections in each of its glass bottles reveals Diehl’s determination to capture the most subtle movements of light and color within each object. The final work fairly hums with a compressed unity, its shadowy palette briefly punctuated by vivid, almost sparkling highlights, as if celebrating the artist’s capacity to strive, even in dark times, for moments of brilliance.

Please contact the studio for pricing and availability of Still Life with Yves Klein Blue, or download the press release (PDF, 73k).

More work by Guy Diehl at Magnolia Editions

Artists at the studio

In the past few weeks we've been working on several projects which are either too top-secret to show, or are still in the earliest stages.

However, there are some projects we can show you: Guy Diehl proofed a new mixed-media edition, John Collier flew in from Texas to add some hand-painted details to his tapestries for the World Food Project, and David Kimball made some handmade paper in the increasingly renovated handmade paper mill! (The paper mill's condition continues to improve thanks to the hard work of Magnolia employees Ken Jensen and Brian Caraway.)

Brian Caraway and Don Farnsworth putting up the Collier tapestries
Brian Caraway and Don Farnsworth putting up the Collier tapestries
Shirley and John Collier
John Collier
John Collier
John Collier
Guy Diehl prints acrylic color on a copper plate etching
Guy Diehl and Nicholas Price discuss proofs
Guy Diehl examines a proof
David Kimball and Nicholas Price in the handmade paper studio
David Kimball making paper
David Kimball making paper