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

Press Release: Kiki Smith tapestries

Kiki Smith - Earth, 2012. Jacquard tapestry, 113 x 75 in. Edition of 10
As an artist uniquely attuned to surface, and one whose practice revels in the possibilities of printmaking and multiples, it seems only natural that Kiki Smith has been working with Magnolia Editions since 2011 on a suite of three tapestry editions. The three tapestries – titled Sky, Earth, and Underground – were first exhibited in early 2012 at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York, as part of Smith’s exhibition, “Visionary Sugar.” Magnolia Editions’ tapestry technique is an ideal vehicle for Smith’s visions, yielding objects halfway between printmaking and sculpture, rooted in the Medieval yet informed by digital sophistication, and possessing a complex yet beguilingly tactile surface.

Kiki Smith - Sky, 2012. Jacquard tapestry, 113 x 75 in. Edition of 10
While her line and drawing style are unmistakable, Smith’s works in various sculptural and print media often employ sophisticated technologies in tandem with handwork. As Wendy Weitman writes in Kiki Smith: Prints, books & things, “Smith thrives on collaboration... Sculpture and printmaking share this collaborative attribute, each often requiring specialized artisans to achieve the finished object. Not surprisingly, Smith excels at both.” The artist is no stranger to textiles: she has been printing and painting on fabric since the early 1980s, including small editions of printed scarves. However, these tapestries employ no printing; their imagery is made up entirely of warp and weft threads. Each composition has undergone dozens of steps and versions on its way to completion, from large collaged paper drawings to digital files; prints to reprints to reprints with overpainting and more collaging; painting, weaving, and reweaving until each detail, texture, and color met exactly with the artist’s specifications.

Kiki Smith - Underground, 2012. Jacquard tapestry, 113 x 75 in. Edition of 10
From crisp pencil lines to watercolor washes and the wrinkles of Nepalese paper, Smith’s tapestry editions weave together a multitude of surface textures, at times conflating skin and bark, feathers and fur, air and water to depict a richly heterogeneous world teeming with life. The scale of the double-headed Jacquard loom allows for the depiction of life-sized human figures, surely appealing to an artist whose work has so often reenvisioned the human form. Earth’s female nude is covered with marks resembling the bark of a birch tree, perhaps recalling Daphne of Greek mythology, who famously metamorphized into a tree to thwart the amorous advances of Apollo. Placed atop a winding, serpentine branch, one hand resting on a snake and the other on a leaf endowed with eyes, Earth’s figure suggests a theme common to all three tapestries: an absence of boundaries between human, flora, and fauna native to the realm of myth and animistic spiritual traditions. Smith says the cast of plants, animals, and heavenly bodies in this body of work suggest “how imperative it is at this moment to celebrate and honor the wondrous and precarious nature of being here on earth.”

Download Press Release as PDF (904 KB)

View Kiki Smith tapestries at Magnolia Editions (with zoom feature)

Kiki Smith tapestries at Neuberger Museum

Tapestries by Kiki Smith, published by Magnolia Editions, at Neuberger Museum; photo c/o Artnet
As an artist uniquely tuned in to surface, and one whose practice revels in the possibilities of printmaking and multiples, it should come as no surprise that Kiki Smith has been working with Donald Farnsworth of Magnolia Editions for the past year on a suite of three tapestry editions.

The three tapestries -- titled Sky, Earth, and Underground -- can currently be seen at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York, as part of Smith’s exhibition, "Visionary Sugar." More photos and information about the show are available here.

Kiki Smith creates a hand-painted texture at Magnolia Editions
Smith is no stranger to textiles: she has been printing and painting on fabric since the early 1980s, including small editions of printed scarves. While her line and drawing style are unmistakable, Smith's works in various sculptural and print media often employ sophisticated technologies in tandem with handwork. As Wendy Weitman writes in Kiki Smith: Prints, books & things, "Smith thrives on collaboration... Sculpture and printmaking share this collaborative attribute, each often requiring specialized artisans to achieve the finished object. Not surprisingly, Smith excels at both."

Ingredients of a Kiki Smith tapestry in progress
The tapestries have gone through dozens of steps and versions on their way to completion, from large collaged paper drawings to digital files; prints to reprints to reprints with overpainting and more collaging; painting, weaving, and reweaving until each detail, texture, and color was exactly right.

Kiki Smith and Donald Farnsworth work on a tapestry's digital weave file at Magnolia Editions
For those in the Purchase, NY area, don't miss "The three worlds: Earth/Sky/Underworld and the work of Kiki Smith" with Purchase College lecturer Suzanne Ironbiter on Friday March 23 at 7:15 pm. The artist will attend and will be available for a Q&A after the presentation.

More info on Kiki Smith's exhibition at the Neuberger Museum

Kiki Smith tapestries at Artnet

More tapestries from Magnolia Editions

New Chuck Close tapestry edition

Chuck Close - Lucas, 2011
Jacquard tapestry, 87 x 74 in. Edition of 6
Chuck Close's first tapestry edition of 2011 is a portrait of the groundbreaking artist Lucas Samaras, who (like Close) is perhaps best known for his self-portraits. Samaras's work often involves one of Close's favorite photographic media – the Polaroid, which Samaras manipulates in innovative ways to produce "photo-transformations."

Close’s Lucas is woven at a more intimate size than his previous tapestries, and the unprecedented detail in its matte surface is due to a higher thread count and a new palette which includes wool fibers for several of the black values in the work. With darker blacks and brighter whites than any of Magnolia’s previous tapestry publications, this work has an exceptionally photographic quality appropriate to its subject.

Like his other tapestry editions depicting fellow artists and creative figures, Close's tapestry portrait of Samaras was digitally translated from a daguerreotype. Together with Cindy Sherman and Andres Serrano, also subjects of Close tapestries, and the painter Alex Katz (another artist who has created a tapestry with Magnolia Editions), these two artists are largely responsible for redefining contemporary portraiture: the extraordinary detail of Close's image and the sheer intensity of Samaras's gaze leave no doubt that both artist and subject are masters of their craft.

Chuck Close - Lucas Press Release (PDF, 179 Kb)

More art by Chuck Close at Magnolia Editions

UPDATE:

Here is a nice high resolution photo of Lucas at White Cube Gallery's booth at the Armory Fair in New York last month, courtesy of Artobserved.com (check their site for more photos from the fair):

photo by L. Streeter, Artobserved.com - click to enlarge