Not translated: Das Feature zu Henry James´ gesammelten Essays zur Illustrationskunst, die 1893 unter dem Titel Picture and Text im Verlag Harper & Brothers in New York erschienen sind, gibt ausschnitthaft und in collagierter Form einige Passagen aus der kommentierten deutschen Erstübersetzung wieder, die jetzt im Piet Meyer Verlag erschienen ist. Das Vorwort stammt von […]
Not translated: Das Feature zu Henry James´ gesammelten Essays zur Illustrationskunst, die 1893 unter dem Titel Picture and Text im Verlag Harper & Brothers in New York erschienen sind, gibt ausschnitthaft und in collagierter Form einige Passagen aus der kommentierten deutschen Erstübersetzung wieder, die jetzt im Piet Meyer Verlag erschienen ist. Das Vorwort stammt von […]
Not translated: Der nachfolgende historische Beitrag von Sylvester Rosa Koehler wurde verfasst für Carl von Lützow´s Monumentalwerk „Der Holzschnitt der Gegenwart in Europa und Nord-Amerika“, Wien 1887. Koehler, geb. 1837 in Leipzig, war lange Zeit Chefkurator für Druckgrafik am Museum of Fine Arts in Boston und einer der wichtigsten amerikanischen Kunstschriftsteller des 19. Jhds. Sein […]
Not translated: Einleitung: Wie kein anderes Kulturlabel hat sich die Marke Andy Warhol als Inbegriff einer produktiven Symbiose von Kunst und Kommerz, von Gebrauchskunst und Kunstkunst durchgesetzt. Er hatte sich in seiner frühen Pittsburgher Studienjahren vor allem an den Arbeiten seines künstlerischen Idols, des amerikanischen Malers und Fotografen Ben Shahn orientiert. Der gemeinsame polnische Migrationshintergrund […]
A picture spread with material from the archive of the Melton Prior Institute, Düsseldorf, in cooperation with the exhibition “Im Zeichen des Protests / Drawing Protest”, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, 19.10.2013 – 09.01.2014, curated by Olga Vostretsova 01) Barthel Beham, “Der Welt Lauf” (The course of the world), copper engraving, Nuremberg 1525 The artist […]
Summary of an interview with the xylographer Rudolf Rieß who was born in Nuremberg in 1935. The interview was conducted on 01/18 and 01/19/2013 during a xylographic workshop of the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design in Bodman. Rudolf Rieß is the last practicing xylographer who learnt the craft of xylography as a skilled […]
In the exhibition Porter/Re-porter, on view from 4 May to 22 September in the frame of “Cube. Sparda Art Award” at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Alexander Roob combines materials from the collection of the Melton Prior Institute with works of his own, including a longer excerpt from the eponymous CS drawing series created in London in […]
Cliché-verre is an ambivalent thing, an inanity, the zero point in the graphic arts of the second half of the 19th century, to cite the opinion of Roland Barthes.(1) The wide variety of terms used to describe this phenomenon in itself speaks volumes: “dessin sur verre pour photographie”, “photogenic drawing”, “dessin héliographique”, “Hyalographie” (glass print), […]
“With the new school nothing is theoretically impossible, and no means are illegitimate.” (Frederick Juengling, 1880) Wood engraving, actually a product of early English Romanticism, experienced its breakthrough with the rise of the illustrated press. Its phenomenal success owed to its hybridity, for it combined the fine mechanical quality of copper engraving with the advantages […]
Lintoniana IX God send the Indian luck! / Success to the buck! / May his scalps be many and quick! / Guard his war, O Lord! through the thick / Of his foes! Give him luck! (W.J. Linton, 1871) In 1866 William James Linton moved to New York because, as he confessed in his autobiography, […]
Lintoniana VIII Infinite Spaces. On William James Linton’s Vignette Art “With the separation of draftsman and engraver began the decline of engraving as an art (…) began a system of special employment; and having to depend on draftsmen, engravers ceased to draw, ceased to rely on themselves. Wanting the wider power, the enevitable course was […]
On the Formations of Political Art and Wood Engraving William James Linton has left behind an immense body of artistic work. He executed thousands of commissioned and autonomously conceived engravings, a number of paintings and watercolours; moreover, he served as editor to several journals, ran his own private presses, contributed hundreds of poems and polemics […]
Lintoniana VI What had laid the foundations for Linton’s reputation as a leading proponent of artistic xylography in the 19th century was the extraordinary intensity of his landscape depictions and the graphic freedom that he allowed himself to this end. The apex of his decade-long landscape work was marked in the mid 1860s by the […]
In addition to a number of studies on the flora of the Lakes, two sketchbooks of Linton with landscape views have come down to us. One is in the collection of Yale University, another in the Linton-Archive of the Melton Prior Institute. The latter contains watercolours and drawings made during hikes in the North East […]
Lintoniana V “Never did corpse of hero on the battle-field, (…) exite such emotions as the stern simplicity of that hour, in which the principle of utility triumphed over the imagination and the heart.“ (The Monthly Repository, 1832) What did Linton actually mean when, at the end of his conversation piece Cetewayo and Dean Stanley, […]
Lintoniana IV “History will speak of me.” – On Linton’s colonial-critical dialogue William James Linton grasped himself foremost as a political artist. In the biographical appendix of the compilation of lyrics, English Verse. Lyrics of the 19th Century, which he edited in 1883 together with the renowned literary critic Richard Henry Stoddard, he left no […]
Lintoniana III “Men like no prosy tales: we’ll try How doggrel rhyme fits history.” The MePri-Collection holds four different copies of Linton’s groundbreaking social poem in which he accuses the afflictions caused by the inhuman legislation for the poor. “This poem established Linton as a peoples poet and became part of the repertoire of radical […]
The MePri Collection holds a wondrous scrapbook on wood engraving, affectionately combined and carefully lettered. The object was offered by a seller of autographs and announced as follows: “An autographed letter by William James Linton signed, to William Abercrombie, discussing his books, saying there is no large paper copy of the Hints. [on Wood-Engraving]. Tipped […]
Lintoniana I “We are Utopians, theorists, dreamers, enthusiasts, fanatics, madmen, in a word, we are republicans.” W.J. Linton, 1850 In December 1850, almost two years after the revolutionary hopes of a democratic change had been buried Europe-wide under a mantle of resignation and depression, radical artisan William James Linton began to proclaim his forceful vision […]