Linton- Life in the Collections
Thomas Ketelsen, Alexander Roob ed.:
67) Zur Hölle mit der Linie. Die Fotografik der New School of Wood Engraving
Cologne 2012
Catalogue of the exhibition "Confound the Line. Photo-Graphics of the New School of Wood Engraving"(from the collection of the Melton Prior Institute) in the Wallraf Richartz - Museum in Cologne
The catalogue includes an essay by Alexander Roob about the New School and their "Chinese Method" of self-extinction. With the so-called Kelly engravings the young engravers of the emerging New School radically broke with the linear codes of the reproduction-graphical orthodoxy. The attacks of William James Linton against the, in his opinion, totally expressionless and unartistic new reproduction methods triggered a much-noticed and enduring debate in the American press. This debate, which inspired the graphic historian William Ivins in the 1940s to his seminal work “Prints and Visual Communication”, can be regarded as the starting point of modern communication and media theory. As opposed to their European colleagues, the photo xylographers of the New School succeeded in establishing wood engraving as a self-confident, artistic medium. Long before Pop Art, their works combined the prestige of artistic production with the indifference of photographic reproduction. Their signed handmade prints on Japan paper were marketed by leading galleries of the time and shown in museums and world fairs. Proponents of the New School, such as the legendary, short-lived Frederick Juengling from Leipzig, the Düsseldorfer Gustav Kruell, the Alsatian Henry Wolf, and Timothy Cole from London, were stars regarded as equals alongside their befriended, Impressionist painter colleagues.
Timothy Cole - Emblem of the Society of American Wood Engravers (SAWE)
W.J. Linton - Timothy Cole: After John Constable (Detail)
Timothy Cole: Woodblocks and Prints after Mantegna and Velasquez
Timothy Cole: Whistler´s Mother
Henry Wolf: Whistler´s Mother
Henry Wolf: Henry Mills Alden
Henry Wolf, after Whistler / Portrait Henry Irving (deleted plate, signed)
Henry Wolf, Portrait Henry Irving (Proofs)