Singular impressions. The monotype in America.

Ein gutes und sauberes Exemplar. - The monotype is a "printed drawing" made with ink or oil paint on a smooth surface such as glass or a metal plate and then pressed onto paper before the image has dried. The medium has appealed to American artists since the early 1880s, when an etching revival inspired interest in the uniquely wiped plates of Rembrandt and Whistler. Throughout the twentieth century, artists have relished the simplicity of the technique and the spontaneity of its chance effects, but when the monotype reemerged as a popular printmaking process during the 1970s and 1980s, few were aware of its history. This comprehensive survey of the monotype in America discusses the work of more than one hundred artists who, attracted by the medium's intimacy and freedom, made prints ranging from the romantic, pastoral landscapes of Bostonian Charles Alvah Walker to the Savarin-can "self-portraits" of Jasper Johns. Whether created as a brief fling with the technique by John Singer Sargent or as a sustained exploration of its subtleties by Maurice Prendergast, monotypes have attracted countless artists who usually work in other media. Describing how artists invented new methods and variations on the basic process, Joann Moser analyzes the role of the monotype in the "Black and White" exhibitions of New York's Salmagundi Club, at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, and in 1920s artists' communities from Provincetown to Taos. It was not until the 1970s that the monotype emerged as an alternative to the technical, structured enterprise that printmaking had become. Recognizing no rules or boundaries, artists pushed the previous limits of the medium to create a richer, more complex, more versatile means of expression. ISBN 9781560987376