Professor, scholar and printmaker Andrew Raftery spoke with Grehchen Wagner, Curatorial Assistant from the Department of Prints and Illustrated books from the Museum of Modern Art, on Saturday, the 20th of September. We spent the month of September celebrating our one year anniversary and Printmaking. View the lecture.
Andrew Raftery (MFA, Yale University School of Art), a printmaker specializing in narrative engravings of contemporary American life, is an associate professor in the department of printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design. Raftery recently received a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship, and will use the fellowship period to complete an engraving project he's been working on for several years. "I would like to talk about the power of the artist as publisher, first by defining self-publishing for the audience. Then I would like to trace a few highlights from art history including Dürer and his enforcement of his copyright against Marcantonio in Venice, Diana Mantuana and her use of the Papal Privilege to ensure the copyrights to her work and of course Hogarth's lobbying for the act of parliament that created the first copyright laws for visual artists. I think these compelling examples can show how printmakers established their own agency within the larger culture. I would then like to talk about current practices in publishing and my own experiences as a self-publishing artist."
Gretchen L. Wagner (MA, Williams College) is a curatorial assistant in the department of prints and illustrated books at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Wagner has curated exhibitions at the D.U.M.B.O. Arts Center in Brooklyn, NY, the Tang Museum at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY, and the Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, among other institutions, in addition to acting on the programming and curatorial committees for WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution and Greater New York 2005 at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, NY. "In recent years, contemporary artists have taken printmaking into the realm of the super-size. Pointing to monumental works of past eras, such as Albrecht Dürer's woodcut Arch of Maximilian I, artists practicing today have embraced the medium to produce sprawling installations and environments in the gallery with dramatic effect. Large formats have also allowed individuals to place their works in exterior and public spaces, far more expansive then the typical interior setting. Outside, the works often take on meanings with social and political resonance. Closely following these developments in the medium, The Museum of Modern Art has recently acquired several projects by artists working in this manner, such as Gabriel Orozco, Nicola López, Nicolas Lampert, and Swoon, among others. This presentation will introduce some of these works, and the challenges involved in their museum display, as an investigation of this recent turn in printmaking and its impact on art produced in all mediums."
