Missouri-born Nick Cave (a SLAM favorite) broke out from the expected print form. In keeping with his reputation, Cave put aside traditional techniques and mediums when he accepted an invitation to work at Washington
University’s Island Press in 2000. He expanded the definition of what we call a print by combining it with textile and sculpture. Cave’s MASS 2000, a collagraph on two sheets and the collagraphic plate used to create it, hangs as a triptych and homage to those affected by HIV/AIDS. The plate was produced by sewing together button-down shirts collected from Goodwill Industries stores around St. Louis and coating them with acrylic. Analogous to the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, the work represents the often silent (and in this project anonymous) suffering brought by HIV/AIDS. Cave’s contribution to this massive collection of artworks labeled “print” is hardly the most
unorthodox. Richard Artschwager’s Locations Hair Blp consists of rubberized horsehair laminated in Formica. With a wry nod to the dry art humor in Artschwager’s conceptual art conceit, his artworks were hung in strange places throughout the galleries. Rosa Lee Lovell lived on Delmar in University City during the 1960s. Her screen print, Figure Group Series, captures the defining spirit of the mod movement with a silhouette of three on-the-move people on a taupe background framed by orange, red and green bands. Inside each frame are dusk-blue photographs. Some of the photos are of that era’s trendy “mods.” Others are of urban details including the old Tivoli Theater sign. Figure Group Series is an excellent example of the juxtaposition of geometric design with photography that was common in the 1960s print movement. One stunner — Epigraph, Damascus — a photogravure aquatint in six panels by Julie Mehretu, is ostensibly a landscape of Damascus referencing the Syrian civil war. I didn’t know that when I first saw it. I was simply struck by the extremely deft, bold, gestural marks reminiscent of Philip Guston’s best abstract expressionism. Then I saw the perfectly rendered architectural details of Damascus underneath all the gestural work and the nature of the abstraction changed. The marks became flying debris, figures fleeing, embers, the trails of bombs and ghosts. Mehretu says, “There is no such thing as just landscape.” I take her to mean that landscape, at its best, holds a narrative. In that sense, Graphic Revolution set forth a modern landscape of print. With all the intrinsic malleability that makes the medium uniquely suited to capture the zeitgeist of any time, the story of print could have been told countless ways. That SLAM chose to tell it the way it did, an inclusive and forward-thinking way, was a win for St. Louis. Exhibition was open Nov. 11, 2018 - Feb. 3, 2019 -Tim McAvin
www.slam.org
Claes Oldenburg, Tea Bag (image courtesy of Saint Louis Art Museum) IN REVIEW
SPRING 2019 ALLTHEARTSTL.COM 04
IN REVIEW
The diverse and robust collection of prints could have suffered from a sense of feel-good-inclusion, but it didn’t. Separated into seven sections, each grouping had a near perfect balance of familiar and esoteric work. On my first visit, I was excited about Warhol’s Soup Cans, Josef Albers’ White Line Squares, Lichtenstein’s woodcuts, and Rauschenberg's very first prints, License and Breakthrough I. On later visits, I spent more time checking out the methods and materials used by artists who weren’t household names.
