The Unfinished Print Book

The question of "finish" in the artistic endeavour has been regarded with increasing fascination since the Renaissance. In the graphic arts this question has involved what it means to achieve aesthetic resolution in printmaking. This book investigates the history of finish and unfinish in printmaking from the 15th to the early 20th century. Historically speaking, proof impressions establish a partial record of the artist's procedure and, like drawings done in preparation for a painting or sculpture, they allow us to trace the thinking that attends the making of any work of art. Yet unlike these other media, printed proofs record exact stages in the evolution of the actual image itself. Printmakers have always been aware of the value of this process; certainly for Rembrandt, printmaker among printmakers, the revelation of creative process through successive states and differing impressions became fundamental to the concept of invention. But over time, collectors began also to take an interest in the various states of a print, which acquired value in their own right. The opening essay of this work examines the problem of finish in printmaking in its broader intellectual and cultural context. The second essay examines Rembrandt's radically experimental series of sketch-sheet etchings, and the final essay analyzes the extraordinary set of proof impressions of a multi-plate colour etching by Jacques Villon, a project that unveils the artist's break out of the aesthetic of the belle epoque and into modernity.Read More