Mary Cassatt-- prints

1890, Tea, drypoint



1890-1, The Letter, drypoint and aquatint





Mary Cassatt was born in the American state of Pennsylvania in 1844, and moved to Paris in 1866, where she then spent most of her adult life. In 1877 she began showing her work with the impressionists. She became friends with these artists, especially Edgar Degas, who taught her the process of etching, a printmaking technique. She continued to work in largely an impressionist manner until 1914. Her health had been going downhill until that point, but in that year she became almost completely blind. She still exhibited her work and supported the womens' suffrage movement thereafter, and she died in 1926. Today's works on the show are prints that she made in the first years of the 1890's.


“Tea” was part of a series of drypoint prints that Mary Cassatt made in 1890. The drypoint technique was simpler for the artist working at home than traditional etching. In the various kinds of etching, lines in black in the final print are produced on a metal plate by creating lines in the metal that are etched away, or otherwise lower than the main portion of the surface. In etching, this is accomplished first, by coating the metal in an acid resistant material, scratching away the parts of this material in areas that are to be printed black, and then soaking the entire metal in acid. The longer this is done, the deeper the lines will be, and the darker they will be printed. Drypoint, on the other hand, does not require acid. The lines to be printed are scratched directly into the metal. There is no way to alter mistakes—every scratch is permanent. But the medium was more convenient than etching for Cassatt, and she made a series of drypoints from 1890 to 1891, two of which are included in the show today.

“Tea” shows a young woman seated at a table, in front of a black wall. She is facing off to the right, with that arm thrown up on to the top of the chair, and her elbow bent down, holding an Asian paper fan. Her arms are bare; it is somewhat unclear, but it appears that her dress has sleeves that only cover the shoulders. The surface of the table extends to the middle of the image, with its corner cutting in front of the woman's stomach. The dark teacup is set on the table, but the woman does on touch it. She looks bored, or upset.

What is unusual about this image, yet typical to this series of prints that Cassatt made, is the combination of finished and unfinished qualities. The drawing of the woman looks most finished, especially around her face. There is a delicate, lifelike use of faint gray tones, which are actually derived from shallow hatch marks, a series of thin, pale, diagonal lines. Her skin is full of subtle tonal variation, that make a realistic representation of shadows, curves, and bones. Her facial expression stands out quite a lot. She is frowning, and she appears to have been sitting there motionless for quite a while. She frowns, and looks away from the viewer. Her eye at the left seems to droop a little, as though she is not focusing on looking at anything, because of a subtle, but visible, line above indicating an eyelid's wrinkle. She looks distressed, possibly tired, perhaps waiting for something, although there is not a definite narrative that emerges from her expression. Though this print was made in 1890, placing it in the post-impressionist period, this snapshot quality is one that is characteristic of impressionist works. The focus is not on getting a definitive narrative, telling exactly what is going on, but on capturing the feeling, the particular ephemeral moment in life.

If anything else in this print can be said to have been drawn almost as realistically as the woman's skin, it is her teacup. But in this, even, the lights and darks are quite exaggerated, and there isn't a huge amount of variation. This teacup is where the title of the piece comes from, yet, compared to the figure, it seems a rather unimportant object. It's unimportant artistically, and this corresponds to its role in what is being depicted—the woman does not seem to care about her tea. Her focus is on her feelings, or on whatever is distressing her. If anything, the tea is something added as a distractive mechanism, and it fails even at that.

Everything else in the work looks quite unfinished. There's a vase of flowers, which is drawn as a blur of light spaces upon the black wall. The lines on the wall and on the flowers are still hatched, all parallel like the lines making the values of gray on the woman's skin, but they are rendered in a looser manner. The wall is a dark mass of vertical lines, and the flowers are vaguely arranged spaces of diagonal lines.

The lines that make up the table are even more loose. They are certainly not always going in the same direction; they are in fact rather a lot like quick scribbles added to get an appropriate tone quickly. The table's edges themselves show a use of distorted perspective, that can be seen in other prints by this artist from about the same time, and for some time later. The table seems to be tilted in some odd fashion, as though it's not completely flat. But we can infer that it is flat, since the teacup and flowerpot appear stable and vertical. The table is simply distorted for effect, made to look more like a simple, pure, geometric shape than it even already is. It does not seem to have thickness, as much as a series of extra decorative lines around the edges. The scribbled hatch marks that cover most of the space on the table simply serve to add to this distorted quality of the table. The table's surface even appears to be floating, since it is drawn without legs. Again, this has a purpose given the subject. It is disoriented and flattened and quickly rendered, just as the woman's surroundings, from her point of view, might be flattened. It's just this surface that's there, in front of her. Since she's focusing probably on her feelings, we can infer, she is not regarding her surroundings very much.

Everything else in the image, the area below the table, the woman's skirts, the visible parts of the back of her chair, and the fan she is holding to the right of the image, are left almost entirely blank. There are only the fewest possible lines drawn, and these are quite pale in character. They look like gestural lines, drawn very quickly, en plen air, as one would draw as this event was happening. It is most certainly an incomplete look.

This idea of a work of art that looks incomplete can be traced back to the first impressionists, who were criticised, among many other things, for seemingly leaving their canvases unfinished. There isn't an attempt at getting every detail perfectly rendered, or smoothing out the texture of the paint—what is more important is that original feeling of the scene. And this, the act of capturing something most immediate, was considered by some artists a more realistic representation of the scene, less distorted by the changes in mind set over the course of numerous hours of work.

“Tea,” and Cassatt's other prints from this series, basically extend this. Drypoint is a more quick, direct process than acid based etching, making it ideal for this kind of work. The difference in medium naturally produces a different result. Scratching into metal is something more like a very permanent kind of drawing, than painting with oil based pigments of various colors. So, the natural incomplete state is a messy collection of lines, just sufficient to get an idea of what is there, while leaving much of the rest of the space white. It is quite a lot more incomplete than many of the original impressionist landscapes and figures, yet it still shares the essential goals of impressionist work. The most important parts of the print are emphasised—the woman and her expression—and what is unnecessary, or just incidental, is left unfinished. So in viewing this work, one perceives something closer to what one would perceive is one found this woman sitting in a cafe, or if one were this woman, experiencing what she is experiencing.

“The Letter” is another print, from 1890 to 1891, shortly after “Tea.” “The Letter” shows a woman seated in front of a small desk, facing to the right, bringing the tip of an envelope to her mouth to seal a letter. It uses both drypoint and aquatint techniques, using a black drypoint layer primarily for thin outlines of the image, but also for the entirety of the woman's black hair and some gray details of lace on her dress; and this is combined with several layers of aquatint, to produce colors, in a manner that looks somewhat like watercolors, though being a printmaking method, multiple copies of each image can be produced.

Cassatt's aquatints of this period show the influence of Japanese wood block prints; this is visible in “The Letter,” stylistically, with the use of large blocks of solid color, which were common in Japanese prints of the time produced from multiple wood block prints, and with the use of floral patterns covering the wallpaper of the interior space and the woman's dress. Indeed, even the subject of this particular print can be traced to Japanese influence, in particular images of geishas shown flirtatiously kissing their handkerchieves, a gesture somewhat similar to the sealing of the letter, which Cassatt depicts.

Cassatt's image, though, is not pure mimicry of an exotic culture; it is full of qualities all its own. It has its own odd, rather disorienting effect that emerges after a long look at the print. This is largely the result of the distorted space depicted, and the use of a repeated floral pattern. There's a table to the desk shown at the lower right side of the print, yet most of the right side is pressed in by the desk's large shelf, which extends higher even than the woman's head. It is seen as a flat brown rectangle, like a Greek column in visual function and proportions, topped with a dim yellow stripe, which is decorated with a subtle series of white dots in a line. The table itself is quite similar to the table in “Tea”-- it appears thin and membrane-like, though less than the table in “Tea,” as this table shows the use of the multiple colors, a deep blue surface and an edge of the same brown as the shelves, to create a slight three dimensional impression, although this impression is certainly a weak one, and it remains quite unrealistic. In addition its perspective is rather distorted, as though the upper line that forms its far side has too strong a diagonal, and should be more horizontal; this creates the impression that the table itself is being twisted and bent, like it's a cut fragment of a helical ribbon. The brown outline's thickness varies around the table, though everywhere it is composed from tight, thin, extremely straight outlines. The lowest edge of the table, which is nearest to the viewer, has these lines set diagonally so that it becomes wider nearer to the right side, cut off from sight by the attached shelving unit. This just accents the distortion of the table's perspective; its edges seem overly tight and straight, and its helical perspective makes it seem, visually, as though it is in motion.

The space shown is kept tight by the use of the shelving unit on the desk, and the somewhat symmetrical element of the back of the woman's chair. It does not extend as high, and its lines are less tightly, perfectly straight, but it makes use of the same brown color. It is also rather flat, like the shelf. The use of flat, solid blocks of color with the aquatint technique creates spaces that are separated visually by color, and by an imperfect edge, which sometimes leaves little pieces of lines of the uncoloured paper visible. The space is tightly compressed into the narrow picture plane, the table is distorted into a helical form that seems to be in motion, and the large majority of the rest of the space is covered in a messy floral pattern. It is not rendered in an exactly detailed fashion, but in a more impressionistic way, because of the nature of the aquatint medium. This is especially true of the wallpaper, which is composed of multiple colors on an uncoloured background, and is for the most part lacking in any outlining from the drypoint. Thin lines form stems, but the leaves and flower buds are simple daubs of colour. The flowers look like a dull pink—really though, they are simply a thinner layer of the brown pigment of the chair and desk shelves. This is combined with yellow and blue, variously mixed, to create tones of green. The flowers swirl, and float around; their stems make indefinite shapes, sprawling in all directions. The pattern of the dress is more definite, composed of a particular shape repeated over the surface of the fabric—two yellow arcs, like palm fronds, that bend together and form a circle, set upon a deep blue surface. It is repeated regularly over the dress's fabric, but is still rather irregular due to the folds within the dress. The pattern itself shows a use of stronger contrast, so it is more immediately seen. Though even with this difference taken into account, there is still a good sense of visual continuity between the dress and the wallpaper, because of the commonality in the use of a swirling floral pattern.

While there is an unusual sense of continuity between these elements, the use of solid blocks of tone make for an unusual sense of disconnect between other spaces. The most evident example is that between the blue that makes up most of the woman's dress, and the pale pink that makes up a layer of a lacy, button-down shirt over most of the front of the woman's chest, through the dress's neckline. Its paler color makes it look nearer than the blue of the dress, though it is actually a layer of fabric under the dress. The blue, being darker, recedes visually. The hands that hold the envelope have a similar effect, but less pronounced, especially because of the complete lack of shading over the skin. Outlines of fingers, skin folds in the palm, and fingernails are denoted by the use of lines in the drypoint layer, but this is all. The space is a flat, thin, pale brown or ochre. This kind of detachment is also visible between the back of the woman's chair and the back of her dress, which are both made from thin, incomplete layers of their respective colours. The woman seems to be floating upon the chair consequently.

There are all of these effects that combine into rather a disorienting image—the detachment between spaces of colors that should be connected, the continuity in pattern between the dress and the wallpaper, the continuous flowering swirls, and the helical, seemingly bent, moving table, compressed into a narrow space by two tall brown columns. All of this occurs around a seemingly entirely mundane, domestic task—the sealing of a letter, preparing it to be sent. There is only this gesture shown, none of the context of the event is depicted. We know nothing of the nature of the letter, whether it is something useless or important, something related to dry matters of business, or a more emotional, personal correspondence. As is characteristic of impressionist art, we only get an ephemeral, momentary glance at the scene, a scene that itself shows only a restrained gesture of an action, without context.

Alexander Calder

1943, Constellation



1934, A Universe



UNESCO Spiral



Alexander Calder was a sculptor, who lived from 1898 to 1976. He produced art from the 1920's and continuously after. His sculptures from the twenties often produce the illusion of mass using thin wires. Later, he made mobile sculptures, for which he is most well known. These began in the early thirties, and after this he continuously elaborated on the idea.

The first sculpture here is an immobile structure, one of the constellation pieces, built in 1943. This is considerably later than the mobile sculptures began, showing that he was still working in a variety of styles contemporaneously. In the constellations, of which there are quite many, abstract, three dimensional shapes are scattered about, separated and suspended in air by a stiff wire. These are organic forms, composed of hard, curved lines, and sharp edges. Even though technically these are termed “organic” forms, as they are composed of curved lines, they are most definitively nonliving—their edges are still strong, and they often do not look like something that is naturally occurring. Instead, they look like pieces of wood that have been shaped by conscious human effort. They are spread apart by the wires, which make the constellation-like shape. What is unusual about this, is that the structures so openly contradict the basic understanding of a constellation. Constellations are human contrivances. The constellations that we are now familiar with are Roman in origin; the various Native American tribes and other cultures created entirely different constellations, independently. This variety of forms identified is the result of the basic human tendency to see patterns in random signals. It is an evolved psychological characteristic—it is better to see a pattern that does not exist, than to fail to see a something that is present, like a hiding predator, or potential food. The pattern of stars seen in the sky is the result of massive objects, casting off a huge amount of energy in light and heat, scattered around our galaxy, over thousands of light years. It is an extremely vast amount of space, yet with everything so distant, it becomes flattened into a particular arrangement of light dots from the vantage point of the Earth. Constellations are built from this flat image, not from the three dimensional arrangement that actually exists. Lines are added between two or more stars that appear close to each other, even though, in the third dimension in the distant space which we cannot see, these two stars might actually be hundreds or thousands of light years away. Calder's sculptures add the third dimension back to the form. Calder's works do not seem to make pictures of soldiers or animals as constellations in the sky do. Their whole form is a geometric abstraction, and it doesn't purport to be anything other than a scattering of forms. The focus is placed on the objects, and the thin, flimsy lines that connect them. This is radically different from the understanding of constellations in the sky, in which the stars and their lines are almost incidental, and the main focus is the total form which is perceived and imposed onto the stars, and the space between them, a form which is usually something living—an animal, a human, or a mythological creature. Calder doesn't offer any such representative idea with his sculptures; the only title is “constellation,” but there is no sense of any particular constellation. There are only the lines, the massive shapes, and the open space between them.

Also shown is “A Universe,” of 1934. It's set on a wooden base, with a thicker curved bar, with something like a bent helical form, rising up, and holding the main circular form, made of wire. From both of these elements, two small spheres are suspended from wire. So, the motion of the sculpture is guided by the circular form, orbiting. Ultimately, Calder found this style of mobile sculpture excessively predictable. According to one anecdote, Albert Einstein saw this structure in New York, at the Museum of Modern Art, and gazed at it for forty minutes, carefully watching it rotate, before declaring that he wished that he had created it. After this, Calder was persuaded to continue these structures for a while, but ultimately still found even the best of them, in his words, “apt to be mechanically repetitious.” This particular sculpture, though, derives an additional humorous quality from its title, “A Universe,” and the disconnect between that and the apparent simplicity of the structure itself. There are possibly two or three small spheres which may be considered planets, orbiting along one sphere of wire, to which they are connected. In both A Universe and Constellation, there is an allusion to these grand, expansive, astrophysical spaces. However Calder was also quite vigorously opposed to the attachment of symbolism to his work. Regarding a large outdoor mobile, the UNESCO spiral, the art dealer George Staempfli once asked about symbolic meaning in his work. Calder responded, “Well, it goes up, something like a flame. But there's no history attached.” His wife apologised for him, “Sorry,.. Sandy is probably as unsymbolic a person as I know.” This little anecdote was recounted in an article by this art dealer, and it is quite illustrative of Calder's opposition to symbolism in his own work in particular, and also of the art scene at the time. This trait is one that Calder shared with many of the abstract expressionist painters, in which allusions might be made to grand philosophical realisations, or the basic human condition, but the work itself does not make use of direct symbolism or representation of these concepts.

The rest of this show will now be spent on the sound which accompanied a short film on Calder's work. It was composed by John Cage in 1950, and the film itself was made by Herbert Matter, and called “Works of Calder”. The film runs for just over 20 minutes, and contains narration from Burgess Meredith, who brought up the idea of making a film on Calder's work. The music itself uses primarily the sounds of Cage's prepared piano technique, in which foreign objects, like bits of metal and plastic, bolts, toys, pencils and the like, are placed about on the strings of the piano, distorting the pitches and making a more percussive timbre. This is combined with recorded sounds of Calder at work, hammering at his sheets of metal.