Exquisite Corpse Example

Leonard Baskin

Leonard Baskin, the crow, woodcut

Leonard Baskin had lived for 78 years. He was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey on the 15^th of August in the year 1922. Seventeen years later, he had gone on to the New York University School of Architecture and Applied Arts. A few years after, he was the winner of a scholarship to Yale. It was there that he had discovered a book in the library. The book had William Blake’s prints throughout the pages. Leonard was extremely impressed by the prints that he had gazed upon and decided to learn how to print and create his own books. In the year 1942, Baskin founded his own press and it was referred to as the Gehenna Press. He was still a Yale student. The press had printed over 100 books and ran until his death in the year 2000. Birds would be placed in his work frequently throughout his lifetime. He was influenced quite a bit by his Jewish upbringing, like his prints of the Haggadah and the Biblical Five Scrolls. He had worked on collaborations with his prints and poems from other poets. One of his collaborations has been read in almost every school through the US. The Crow was his best known collaboration. He also worked on figurative art during the abstract expressionism era. His feelings for this type of art were negatively strong, and it was not a secret. His work was displayed in more than 40 exhibitions throughout his lifetime.

Anthony Spencer

Elizabeth Catlett

Elizabeth Catlett, Sharecropper, 1968, Woodcut

Elizabeth Catlett was born on April 15^th, 1915. Most of her life was dedicated to her works of art. Her career spans over to 70 years. She painted paintings, and molded sculptures. Many of her pieces of art were ways to celebrate the strength and endurance of the Afro-American, and Mexican women. In order to give off the looks, emotions, and spiritual essences she used clear simple shapes. The essence of beauty that are in her subjects, are equally similar to the beauty in her work. Some say that her sculptures were haunting. Others thought that they were lovely. Many pieces of her work were a bit on the graphic side of the fence, but it was justified in the means to advance their cause. Her career as an artist was devoted to making the lives of Mexican and Afro-American women better.

by Anthony Spencer

Jacob Landau

“Earth Mother”
This print was Jacob Landaus first lithograph and was created on water marked paper in 1969.
http://www.artoftheprint.com/artistpages/landau_jacob_earth_mother.htm \

This print was Jacob Landaus first lithograph and was created on water marked paper in 1969.

http://www.artoftheprint.com/artistpages/landau_jacob_earth_mother.htm \

Landaus art work was looked at as fine art. He likes to explore the basic themes of humans in his art work. The art he created was inspired by prophets. He was a 20^th century lithographer, painter, illustrator and designer. Most of his prints consisted on long skinny detailed lines with cures creating human like features in his art. They also consisted with many shades of grey; there is white and black with lots of grey in between.

by Jones, Mackenzie Lynn

Leonard Baskin

Leonard Baskin, Man of Peace, 1952, 60″ x 31″

Leonard Baskin is widely considered one of the preeminent figures of 20th century American art. Creatively active for over five decades as a sculptor, printmaker, painter, illustrator, critic, book publisher, and educator, his work resonates with a rare degree of visual, social, and intellectual intensity.   Works by Leonard Baskin are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, The Nation Museum of American Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Seattle Art Museum, and the Vatican Museum.   Davidson Galleries maintains a diverse inventory of Baskin’s original prints, paintings, and sculptures.

Baskin found in wood engraving a way to depict both the inner maelstrom and the outer physicality of the human form at once. As his command of the medium grew, Baskin allowed his line to speak for itself, but he has never abandoned his political commitment. “Art,” he has said, “is content, or it is nothing.” The artist must be committed to making a statement.

Most of his work looks dark and scary. He used sinewy anatomical lines; delicate and twisted to depict both the inner maelstrom and the outer physically of the human form at once.

http://www.rmichelson.com/Artist_Pages/Leonard-Baskin/pages/Monumental-Woodcuts.html

by Keisha Parker

Surrealist Woodcuts

 

Escher created this surrealistic woodcut by combining several favorite design elements into a bizarre dreamscape. Escher had illustrated the insect sometime before, when an obliging mantis landed and posed upon his sketchbook.

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920’s and its best known for its visual artworks and writing. And the technique of woodcutting is a relief printing artist technique in which an image is carved into a surface of a block of wood.  So together they are visual paintings carved into wood for reuse.

 

Ukiyo-E/ Katsushika Hokusai Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker

Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints (or woodcuts) and paintings created between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of landscapes, tales from history, the theatre, and pleasure quarters. This was the main artistic genre of woodblock printing in Japan.

Usually the word ukiyo is literally translated as “floating world” in English, referring to a conception of an evanescent world, impermanent, fleeting beauty and a realm of entertainments (kabuki, courtesans, geisha) divorced from the responsibilities of the mundane, everyday world; “pictures of the floating world”,  ukiyo-e, are considered a genre in themselves.

Ukiyo-e can be categorized into two periods: the Edo period, which comprises ukiyo-e from its origins in the 1620s until about 1867, when the Meiji period began, lasting until 1912. The Edo period was largely a period of calm that provided an ideal environment for the development of the art in a commercial form; while the Meiji period is characterized by new influences as Japan opened up to the West.

There was is a drawn out process to the creation of Ukiyo-E prints. The artist produced a master drawing in ink. An assistant, called a hikkō, would then create a tracing (hanshita) of the master. Craftsmen glued the hanshita face-down to a block of wood and cut away the areas where the paper was white. This left the drawing, in reverse, as a relief print on the block, but destroyed the hanshita. This block was inked and printed, making near-exact copies of the original drawing. A first test copy, called a kyōgo-zuri, would be given to the artist for a final check. The prints were in turn glued, face-down, to blocks and those areas of the design which were to be printed in a particular color were left in relief. Each of these blocks printed at least one color in the final design. The resulting set of woodblocks were inked in different colors and sequentially impressed onto paper. The final print bore the impressions of each of the blocks, some printed more than once to obtain just the right depth of color.

Sources

A History of  the Ukiyo-E woodblock print. Retrieved September 16, 2012 http://www.ukiyoe-reproductions.com/html/history.html

Image 1. http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/ukiyoe/hokusai.html

Image 2 http://www.ukiyoe-reproductions.com/html/history.html

Image 3 http://zylanthe.deviantart.com/art/Ukiyo-e-199644073

by Kristin Alexander

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Katsushika Hokusai Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker

Hokusai, Katsushika. The Great Wave. Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Sept. 2012. <http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hokusai/great-wave.jpg&gt;.

Katsushika Hokusai was a Japanese artist who was a painter and a great printmaker of the Edo period, which today is modern Tokyo. He was influenced by Chinese paintings. His most popular work of art is his thirty-six views of Mount Fuji, which depicted multiple views of Mount Fuji in woodblock form. The most popular of the thirty-six views would be The Great Wave print, which illustrates boats be being tossed in the beautiful blue crashing waves and the green, snow topped mountain in the distance. All of his work was great, but The Great Wave brought him reorganization from western civilization, which in term influenced man artist across the world.

Sources:  Katsushika Hokusai.” Biography, Paintings, and Quotes. N.p., 2008. Web. 17 Sept. 2012. <http://www.katsushikahokusai.com/&gt;.

“Katsushika Hokusai Biography.” Katsushika Hokusai Biography. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Sept. 2012. <http://www.katsushikahokusai.org/biography.html&gt;.

Alexandria Robinson