Reflections on Bill Jacklin’s Graphic Work Jill Lloyd
Fig. 1
The Rink, D, 1995 (detail) Monotype Image 28 x 23 in. (full page)
Bill Jacklin has a deep-rooted instinct for graphic art. As an artist for whom drawing – be it with the pen or the etching needle – is like breathing, the graphic medium of printmaking comes naturally and lies at the very heart of his work. Yet if Jacklin’s prints originate in his instinctive mastery of line, they are equally striking for their painterly qualities: they incorporate the free, expressive touch of an artist accustomed to exploring the fluid effects of paint and colour. Indeed, Jacklin’s graphic work occupies a magical threshold between drawing and painting. The very process of printmaking releases in the artist an intense yet liberating creative state that comes close to the focused mood of a child at play. For all his seriousness of purpose, printmaking frees Jacklin from the responsibility of large-scale work and reveals him at his most open and experimental. The artist is nevertheless only able to pursue this experimental path because he has an absolute mastery of his craft. Jacklin began to study graphics at the age of eighteen. When he returned to art school after briefly working as a commercial designer in the early 1960s, he gravitated naturally towards printmaking. Here Jacklin learnt the etching technique, which he favours doubtless because it is the graphic medium closest to drawing that also allows for atmospheric and textural
effects. Whether it was the drawn mark that scored the paper or the etching tool that scored the plate, Jacklin experienced line from the outset as a direct conduit of his thoughts and feelings about the world – clearly evident, for example, in the moving drawings he made in 1963 of his sick, alcoholic father, in which observation and emotion are balanced on a knife-edge. When he came to reformulate these moving drawings of his father as etchings, a highly experimental pathway opened up in Jacklin’s art. For example, while he was still learning about etching techniques he left one of the etched heads of his father in the acid bath for an entire weekend. Returning two days later he found the room blackened and steaming from the toxic fumes of the acid, and his etching plate shattered into several pieces. After washing the plate, Jacklin pieced it back together and printed Portrait of My Father (1963; p. 28), which incorporates the destruction wreaked by the acid in the fragmented image. The violence of this encounter with the darker side of the graphic medium is expressed not only through the shattered plate but also through the dramatic collision of deepest shadow with otherworldly light. Jacklin’s growing mastery of the etching medium came to the fore in the Anemones series of 1977 7
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(pp. 40–41), in which he records the petals of a vase of flowers gradually falling and being transformed into an abstract pattern. Jacklin worked on the seven prints of the series sequentially, executing the linear elements in hard-ground etching and the tonal areas in aquatint, which involved ten or more stages achieved in a single session. The key to the latter technique is to judge exactly the length of time that the acid bites: the longer the plate remains submerged, the darker the tonal areas become, and any subsequent modification risks compromising the aquatint’s vivacity and sparkle. The series displays Jacklin’s technical prowess. Each tonal variation is precisely judged, creating radiant effects that lie between velvet blacks and luminous whites. The play of light and shadow that the artist achieved in the Anemones series opened up new horizons with regard to the depiction of darkness and light and the metaphorical implications of this pairing. Moreover, working on the series with such intensity not only honed Jacklin’s skills but gave him the latitude to experiment and push the boundaries, confident that he had enough control over the medium to deviate from learnt techniques. Not all Jacklin’s motifs relate to the dark imagery evident in his heads of his father or the falling petals of a dying flower. On the contrary, the artist is committed
above all to an affirmation and celebration of life. What Jacklin discovered in the printmaking process was the power to create his own expressive universe through pushing the boundaries of the graphic medium to extremes. Although he responded at the time to the new lease of life given to printmaking by contemporaries like Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg in the 1960s, Jacklin felt a deeper, underlying affinity with etchings by Rembrandt that he had discovered as a young man, even purchasing a Rembrandt print from a large edition on a student trip to Paris, which he still keeps beside him in his studio. Jacklin was fascinated by the alchemical process that was reflected in the wide variations between different states of Rembrandt’s prints. Studying them closely, he observed how Rembrandt would move areas of light and darkness across the surface of his etchings by scraping away the original composition, polishing and redrawing, so that an area of shadow might move from one side of a print to the other. The resulting image emerged in a state of metamorphosis, like a living, breathing being. This process of transformation and growth that Jacklin witnessed in Rembrandt’s work stayed with him and deeply influenced his own approach to etching. Through continual experimentation – combining the effects of etching
Fig. 2
Self-portrait with Room, 1964 Lithograph Image 12½ x 28¾ in. Paper 14 x 30 in.
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The Play of Light and the Action of Shadows Nancy Campbell ‘Is it true that anything can be changed, seen in any light, and is not destroyed by the action of shadows?’ John Cage, 19611 ‘Each time I make a line I hope to reach out to both the physical world and the metaphysical world’ Bill Jacklin, 19712
Fig. 3
Anemones 6, 1977 (detail) Etching Image 12 x 8 in. Paper 25½ x 19½ in.
Margaret Priest, a fellow student at Walthamstow Art School in the 1960s, recalls Bill Jacklin carrying a giant sketchbook – at three feet by three feet, it was so large that he had to bind it himself – for his ‘outsize outdoor drawing project’.3 This ‘outdoor drawing’ has led Jacklin around the world, from Hampstead Heath, where he began to record his observations as a child, across London to New York and elsewhere in the United States, and to Venice and Hong Kong. Elected a Royal Academician in 1991 as a painter, Bill Jacklin has brought the drawn line to the heart of his practice. As an artist who paints in series, and often on an ambitious scale, it is through print that Jacklin has developed his ideas, whether through the monotypes he makes alongside paintings in his studio, or in portfolios such as the Anemones or Coney Island suites that are signal moments in his career. Printmaking has formed a significant part of Jacklin’s work from the outset. When he applied to the Royal College of Art in 1964 (having completed his National Diploma in Design at Walthamstow), it was to the printmaking department. This fell under the aegis of the graphics school and at the time the curriculum was ‘conservative’. 4 Jacklin had already studied lettering at Walthamstow and, needing to support himself financially, had worked as a graphic designer, 11
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firstly at the advertising agency Studio Seven, and then freelancing for major firms such as Ogilvy & Mather. He had no desire to repeat his earlier lessons, so he left the printmaking department, and – with the support of Peter Blake5 – reapplied for the painting school the following year. Yet graphics were to feature strongly in his final degree show. In Wall Environment (1967; fig. 4) the studio wall served as a base painting, hung with screenprints depicting a fire hydrant, a bucket and other mundane objects that were present in the space. Jacklin’s ‘collaged’ reflections of everyday reality reveal the influence of Robert Rauschenberg,6 who had begun to screen print images onto his canvases after being introduced to the technique by Andy Warhol in the early 1960s. Jacklin’s first experiments with print were not confined to this fashionable new technique. His most exciting student work is widely acknowledged to be Invitation Card (1963; fig. 6). Although the title might suggest otherwise, this is a three-dimensional work: a box containing six toy soldiers, in various stages of material breakdown. Jacklin recalls that he ‘made all the figures, shot them up with a .22 rifle, put acid on them by degrees, same as I might do with an aquatint, and the last one I gave a medal to’. This progressive degradation and decoration is early evidence of
Jacklin’s interest in series, repetition and erasure – concerns that were to be the foundation of his graphic work. In Soldiers II (1963; p. 25), a lithograph made the same year, the six mechanical figures appear in reverse: the violence exerted upon them expressed by jittery white lines scratched around the cuboid heads and the diminishing area of each khaki torso. Already Jacklin saw the possibilities of developing his ideas across different media. The medals awarded to the last soldier in Invitation Card were a gift from Peter Blake, but they recall the Military Cross and the Croix de Guerre with which Jacklin’s father was decorated during the First World War. The honours Harold Jacklin received could not obliterate his harrowing experience of conflict, which had contributed to the schizophrenia and alcoholism that were apparent by the time of his second marriage, to Jacklin’s mother Alice, in 1935. Jacklin was born in 1943, during the Second World War, ‘when the Doodlebugs were dropping on London’.7
Fig. 4
Wall Environment, 1967 Photo silkscreen panels on wall Fig. 5
Object ‘Fire Bucket’, 1968 Silkscreen Image 21½ x 14½ in. Paper 30 x 22 in.
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Opposite
Woman in a Chair, Series IV, 1983 Monotype 36 x 26½ in. (full page) Above left
Woman in a Chair, 1984 Lithograph Image 28 x 20¼ in. (full page) Above right
Woman in a Chair, 1985 Etching Image 6¾ x 5¼ in. Paper 15 x 11¼ in. Below right
Woman in a Chair, 1984 Monotype from offset lithograph Image 46½ x 34 in. (full page) 45
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Above
Girl in Deck Chair, 1992 Etching Image 9½ x 12¼ in. Paper 17¼ x 21½ in. Below
Coney Island Suite: The Benches, 1992 Etching Image 9½ x 12¼ in. Paper 17¼ x 21½ in. Opposite, above
Coney Island Suite: Coney Island Incident, 1992 Etching Image 9½ x 12¼ in. Paper 17¼ x 21½ in. Opposite, below
Coney Island Suite: The Bar, 1992 Etching Image 9½ x 12¼ in. Paper 17¼ x 21½ in. 50
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Opposite, above
Coney Island Suite: Bathers I, 1992 Etching Image 9½ x 12¼ in. Paper 17¼ x 21½ in. Opposite, below
Coney Island Suite: Bathers II, 1992 Etching Image 9½ x 12¼ in. Paper 17¼ x 21½ in. Above
Coney Island Suite: The Bather, 1992 Etching Image 12¼ x 9½ in. Paper 20¼ x 18½ in. Below
Coney Island Suite: Two Men Talking, 1992 Etching Image 12¼ x 9½ in. Paper 20¼ x 18½ in. 53
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Above left
Coney Island, 1991 Conté on paper Image 12½ x 9¼ in. (full page) Above right
People, Places, Things, 1991 Conté on paper Image 9¼ x 12½ in. (full page) Below
Towards the Sea, 1991 Conté on paper Image 9¼ x 12½ in. (full page) 54
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Coney Island Bathers IV, 1992 Coloured etching Image 9½ x 12¼ in. Paper 17¼ x 21½ in. 58
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Coney Island Bathers III, 1992 Etching Image 9½ x 12¼ in. Paper 17¼ x 21½ in. 59
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Opposite
Best in Show NYC, 2002 Etching Image 8¾ x 6¾ in. Paper 19¾ x 17 in. Above
Westminster Dog Show, 2010 Etching Image 10¾ x 13 in. Paper 20 x 21¼ in. Below left
Portuguese Water Dog, 2010 Etching Image 11½ x 10¼ in. Paper 20¾ x 19 in. Below right
Wire Haired Fox Terrier, 2010 Etching Image 11 x 9 in. Paper 18¾ x 14¾ in. 111
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New York Harbor II, 2003 Monotype Image 19¾ x 15¾ in. Paper 27 x 22½ in. 112
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Glossary of Bill Jacklin’s Printmaking Techniques Mychael Barratt
Bill Jacklin in his studio, January 2016. Photograph by Miggs Burroughs 154
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Aquatint Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique that is used for the creation of tonal effects and areas. The surface of a degreased copper or zinc plate is covered with a fine, powdered rosin; this can either be dusted on by hand, or the plate can be placed into an aquatint box where an even layer of rosin gently settles onto it. When the plate is then heated the rosin adheres to form tiny acid-resistant particles. The plate is then immersed into either ferric chloride or nitric acid to etch the plate around each particle, with the depth of tone being established by the length of time that the plate is in the acid. Protecting specific areas by painting on acid-resistant stop-out varnish for successive immersions creates variations in tone. Carborundum Carborundum printmaking is a collagraph technique used for printing dense tonal areas. Carborundum is an abrasive, sand-like powder that is affixed with glue to plates made of cardboard, wood, plastic or metal. Once the glue has completely set, the surface will hold an immense amount of ink, and can then be printed from. Variations in tone can be created by using larger quantities of glue and carborundum to print darker tones, or specific oil-based paint application to print lighter tones. Colours are determined by the choice of printing inks. Collagraph Collagraph printmaking refers to plates that have been built up generally with a collage of materials that have been glued to the surface. Traditional materials include glue, paper, fabric and carborundum. Prints taken from these surfaces generally have an embossed, three-dimensional nature. Coloured carborundum (see Carborundum) Drypoint Drypoint is a direct intaglio printmaking technique in which a sharp tool or nail is used to draw directly into a metal plate made of aluminium, copper, zinc or steel. The drawn line creates a raised metal burr that holds ink and creates prints with a softer, hazier appearance than is possible with etching. Etching Etching is a term that can be used to cover all intaglio printmaking techniques; however, it is usually used to refer to plates made using the techniques hard-ground etching, soft-ground etching and aquatint. In each of these a metal plate is immersed into a mordant such as nitric acid to bite into the surface. The etched marks will hold ink that will transfer to
paper once printed. Etching is also the verb that printmakers use to refer to the act of immersing the plate into acid. Grounding (see Rocking) Hard-ground etching Hard-ground etching is an intaglio printmaking technique in which lines are etched into a metal plate made of copper, zinc or steel. The surface of the plate is degreased and completely covered with a hard, waxy ground that is acid-resistant. The artist uses a tool to scratch through the surface of the ground, so that the lines or marks will expose the plate beneath to the acid when the plate is immersed. The tonal variation is controlled by the length of time that the plate is immersed. Inkjet print Inkjet printing is a computer printing technique that re-creates a digital image onto paper. An original digital print is not a replica of an image previously made in a different medium but a bespoke digital image that is created by the artist on a computer screen. The image is then printed on acid-free archival paper. Intaglio Intaglio is the comprehensive term that covers all techniques in which marks are made into the surface of a metal plate; these marks hold ink that will transfer to dampened paper when printed. The marks in the metal are made either by direct techniques such as drypoint, mezzotint and engraving, or by indirect techniques that use acid to etch into the surface of the plate. Linocut Linocut printing is a relief printmaking technique in which ink is rolled onto the surface of a carved piece of linoleum and then transferred to paper. An image is carved into the linoleum using tools with tips that are hollow, grooved or ‘V’-shaped depending on the specific marks needed, and the uncarved raised areas create the image. Firm rollers are used to roll ink over the raised surface of the block, which is then transferred to the paper either with a press or by rubbing on the back of the paper by hand. Mezzotint (also see Rocking) Mezzotint is the direct intaglio printmaking technique used to print large tonal areas with subtle variations. A drypoint tool with rows of small teeth, called a rocker, is used to roughen the surface of a copper or zinc plate systematically with thousands of tiny raised burrs that hold ink. Once prepared, a mezzotint plate will print a rich, velvety black. The image is made by polishing or burnishing highlights into the plate to create lighter tonal areas.
Monoprint While most printmaking techniques produce multiple editions, monoprints and monotypes are unique, one-off prints. There is an infinite range of techniques available to the monoprint artist and not all of them involve a printing press. Techniques that do involve a press include the expressive and unique inking of plates or blocks made using other techniques such as etching or woodcut; the inking and printing of various overlaid objects and elements; or the inking up of a plate in a painterly manner to be transferred to paper. An example of a monoprint that does not involve a press is when a drawing is done on the back of a piece of paper that has been laid onto a surface rolled with ink, thus transferring a mirror image of the drawing on the reverse. See also Monotype. Monotype A monotype is a monoprint in which no reusable element (such as an etching plate, woodblock or stencil) has been employed. Examples include printing from plates that have been inked up in a painterly manner, and creating an image by removing ink from a completely inked surface with rags or brushes or by spraying on solvents such as white spirit or lighter fluid. As a unique piece, the monoprint and monotype hold a status somewhere between the editioned print and a drawing or painting. Photogravure etching Photogravure is an intaglio printmaking technique. A copper plate is degreased and covered with a layer of aquatint. A light-sensitive gelatin paper is then exposed to a film positive before being placed on the copper plate. Once affixed to the plate the gelatin image will act as a resist when the plate is etched, re-creating all the subtleties of the original photograph. Machine-made photogravure plates have largely replaced this traditional technique. Photo silkscreen (see Screenprint)
surface of a plate in order to create a mezzotint. The tool is rocked back and forth in one direction over the surface of the plate until the surface is entirely covered with small, raised burrs. The plate is then turned slightly and the process repeated. To create a consistent grain this process should be repeated in slightly different directions at least 20 times. Screenprint Screenprinting is a technique in which a print is created by pushing ink through a piece of fabric or mesh. The mesh – traditionally made of silk but now more usually a synthetic fabric – is stretched over a frame and the non-printing areas of the mesh are blocked out using lacquer or glue. In the case of a photo silkscreen print, a light-sensitive resist is painted onto the screen so that when the screen is placed in an exposure unit with a negative, the image area is burned off depending on the light that reaches the screen. Ink is forced through the open areas of the mesh onto the paper using a rubber blade or squeegee. Soft-ground etching Soft-ground etching is an intaglio printmaking technique in which drawn lines and tones resembling pencil marks are etched into a metal plate made of copper, zinc or steel. First the plate is degreased and an acid-resistant, waxy ground is applied to it – this is softer than a hard ground and never hardens. The artist lays a piece of paper over the surface of the plate and draws onto the plate through the paper. When the paper is lifted, the ground is removed in a manner very closely resembling the drawn lines. The plate is then immersed in acid to etch the drawn lines and areas. This is a very sensitive technique and the ultimate printed image very closely resembles the original drawing. An artist can also etch patterns or textures by laying fabric, leaves or any other flat object onto the soft ground. The plate is then run through the press at a pressure much lower than that used for printing, before being etched.
Relief printing Relief printing describes any form of printmaking where only the raised parts of the printing plate or block are inked. The recessed parts of the image stay completely ink-free. The plate or block is inked using a firm roller to apply ink to the surface and is then printed either by hand or with a press. Relief printing techniques include woodcut, linocut, relief etching, letterpress, wood engraving and potato print. Rocking (or Grounding) Rocking is the act of using a tool called a rocker to systematically roughen the 155
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A limited edition of 50 copies of this book contains the following work: Bill Jacklin The Rink, 2016 Soft-ground etching on Somerset Satin White 300 g paper 11 x 8ž in. Edition of 50 copies, printed by Simon Lawson at Huguenot Editions, signed and numbered by Bill Jacklin
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