Imprint Exhibition

CORITA KENT (American, 1918—1986) news of the week, 1969 Serigraph Purchased through the Legler Benbough Student Acquisition Fund by Rose Guth, Mina Krenz, Caroline Leinung, and Samantha Mercer, PC2015.03.01

Making her art a form of activism, the artist (and one-time Catholic nun) Corita Kent challenged governments, the Church, and individuals to fight for social justice in an unjust world. In this work, Kent critiques U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Combining elements from mass media—including recent covers from both Newsweek and Life magazines—with a diagram of a slave ship and a passage from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Kent makes connections between the violence of the war and the legacy of slavery. The artist creates a more confrontational piece through her use of striking colors and a vertical composition. Kent aimed to get her message across on a large scale; serigraphy, also known as silkscreen printing, was her favored medium for its ease of circulation and because it allowed her work to be produced in multiple, spreading her words to a wider audience.

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG (American, 1925—2008) Support, 1973 Serigraph Purchased through the Legler Benbough Student Accquistion Fund by Madison Burningham, Charles Madruga, Michael Musselman, Abby Schrader, and Victoria Simon, PC2015.02.01

Robert Rauschenberg produced Support as a response to a major earthquake that struck the Nicaraguan capital of Managua in 1972, claiming five thousand lives and displacing two-thirds of the city’s 325,000 residents. Proceeds from the sale of this print benefitted the Pan American Development Foundation, which provided direct aid to victims of the disaster. The print references the earthquake through an assortment of appropriated massmedia imagery, ranging from a bald eagle to a hand holding a pen that points toward the word “help” in a reversed headline. Rauschenberg employs an approach similar to the one he used for his “combines,” works where incorporated found objects and appropriated photographs in a seemingly random—but nevertheless calculated— manner. The artist believed that art should relate to “both art and life. Neither can be made.” Following this belief, he created densely layered images that move between these realms in a constant dialogue with viewers and their surrounding world.

GARY SIMMONS (American, b. 1964) Starlite Theatre, 2012 Soap-ground aquatint and aquatint, printed in three colors Purchased through the Legler Benbough Student Acquisition Fund by London Mahaffey, Daniel Rebagliati, and Alexandra Smith-Farina, PC2016.01.01

Gary Simmons is best known for his distinctive “erasure” technique, in which he smudges a drawing by wiping its surface, partially obscuring or erasing his image in the process. His early works employed chalk on blackboard, but he later mimicked the same effects in his paintings, murals, and works on paper. The resulting blurred images have a phantom-like quality. Many of Simmons’s works have connections to American history, pop culture, race, and class, and their process suggests attempts to erase their subject matter from our historical consciousness. Starlite Theatre, from his drivein movie series, depicts the road sign for Dallas’s Starlite Drive-In, one of the few theaters in Texas to permit African-American patrons during the 1950s.

Simmons’s spotlight on this theater points to the complexity of American history, recalling a past of segregation and discrimination that might otherwise be forgotten or obscured.

TIAGO GUALBERTO (Brazilian, b. 1983) Pay Per Doll I, 2012 Two-color lithograph University Purchase in Honor of Peter Ellsworth and the Legler Benbough Foundation, PC2014.08.01

The play on words in Tiago Gualberto’s Pay Per Doll I suggests both “paper dolls,” the child’s game of changing a figure’s identity by changing its outfit, and also “pay per” doll, referring to the service work implied by several of the outfits shown as well as the commodified nature of modern identity. The “doll,” at bottom center, is an indigenous Brazilian woman surrounded by an assortment of apparel and accessories. The viewer is invited to formulate a new persona for her by changing her clothes and hairstyle. The options, however, are limited; they include a maid’s uniform and what appears to be the exotic costume of a performer.

Such “dress up” also masks the figure’s ethnic identity in favor of the illusion of choice offered by the modern first world. This work reflects Gualberto’s concerns about the exclusion and eradication of indigenous cultures in Brazil.

FRED WILSON (American, b. 1954) Arise!, 2004 Spit bite aquatint with direct gravure Anonymous Gift in Honor of the Peter Ellsworth and the Legler Benbough Foundation, PC2016.03.01

The print’s title references one of the best-known characters in western literature: Shakespeare’s Othello, who, upon hearing of his wife’s supposed betrayal cries: “Arise, black vengeance, from hollow hell!” Shakespeare’s use of “black” refers both to Othello’s race and to a period-specific metaphor of evil. The loaded associations of blackness in western culture are embodied in Wilson’s print by dark spots of various sizes made by dripping acid onto the printing plate. Such “stains” have undeniable racial associations, and are also an allusion, perhaps, to the “damn’d” spots the haunted Lady Macbeth is unable to rub out. Indelible yet indistinct, the spots “speak” with the voices of black characters ventriloquized by white writers including Mark Twain, Arthur Miller, and Herman Melville.

Arise!, however, is also an affirmative re-appropriation of the meanings of blackness. Indeed, the title itself can also be read as a call to arms.

LISET CASTILLO (Cuban, b. 1974) Rice, 2000 Photogravure Purchased through the Legler Benbough Student Acquisition Fund by Lillian Barnes, Alexis Dachs, Kristen Darling, Sara Rowe, and Sarah Zentner, PC2014.07.01

Liset Castillo is a Cuban-born photographer and sculptor. Rice is one of three photogravures (prints made from photographic plates) in a series that she made to monumentalize common everyday staples.

Similar to the two other prints in the series, Garlic and Spoon, Rice’s simple presentation—a small mound of uncooked rice piled on a plank of wood—is at odds with dramatic scale of the print.

Castillo’s treatment of this subject focuses our attention on this humble foodstuff as a thing of great significance and underscores a larger message about hunger and scarcity in her native Cuba.

SHAHZIA SIKANDER (Pakistani-American, b. 1969) Orbit, 2012 Color direct gravure Purchased through the Legler Benbough Student Acquisition Fund by Katherine Ayd, Jerome Bwire, Cesar Chavez, Virginia da Rosa, Hannah Day, Ross Ehren, Brittany Ford, Anthony Graham, Dominique Kourie, Morgan Likens, Monika Marambio, Liam Richards, Sean Rivera, Joseph Seiler, and Jake Zawlacki, PC2013.04

Shahzia Sikander’s art is inspired by the tradition of Indo-Persian miniature painting, although she also seeks to, “chang[e] the narrative and deconstruc[t] its stereotypes.” Born and trained in Pakistan, Sikander adapts the miniature’s restrictive traditions to the possibilities of contemporary practice, expanding its scale and experimenting with a variety of processes including digital media and mural painting. The results, which explore themes of history, politics, and sexuality, are highly personal yet reflect the multicultural realities of modern day Pakistan, with its mix of Muslim, Hindu, and Persian traditions and cultures. Orbit, published with Crown Point Press, displays several recurring motifs in Sikander’s work, including biomorphic shapes that suggest objects such as musical instruments or hookahs, and misshapen, melting bodies shown in silhouette. These layered shapes play between form and formlessness, order and entropy.

ANA MARIA HERNANDO (Argentinian, b. 1959) El Corazón Inocente, 2010 Color lithograph with collage Purchased with Funds from Therese Truitt Whitcomb, PC2014.09.01

The imagery and bright color of El Corazón Inocente (The Innocent Heart) are reminiscent of the “tropicalization” of Latin American art in the first half of the 20th century. Hernando uses a large white flower, each petal delicately attached to the paper support, to symbolize the innocent, open heart of the title. Flowers are a recurring motif in her work, representing impermanence and beauty.

The artist, who was born in Argentina, was inspired to make visible the artistry of “women’s work,” such as embroidery and textiles, whose makers are often rendered invisible by cultural attitudes about gender and creativity. Hernando incorporates the work of such women—including the embroidery of cloistered Carmelite nuns and petticoats made by Peruvian weavers—in her installations by starching or encasing the fabrics in resin, transforming the cloth into a sculptural object and elevating its status from functional object into a work of art.