Temperamental Technologies
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2020-08-03T15:41:19+00:00
Is there a phlegmatic quality to printmaking, especially reproductive printmaking—its careful thinking in reverse, its slow process of carving an image into a copper plate or a wood block? Is there something choleric about the destruction required to produce an image—the immersion of an etching plate in acid, the gouging of a woodblock—even as these processes also demand self-control?
Held and passed from hand to hand, the early modern print was not simply experienced as an image, but as a fully material object. Thus, the image’s subject matter would not be the only element informing the interpretation of a print’s temperament. The hard stippling of a wood engraving might add a choleric severity to Fritz Eichenberg’s impression of otherwise phlegmatic men; while the dry, charcoal-like gradation of tone could lend a choleric heat to William Gropper’s lithograph of a hysteric.
The reproducible nature of prints meant that multiple impressions of a single image exist, but the quality of each impression varies. At Bryn Mawr, we have three prints of Dürer's engraving, St. Christopher; but not all these images are the same. One figure faces left, while two face right; thus, they could not have been made from the same plate. The original print was likely traced and then reproduced in reverse for the purposes of mass-production of the saint’s image. The print with the figure facing left has better tonal quality and more distinct lines than the other two engravings; research reveals that it faces the same direction as Dürer's original engraving.
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