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《Picasso. Graphic works and process.》
／Jose Manuel Guillen The world, human beings and things are all found immerse in continuous processes. Art history is credited as a continuous process of discernment. We could perceive art as a process in which we endeavour to give a meaning to chaos. Or by means of it we try to grasp, or understand, the reality that surrounds us in a process implicating knowledge, analysis and reflexion. It becomes sort of a game. One that may last a lifetime. To know what is beyond what we are able to see has been the desire that inspired man’s adventures and journeys. This fact has been bound together with progress. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes was born in Fuendetodos, a small town in Aragón, in 1746. He was a portraitist of the royal court and died in exile in Bordeaux in 1828. He is one of the most important Spanish artists in the world. He lives a period of many changes and convulsions in Europe. One of the most interesting aspects of an artistic action is its character of being a process. In graphic works this process becomes very evident. The process as a characteristic is fundamental in order to understand the complexity of the engraving or lithography as a pictorial universe. The same process forms a specific manner of artistic consciousness and generates a special attitude in the artist in regard to the work. Also, this implicates a distinctive mental and perceptive process within the artistic realm. As an artist and a printmaker, I am interested in analyzing the underlying phenomena in the matters of creativity or in graphic works: the problems posed by the idea, the rendering and the material, or assuming the possibilities that the medium offers as an open spatial-temporal process. The appeal that many artists find in graphic works is in a great part owed to its inherent attribute of retaining actions since they continue to exist on the stones and the plates. In a printmaking or lithography the study and analysis of the creative process applied to a work are more feasible than in any other technique. Not only is one able to display a series of successive ideas from the initial sketch on to the final image, but also each of the prints and lithographs may be separated into different components in order to reveal the hidden supporting logic and mental process. Frequently, contemporary prints are presented in a “series” or in “portfolios”. In addition, one may assert that some of the most well known prints form part of series in which each one of the elements has so sense, unless it is connected with the others. That is to say, for the artist the possibility of a collection possesses a semantic value. The individual elements linked together form an open book exhibiting the techniques employed, as well as the creative process in itself, for profound study. We are able to read how the work was generated and often find a complex genesis that progressively flourishes because of internal selectively controlled transformations. In fact, it is the process that unchains and develops the work. “!Ca reste, vous savez ca reste!” (!This is what remains, you know, this is what remains!) On October 29th, 1964, Picasso pronounced this sentence while he was doing a portrait of Angela Rosengart, the daughter of an old friend of his. He was working with a zinc plate and did not know yet whether the portrait would be liked. Picasso stated that the most difficult task is to decide whether an artwork is finished or not. “If I carry out a proof of its state now, I could continue to work on the plate, while its current state would be preserved in this trial.” In order to become aware of the stages in the evolution of an engraving or lithograph, the printmaker will usually make a number of trial prints, called “Trial Proofs”, that serve as technical or control phases. They are an ideal instrument within the rational graphic discourse to carry out verifications, and enable the artist to evaluate how the work is progressing from the sketch phase to a previously determined objective. For some visionary artists such as Hercules Seghers, Rembrandt, Piranesi, or Picasso, these proofs are the evidence remaining in the plate or on paper, as a sort of "state of the spirit". The metamorphosis taking place on the plate is registered and captured in these traces of the “changes" in the feeling or in the capricious thoughts of the artist. For Picasso, the characteristic of graphic work being a process is one of its most attractive ingredients. Its “nature as a process” and the possibilities for experimentation offered by this medium transform an engraving into a journey of discovery. By way of example, the initial phase of an engraving or a lithography is a hypothesis where the end solution depends on the elements assisting the artist: the press, the techniques, the performance of the inks and the acids, the intervention of fate, and the time its making lasts. When analyzing his engravings and lithographs, we can read how the work was produced. Often it is the fruit rendered by a complex genesis, where selectively controlled internal transformations progressively proper. The inherent quality of lithography as a medium ought to be recognized. It does not simply deal with a drawing on a stone, since its possibilities to add, erase and manipulate, convert it into something independent and unique. Although the creative process involves continuous decision making, these decisions vary radically according to the quantity of existing technical options. It was this quality that attracted artists such as Picasso or Jasper Johns enormously. The latter, in a series of works on numbers - just as Picasso in the lithograph series “The bull” - tried to highlight the changeable nature of the works by employing methods that allowed him to revise and make a provisional balance of his work, similar to sketches and studies in painting and sculpture. These stages of a work allow whoever contemplates it to take a glimpse at the creative process related to the artwork. They provide explanations on the development and show the way followed by the artist in order to achieve the desired aim. In the art of engraving the artist carries out a function of “selective” control of the different alternatives in order to achieve his purpose. “One must bring into light all the works found in each work” as Picasso himself phrased it. |