![Introduction](images/intro.gif)
hen
does a work of art achieve aesthetic resolution, and when does it fall
short? Artists, collectors and theorists since the Renaissance have
regarded this question as both problematic and central to understanding
the artistic endeavor. For reasons inherent to the medium, prints claim
a special place in this history. Over the course of several centuries
artists were increasingly apt to retain and distribute prints at various
stages in their making. Experiments with differing states and specially
tailored impressions encouraged a fascination with degrees of finish
in printmaking that challenged the very idea of aesthetic completion.
This exhibition chronicles the complex workings of the artistic imagination
revealed by the unfinished print and the changing estimation of artistic
process that it provoked. Despite its implication for the rise of modernism,
this development has never before been considered across its full historical
sweep.
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