![Modernity](images/modernity.gif)
y
the turn of the twentieth century the problem of the unfinished print
had been taken to its furthest reaches--the possibility of a work of
art in a perpetual state of becoming. All barriers had been effectively
breached and the matter of unfinish transformed from a practical and
philosophical problem to a precondition of modernity. In certain conspicuous
instances the question of finish could be indefinitely suspended. Alternately
accepting and rejecting the implications of its technological foundation,
the print had its own contribution to make to modernist aesthetics.
The provisional nature of the unfinished "state" presupposing some final
version had by this time been well authorized as a work of art worthy
of exhibiting and collecting in its own right. Hence, the dictum attributed
to Rembrandt that a work of art is finished whenever its maker determines
it to be was superseded by a wider claim to subjectivity, extending
the prerogative to include the beholder as well. "When is it complete
and when is it not complete? I don't think one can say what one longs
for" (Jasper Johns, 1981).
Mary Cassatt
Mary Cassatt, who spent the better part of her career in Paris, was
an important innovator in color printing as well as in her subject matter.
This sequence demonstrates her approach to making a color etching, beginning
with a drawing and proceeding through successive states to the final
stage when the plate was published as an edition. Cassatt was one of
the first artists to exhibit proof states as self-sufficient works and
a demonstration of process.
Villon--La Parisienne
![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20090506204338im_/http://www.nga.gov/thumb-s/a00054/a000545b.jpg) Jacques
Villon's ten variant proofs of La Parisienne deviate from the
norms of printmaking: there is no definitive state, no known final edition,
and no apparent attempt to create uniformity. Instead the artist was
absorbed in varying color and impression. The sequence begins with the
impression in black (proof 1).
Villon went on to introduce additional plates and colors. In the third
proof he included color notes as a guide for the printer. In the fifth
he cropped about an inch from the plates at bottom and left; and in
the ninth he heavily burnished out most of the background, severely
reducing the ornateness of the interior and edging the image toward
abstractness. Villon's experiments with La Parisienne chronicle
his artistic development into relative abstraction. At the turn of the
century, the condition of "unfinish" had become an essential aspect
of modernist thinking.
On the basis of the Gallery's proof impressions, and extrapolating
to other extant proofs, the case can be made that Villon's development
of the print was undertaken in three distinct campaigns. The first comprised
the initial working of the plate(s) and elaboration of the ornate setting,
the "additive" phase of the print's evolution (proofs 1-4). The artist's
cropping of the plates signals the second campaign, which took a "subtractive"
course toward simplicity and the beginnings of abstraction (proofs 5-9).
The third and last campaign included both additive and subtractive
changes, which further extended the work's shift toward abstraction
(proof 10).
![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20090506204338im_/http://www.nga.gov/thumb-s/a00054/a000545c.jpg) |
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Proof 1 |
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Proof
2 |
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Proof 3 |
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Proof 4 |
![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20090506204338im_/http://www.nga.gov/thumb-s/a00053/a0005344.jpg) |
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![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20090506204338im_/http://www.nga.gov/thumb-s/a00053/a0005345.jpg) |
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![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20090506204338im_/http://www.nga.gov/thumb-s/a00054/a0005458.jpg) |
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![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20090506204338im_/http://www.nga.gov/thumb-s/a00054/a0005459.jpg) |
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![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20090506204338im_/http://www.nga.gov/thumb-s/a00054/a000545a.jpg) |
Proof 5 |
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Proof 6 |
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Proof 7 |
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Proof 8 |
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Proof 9 |
Gauguin
These monotypes come from Gauguin's Tahitian period and were created
in ways that are both direct and complex. Partly because of his geographical
isolation Gauguin worked with relatively simple materials. His techniques
permitted a considerable tolerance of accident, causing irregularly
textured patterns, broken lines, and intermittent blotches on the images.
Hence these prints fall distantly into the tradition of the constructed
fragment, an initially romantic idea transformed into a consciously
"primitivist" aesthetic.
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