On a blistering cold Tuesday afternoon, Paths to the Press: Printmaking and American Women Artists, 1910-1960 at the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University serves as a perfect oasis of warmth and comfort. Curated by Elizabeth Seaton, associate curator at the Beach Museum of Art, Paths to the Press is the result of years of study, dating back to her dissertation on printmaking in the era of the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration.
In a gallery talk, Seaton introduced the exhibition with the stimulating questions she explored in the show: What brought these women to printmaking? How did printmaking affect them as artists and people? Seaton mentioned that the impetus for the show mainly came from an urge to help recover these artists and make them known, since survey texts on printmaking usually fall short in the number of women they include. In addition to being, according to Seaton, “the first major exhibition to survey the contributions of women artists to American printmaking during the first half of the 20th century,” Paths to the Press includes a companion catalogue—also the first of its kind—which can be accessed through the Columbia Web site.
The show is arranged chronologically, beginning with a large room at the entrance followed by three smaller rooms, and finally ending with the largest and most brightly lit room in the gallery. Certainly, the first print of the show, a Mary Cassatt, is the most familiar. But Seaton focuses her attention on the print right next to it: a print of sweeping, dramatic skies by leading member of the American Etching Revival Mary Nimmo Moran who, Seaton noted, inspired the artist’s husband to create his own painting. From there, Seaton goes on to present groups of printmakers who were connected to each other, like the Provincetown Printers (represented by three colorful landscape prints located to the right of the entrance to the gallery), who discovered how to make prints using only one block, instead of the typical Japanese method of printmaking, which uses multiple blocks.
The subject matter of the prints varies. Although Helen Hyde’s print “Mount Orizaba” looks like a strictly Japanese landscape setting, Hyde in fact used an image that was more available to her—a landscape in Mexico. Rovia Helford’s “Two Miners (Out of the Pit)” is based on a trip Helford took with the WPA to the coal- and steel-producing regions of Pennsylvania. At around the same time that Helford created “Two Miners,” an estimated 800 women printmakers were given greater opportunity to work in the field, allowing them better access to equipment and resources needed for the art form.
At the opening reception, three artists—Deborah Remington, Clare Romano, and Ellen Lanyon—each spoke about their experiences as printmakers. Remington, who still lives and works in New York, mentioned that she and her classmates at the San Francisco Art Institute didn’t care about being technical—it was the Beat era. Her print, “On The Scene,” is definitely an homage to this beatnik spirit: dark, crimson spots surround black, thick, sweeping lines, creating an imprecise yet playful mix of deliberate colors. When asked what it was like being a female printmaker at that time, Remington answered adamantly, “It wasn’t a matter of gender. It was a matter of what you did as an accomplishment.” Still, Remington noted, a woman had to be a better artist than a man did in order to be noticed.
It’s unfortunate that the general audience for the exhibition seemed to be composed of older professionals from around the New York area, rather than Columbia University students. Paths to the Press is a great show that transcends age barriers, and could give students the opportunity to see a truly influential group of artists that are usually not recognized.
Paths to the Press will run through March 8, 2008 and is open Wednesdays through Saturdays, 1-5 p.m.