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| The relationship of graphic art with time and space in Latvia Zanda Jankovska, Art Critic | |
| The times, the days which we spend together with our contemporaries are like a manipulation with words, trying to name what we haven’t been able yet to label today. In the field of visual aesthetics the compass doesn’t work anymore when we try to talk about something concrete, direct, precise. Perhaps language as a medium is the thing that is the most difficult to work with in this age, even though text accompanies our every step. However, this time the task that has been set is to talk not about language and its possibilities, but about the graphic arts. What is graphic art? This was defined for the first time in the 1960s, at a time when silk screening was attempting to fully establish itself in the graphic arts arena; we now know it as the ‘Vienna definition’. Within it, a work was considered to be graphic art if it had been run off from the printing matrix using the touch of an artist’s hands, in a limited number of copies and signed. But is this definition still in force? Do we still understand the concept ‘graphic art’ as being one which only includes things that have been run off from the printing plate? Is it a form of fine art, which includes drawing and printed material based on drawings – prints, indicating that the main means of expression in it are the line, the lights and the darks, and the relationship between black and white fields? One cannot complain about the development of graphic arts overall, because in the context of Latvia its fixation in time and space is just as fragmentary as for the other branches of visual art. Having said that, one is overcome by a wish to forget about the existence of painting for a moment, as it is after all the most sovereign branch and currently has not become quite so diluted in the field of art terminology. One could also try to sweep it all up together and conjure up a scene like a panoramic bird’s-eye view captured on camera. But does this camera have an objective (lens), which works as a subjective? Such a question arises when we accept the Vielmaiņa(1) (‘Metabolism’) exhibition as one of the clearest ‘health checks’ of graphic art, because the moment when we confirm it as a mirror image of the current state of graphic art, the Vienna definition seems like a failed interpretation of a 19th century cabaret performance in the 21st century. | |
 Lita Liepa. Cut into Nature. Video Installation. 2009 | |
| None of the visual arts trees has become quite as full of branches and foliage as the graphic arts or printmaking. In talking about graphic art in its traditional meaning, it’s no secret: it does have a certain functionality about it. This quality has been imparted mainly by today’s technology, which enables it to be reproduced en masse, but we mustn’t speak about reproducibility as an Australian feral rabbit kind of effect. Graphic art as the printing and typography industry, as an unrestricted vehicle of communication, should be separated from graphic art as art. One of the unwritten rules of printmaking is its confinement within the borders of a defined plane. Computer-graphics also appears on the pedestal among printmaking techniques, which, with the opening out of technological possibilities, allows to speak of the modification of forms and techniques over time. Digital printing is only the next step in printmaking. It is similar to what happened in dramatic art when the Lumiere brothers showed the first motion picture – the actor now had the opportunity to choose: to work in the theatre or in cinema. In the graphic arts there has been a serious split between art and functionality. “It’s a paradox, but the development of graphic art these days is slowed down by its potential for reproducibility; previously it provided the opportunity for a wide circle of buyers to purchase an art work, but nowadays a buyer of art searches for and views exclusive work of which, ideally, only the one example has been created. Nowadays, the possibility of making multiple copies – from an art market perspective – is more of a negative than a positive” says graphic artist and mezzotint specialist, Guntars Sietiņš, about the prevalence of graphic art. Nowadays, when mechanical time no longer bears relevance to real time, when a minute and a second seem like a narrowed space, the most pressing issue in graphic art comes down to the fact that the range of means of expression has been greatly extended, creating a problem with a situation where the old alphabetic order in this story no longer functions. Contemporary media has arrived at a crossroads alongside the classical graphic arts techniques: lithography, engraving and etching, mezzotint, letterpress and silk screening. What we call Latvia is not the only ‘planet’ in the Earth’s system. Movement takes place without an inert labelling of the vector. In order to understand what is currently happening in Latvian graphic arts, one must be mindful of what is taking place in international graphics exhibition halls, and what they demand and will accept. Participants at the 15th Tallinn Print Triennial and the Liege International Biennial of Contemporary Prints (in Belgium), which will take place next year, are being offered unlimited possibilities in the material they may use, from classical printmaking techniques to computer graphics and video, the new media being described as experimental techniques; however, at the 2nd Penang International Print Exhibition (Malaysia), which will take place at the end of the year, as well as at the 7th International Miniprint Finland Triennial, works done in traditional techniques, and of a certain size, are being sought. There is a balance. There is an affirmation of the new and also that which has been established in the past. However, looking to the future, Sietiņš says: “It would be good to call things by their real names: video art is video art, an installation is an installation, painting is painting, but these days an artist may work somewhere in between. Any collection of technical means is only an instrument for expressing ideas and for creating a visual art work. Viewed from this position, the continued existence of narrow graphics exhibitions could be threatened over time. Each year a fair number of international exhibitions take place, but some, like the Bradford Biennale and the Osaka Triennial, have ceased activity. Ljubljana and Tallinn were flexible and changed their exhibition format, accepting absolutely every new technology together with the classical graphics techniques. However, there are exhibitions in Spain and Italy, for example, where they rigidly cling to the classical techniques alone. They don’t even want to see silk screen – an already accepted graphic art technique, which no-one disputes any more. Sometimes, when flicking through catalogues, it’s very sad, it’s as if you’d opened a catalogue from the 1970s. Consequently, these requirements scare young people away, and at these exhibitions this can be clearly seen. These days it is hard to find a young artist who would be prepared to sit with the same work for some months, like the engravers did in the Middle Ages. It doesn’t happen this way anymore. But that doesn’t rule out the fact that the artist can create wonderful, contemporary things using classical techniques, such as linocut, etching, lithography.” Nele Zirnīte, who together with her colleagues Gunārs Krollis and Varis Krauklis founded the Printmakers’ Association in March this year (there are currently ten member artists), regards the encroachment of contemporary technology into international graphics exhibitions as follows: “That’s normal, it livens things up and adds something. The quality of the works does vary, however. You can manipulate with words – the new technologies work as key-words, but the execution can be talentless and tasteless. If we’re discussing the Tallinn Triennial, I’m very sorry that it has turned out that way, as, in my opinion, they should have kept up the tradition. For example, there are exhibitions in Japan and the Czech Republic where they adhere to tradition, they don’t even accept computer printing, maintaining a level of traditional graphic arts techniques. I’d like it if it happened in parallel, without pushing out the traditional techniques. There are values which should not be manipulated. I also like video. In my own works as well, however static they may be, all of the images are in movement, they’re all like frozen photo stills.” Be that as it may, there is a wish to discuss the things we sometimes don’t want to call graphics. Multimedia graphics? To create a diagram and indicate with arrows – traditional and non-traditional/experimental graphics? Interdisciplinary? Art work as the outcome of graphic thinking? With regard to painting in Latvia, questions like this don’t arise, as it is obviously the most pure branch of traditional visual art. Why do so many questions come up about graphics and graphic artists? Although there are painters, like Helēna Henrihsone and Ritums Ivanovs, who have expressed themselves in graphic art works as well, no-one doubts their positions in painting. It must be concluded that the concept of ‘graphic arts’ today is all-encompassing, too broad. You could run a marathon around the stadium and pretend that you’re not running around an ellipse but a square instead. The artist is free and operates freely with the gamut of means available, as quite humanly it isn’t possible to deny the period in which we, as physical bodies, find ourselves, with the ability of perceiving the existing space. It is not possible to remove yourself from the context of the present, directing yourself to live in the past, when creativity forces you to anticipate future values which haven’t been precisely formulated yet. It is not admissible to dispute what exists, has already been confirmed by those who have assessed it, and is in the course of development – albeit not free-wheeling. You can also refuse to talk about it, thinking that graphic art in Latvia is not evolving and hoping that the canons of the past are some kind of structuralised, unshakable pantheon. These games with contemporary and classic graphic art can be observed mainly at exhibitions of young graphic artists, in which Kate Krolle, Lita Liepa, Katrīna Šauškina, Līva Rutmane, Diāna Boitmane, Inga Ģibiete, Lita Blanka, Andrejs Strokins, Eva Lilienfelde, Liena Bondare and others take part, but everything operates as a mutually complementary element. New forms of expression enter traditional techniques just as printmaking qualities are explored in new technologies as well. | |
 Paulis Liepa. Burn It! Letterpress on cardboard. 30x44cm. 2007 | |
| A rich assortment of graphic art was presented by Juris Petraškevičs, who organized the previously mentioned Vielmaiņa. This exhibition represented not only a broad range of technical approaches, but demonstrated the level of maturity of the artists as well. Did the graphic artist – curator wish to justify anything? “I wanted to show the current possibilities open to graphic arts, or the scope of graphic art works today. At the moment, the question of what is graphic art is more an object of discussion. Undoubtedly, new technologies and new artists are emerging. The spectrum in which they work is very broad. The principles and methods which are used show that synthesis is taking place between disciplines. Graphic art is not just a little picture with a view of Riga, which you can buy and hang on the wall. Can it always be called graphics? I invited both artists and art scholars not so much as to try to answer this question, but to make them think; this was partly published in the exhibition catalogue. One of the aspects which was also mentioned in the critical reviews – is this graphic art? My personal view is that what we call it is not as important as the principles used. There would be more point in discussing the work of art as such. The question of technology and what kinds of techniques were used would then be secondary. Obviously, often one depends on the other, it goes hand in hand and that’s why I chose the widest possible range for the exhibition. Starting with the very classical graphic art – Juris Briedis’ prints – and finishing with Kate Krolle’s video. Theoretically, one could say that it isn’t printmaking, but at the same time – the compositional principles, the graphical way of thinking... I mean not so much the technological aspect, but more in the sense of emotion and feelings: video could be subordinate to emotional perception, and work less like a type of technology. One shouldn’t reproach this, but develop it and work on a qualitative use of this technology in the future” – said Juris Petraškevičs about the array of graphic art on show recently. With the entry of new media which have ‘fused’ with printmaking, the descriptions ‘graphical’, ‘thinking graphically’ are often used. How is that different from, if one may say, the simple thinker? Petraškevičs continues: “It’s more of a historical concept, a preconception about drawing, printmaking techniques, print runs – that could be the thing that leaves an influence when working with other media, as well as a certain experience of close up: graphic art often needs to be looked at up close, investigated. In the same way I’d associate jazz more with contemporary music, which you have to listen to closely. The literary side, the story is not as important. The important thing to feel is the specific nature of the material, the half-tones, the light. It’s the same with Kate Krolle’s video, too – this play of light, the corporeity. You can draw on steamed up glass with your finger, but how will that drawing be different from one done in pencil?” That only means that reality and the materials available have still not been theoretically assimilated and processed, creating a sfumato effect in terminology. But if, in the course of reality, the use of new technologies in graphic art exhibitions is accepted among a certain circle of artists and curators, then in any case this isn’t seen as a negative process, allowing it to progress at full speed. Graphic art, like other types of traditional media, is undergoing evolution. We can observe that some sculptors are working in performance, making three-dimensional bodies intuitively move in space. The same thing is happening in graphic art: the line, as one of its fundamental qualities of expression, is starting to move. But there is one more problematic area with graphic art – the place where to realize an idea, if we stop at printmaking. The graphic arts are not mobile, they are local and fixed to a place – the place which has the printing press, plates and the other necessary pieces of equipment. Sietiņš: “Professional artists here [in Latvia] work cyclically. There aren’t any collective printmaking workshops (except for the Artists Union workshop), where people work every day on a regular basis. Fortunately for us, students work here (at the Art Academy of Latvia – Z. J.) and that’s why, if there is an international exhibition, we can provide new artists who have either recently graduated from the Academy, or are in the last years of study. I can name several new graphic artists whose work has achieved recognition at international exhibitions in recent years: Paulis Liepa, Agnese Deičmane and Lāsma Pujāte, for example. I agree that numerically there aren’t many artists who regularly work in printmaking. It was great that it was possible to hold such an exhibition at the Latvian National Museum of Art with many new artists, a large number of whom are still students at the Academy. But the question is, what will they be doing in five years time – will they continue to work? In the previous issue of Studija I read an interview with the Tallinn Print Triennial curator, Simon Rees, who has noticed this local peculiarity, applicable not only to graphic artists. When foreign curators come to Riga, it is hard for them to find artists who are working regularly and can show their latest works at any time. A large number of socalled professional artists here work from one project to the next.” There are no borders in global art, nor in its ‘locality’ – graphic art. It is difficult to argue about what is happening currently, but of course the feeling is more or less clear that in future the things we are now discussing will break through, with head raised high, looking back at what has passed, but reaching out for the future. Nothing will disappear from tradition, you can’t hope that a graphic arts ice age will arrive and we’ll be able to view its fossils in an art museum. Everything is in balance. There are graphic artists who work with traditional techniques and don’t feel the need for a change of medium, as there is so much still to be discovered in the classical tradition also – both in the development of technique as well as in form; and there are others who, using their vision of the world as an overall graphic picture, are utilising the new technology. We must speak about art as a whole, about trends which had already taken root in modernism and not just in the visual arts, but also in literature and music, with the understanding of art not as the provision of a ready interpretation, but as a space for free fantasy and making viewers become equally involved in its revelations. (1) The Vielmaiņa graphic art exhibition was on display at the White Hall, Latvian National Museum of Art, 1 October - 8 November, 2009. /Translator into English: Uldis Brūns/ | |
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