A Ill‘f-QWVWJ is ”1 lg" OVERDUE FINES: 25¢ per day per item RETURNING LIBRARY MATERIALS: _______...__————— Place in book return to remove charge from circulation records 0 r? r “Mm/x “r 1g #33 x. : 2a F? .l _. A ATELIER 17 AS CATALYST: MINNA CITRON AND SUE FULLER 1930-1970 BY Mary Maloney-Rose A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Department of Art 1981 ABSTRACT ATELIER 17 AS CATALYST: MINNA CITRON AND SUE FULLER 1930-1970 BY Mary Maloney-Rose Atelier 17, Stanley William Hayter's printmaking workshop founded in Paris in 1927 and re-established in New York from 1940-1955, had a significant impact on post- World War II American art. The first part of this thesis discusses the history of the workshop, with emphasis on Hayter's teaching method and intaglio techniques developed by students. The second part focuses on the works of Minna Citron and Sue Fuller, New York artists who studied at Atelier l7. Citron's interest in the third dimension, gained from her studio experience, culminated in the 1960's with her constructions, which blend painted canvas with de- tritus. About 1950, from her fascination with soft-ground etching, Sue Fuller began developing string compositions, sculptures consisting of threads stretched on frames. An- alysis of these artists' works is a major aspect of the role which Atelier l7 played in the evolution of contem— porary American art. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Grateful acknowledgment is made to the many people who have provided information and assistance in the preparation of this thesis. The author is especially appreciative of the assistance rendered by the museum personnel and li- brarians at the Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Whitney Museum of American Art, all in New York City, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Archives of American Art in Detroit, Michigan. Particular mention should be made of Dr. Eldon VanLiere who, in his role as chairperson of the guidance committee, encouraged and aided the student. Dr. Linda 0. Stanford and Dr. Sadayoshi Omoto, both members of the the- sis committee, have likewise offered suggestions and criti- cisms that have been appreciated. In addition, special thanks go to Mrs. Janice Simpson, curator of the slide library in the Department of Art, for giving me the op- portunity to be employed and receive job training. Finally, the author wishes to acknowledge the support and encouragement of her mother, Mrs. Mary Maloney, and her husband, Greg Rose. ii We cannot fail to be struck by the independence with which the various members have worked together under Hayter's technical guidance without conceding the individuality which has marked their work in other media. For them, as for Hayter, the work Of "Studio 17," like all the greatest contemporary pictorial expression, is primarily a research toward expanding the frontiers of expression. And through their concerted efforts under Hayter's leadership a wide, overgrown field is being reclaimed. James Johnson Sweeney James Johnson Sweeney, "New Directions in Gravure," Museum of Modern Art Bulletin 12 (August 1944): 5. iii LIST OF FIGU INTRODUCTION Chapter TABLE OF CONTENTS RES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I. ATELIER 17: HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT . . . II. ATEL Stanley William Hayter and the Origins of Atelier l7 . . . . . . . . . . . . Hayter's Concept of Printmaking . . . . Hayter's Transferral of Atelier 17 to New York . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Philosophical Continuity Between th Paris and New York Studios . . . . . The Workshop Experience . . . . . . . . Atelier 17, New York, in Retrospect . . IER 17: PHILOSOPHY AND TECHNIQUES OF PRINTMAKING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III. MINN DI Automatism and Stanley William Hayter . Automatism and Atelier l7 . . . . . . . Printmaking Techniques at Atelier 17 . Engraving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Soft-Ground Etching . . . . . . . . . . Colored Prints . . . . . . . . . . . . The Influence of Atelier 17 on American Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A CITRON: "... ACHIEVING THE THIRD MENS ION " O C C O O O O O C O O O O O O Citron and Social Realism, 1924-1945 . Citron and Atelier 17, 1946-1950 . . . Citron and Automatism . . . . . . . Citron‘s Post—Atelier 17 Years: The Fifties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Citron's Post-Atelier 17 Years: The Sixties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Minna Citron in Retrospect . . . . . . iv Page vi 11 13 17 20 30 36 37 41 43 45 49 53 56 61 63 66 68 73 77 88 Chapter IV. CONCLUSION APPENDIX BIBLIOGRAPHY FIGURES SUE FULLER: Fuller and Social Realism, 1934-1943 Fuller and Atelier 17, 1943-1945 . . Fuller's Post-Atelier 17 Years: 1945- 1946 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fuller's Post-Atelier 17 Years: 1946- 1949 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fuller's Post-Atelier 17 Years: The Fifties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fuller's Post-Atelier 17 Years: The Sixties SPINNER OF WEBS Sue Fuller in Retrospect Page 93 95 98 106 111 114 122 126 131 136 138 148 LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Joseph Hecht. Bison, c. 1930. Engraving, dimensions unknown. Collection of the artist. Source: Hayter, New Ways of Gravure, p. 251 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 2. Stanley William Hayter. The Big Horse, 1931. Engraving, 25.4 centimeters high x 19.7 centimeters wide. Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C. Source: Hayter, New Ways of Gravure, p. 257 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 3. Andre Masson. Improvisation, 1943. Drypoint, aquatint and lift-ground etching, 20 cm x 15.2 cm. Collection of the University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City. Source: Elvehjem Art Center, University of Wiscon- sin, Madison, Atelier 17, p. 30 . . . . . . . 150 4. Ezio Martinelli. Tarn, c. 1952. Oil on canvas, dimensions unknown. Source: F. P., "Ezio Martinelli," Art News 51 (May 1952): 45 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 5. Jackson Pollock. Untitled, 1945. Engraving and drypoint, 37.8 cm x 44.8 cm. Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Source: Rose, Jackson Pollock: Works on Paper, p. 55 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 6. Andre Masson. Rapt (Violated), 1941. Dry- point, 30.8 cm x 40.6 cm. Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Source: Rubin and Lanchner, Andre Masson, p. 62 . . . 153 7. Jackson Pollock. Number 1, 1948. Oil on canvas, 172.7 cm x 264.2 cm. Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Source: O‘Hara, Jackson Pollock, p. 61 . . . 154 vi Figure 8. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. Vii Stanley William Hayter. Rue des Plantes, 1926. Drypoint, 26.7 cm x 20.9 cm. Collection of the Brooklyn Museum, New York. Source: Victoria and Albert Museum, London, The Engravings of S. W. Hatter, p. 15 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O Stanley William Hayter. Combat, 1936. Engraving and soft-ground etching, 39.4 cm x 48.9 cm. Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Source: Hayter, New Ways of Gravure, p. 233 . . . . . . . . Enlargement of the Print of a Burin Line. Source: Hayter, New Ways of Gravure, p. 36 O O O O O I O O O O O O O O O O O O O Stanley William Hayter. Death by Water, 1948. Engraving, 34.6 cm x 58.7 cm. Photograph courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois . . . . . . . . . . . Pierre Courtin. Composition, 1956. Engrav- ing, 22.4 cm x 24.9 cm. Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Source: Castleman, Prints of the Twentieth Century, p. 140 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alice Trumbull Mason. Indicative Displacement, 1947. Soft-ground etching, 26 cm x 40 cm. Photograph courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum, New York . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stanley William Hayter. Cinq Personnages, 1946. Engraving and soft-ground etching printed in three colors, 36.8 cm x 60.9 cm. Collection of the Elvehjem Art Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Source: Cochrane, "Atelier 17: Revolutionary Force or Historical Footnote?," American Arts & Antiques (November-December 1978): 78 . . . . Minna Citron. Dress Circle, Carnegie Hall, 1936. Oil on canvas, 55.9 cm x 81.3 cm. Collection of Thomas and Virginia Citron. Source: From the Eighty Years of Minna Citron! p. 31 . . . . . . o . . . . . . . . Page 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 Figure 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. viii Page Minna Citron. She Earns "An Honest Living," 1934. Oil on pressed wood, 64.8 cm x 40.6 cm. Collection of the artist. Source: Vassar College Art Gallery, New York, 7 American Women: The Depression, p. 27 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Minna Citron. Men Seldom Make Passes ..., 1946. Etching and aquatint, two color plates, two states plus print, 38.1 cm x 24.1 cm. Source: From the Eighty Years of Minna Citron, p. 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Minna Citron. Whatever, c. 1946. Etching and engraving, 6.4 cm x 3.8 cm. Photograph courtesy of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. Source: New School for Social Research, New York, The Graphic Work of Minna Citron, p. 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Minna Citron. Squid Under the Pier, 1948. Etching and engraving, two color plates, 37.8 cm x 45.1 cm. Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois. Source: Laurel Gallery, New York, Atelier 17, p. 25 . 166 Minna Citron. Measure of Fate, 1955. Oil and paper collage on canvas, 121.3 cm x 80 cm. Photograph courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Irene Rice Pereira. Undulating Arrangement, 1947. Oil on composition board and glass, 59.4 cm x 43.8 cm. Collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum. Source: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Geometric Abstraction in America, p. 35 . . . . . . . . 168 Minna Citron. Construct No. 1, c. 1964. Tar- paper on oil, 88.9 cm x 48.3 cm. Source: Tasca Gallery, New York, Citron, p. ii . . . 169 Minna Citron. Blue Band, 1965. Etching and aquatint, 58.4 cm x 27.9 cm. Source: From the Eighty Years of Minna Citron, back cover 170 Figure 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. ix Minna Citron. Victoria the Queen, 1964. Oil, fabric and wood, 158.8 cm x 121.9 cm. Col- lection of Kresge Art Gallery, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan. Source: Tasca Gallery, New York, Citron, front cover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Minna Citron. Thread of Ariadne, 1949. Oil on board, 50.8 cm x 60.9 cm. Source: Hacker Gallery, New York, Minna Citron Paintings and Graphics, 1947-52, p. 11 . . . Minna Citron. Pretty Shadows of My Bonds, 1965. Oil and metal, 76.2 cm x 63.5 cm. Collection of Vassar College, New York. Source: From the Eighty Years of Minna Citron, p. 36 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sue Fuller. Sonnenschein Umbrella Company, c. 1942. Watercolor, dimensions unknown. Source: "Pittsburgh Artists: a 32nd Annual," Art News 41 (March 1-14, 1942): 6 . Sue Fuller. Cacophony, 1944. Soft- and hard- ground etching, 29.8 cm x 22.2 cm. Collec- tion of the artist. Source: Cochrane, "Atelier 17: Revolutionary Force or His- torical Footnote?," American Arts & An- tiques (November-December 1978): 85 . . . . . Sue Fuller. Hen, 1945. Soft-ground etching and engraving, 37.1 cm x 30.2 cm. Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Source: Browne, "Sue Fuller: Threading Transparency, Art International 16 (January 20, 1972): 39 . . . . . . . . . . . Sue Fuller. Sailor's Dream, 1944. Soft-ground etching, 22.2 cm x 14.6 cm. Collection of the artist. Source: Hayter, New Ways of Gravure, p. 268 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sue Fuller. String Composition 1, 1946. Wood and sewing thread, 45.7 cm x 60.9 cm. Col- lection of the Celanese Corporation of America. Source: Browne, "Sue Fuller: Threading Transparency," Art International 16 (January 20, 1972): 38 . . . . . . . . . . . Page 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 Figure 32. 33. 34. 35. Page Sue Fuller. String Construction, Number 51, 1953. Aluminum and plastic thread, 85.1 cm x 115.6 cm. Photograph courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York . . 179 Naum Gabo. Linear Construction in Space, Number 4, 1958. Plastic and stainless steel, 101.6 cm x 53.3 cm. Collection of the Whit- ney Museum of American Art, New York. Source: Whitney Museum of American Art, Catalogue of the Collection, p. 115 . . . . . 180 Sue Fuller. String Composition 104, 1961. Saran thread, 60.9 cm x 60.9 cm. Collection of the Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York. Source: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Geometric Abstraction in America, p. 48 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Sue Fuller. String Composition 901, 1970. Plastic embedment, 76.2 cm x 132.1 cm. Collection of the Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York. Source: Browne,"Sue Fuller: Threading Transparency," Art International 16 (January 20, 1972): 37 . . . . . . . . . . 182 INTRODUCTION Minna Citron (b. 1896) and Sue Fuller (b. 1914) are contemporary American artists living and working in the New York City area. In the 1940's these two women studied at Stanley William Hayter's experimental printmaking workshop Atelier 17, following the re-establishment of the Parisian enterprise at the New School for Social Research. After having learned and experimented with intaglio techniques at Atelier 17, Citron and Fuller expanded their artistic expression into the realms of painting and sculpture, re- spectively, throughout the 1950's and 1960's. The first part of this thesis is concerned with the history and psychological environment of Atelier 17: its founding by the British printmaker and painter Stanley William Hayter, the experimental attitude that dominated the workshop and the revivals and innovations introduced by Atelier 17 members that have influenced greatly the development of twentieth-century printmaking. The names of Hayter and Atelier 17 are well known among museum and gallery curators and printmakers, but to the general pub- lic they remain obscure. Authors of several articles in art periodicals--Art News, Art Digest, Art in America, Artist's Proof--and books on printmaking have discussed briefly the role of Hayter and his workshop in the revival 1 2 and exploration of intaglio techniques. But, with the ex- ception of former participants in Atelier 17, authors and critics have taken very little interest in the topic of Hayter and his printmaking studio. The primary sources of information on Hayter's di- dactic teaching methods, technical experimentation and in- novations at Atelier 17 were the two books authored by him--New Ways of Gravure (1949) and About Prints (1962). Personal experiences and observations of the everyday life in the studio elucidated in magazine articles by many former Atelier 17 members proved to be valuable support for ideas propagated by Hayter in his writings. Extensive studies of the history of Atelier 17 and the atmosphere that characterized the studio at various times have been conducted by Joann Moser, Curator of Collections at the University of Iowa Museum of Art. Moser's research ef- forts include: a 1976 Ph.D. dissertation entitled "The Significance of Atelier 17 in the Development of Twentieth- Century American Printmaking"; the 1977 catalog and exhi— bition Atelier 17 held at the Elvehjem Art Center, Uni- versity of Wisconsin, Madison; and the 1978 article "The Impact of Stanley William Hayter on Post-War American Art" published in the Archives of American Art Journal. Minna Citron and Sue Fuller, the two women discussed individually in the second part of this thesis, are local New York City artists who took advantage of the opportu- nity to experiment with intaglio techniques under the 3 guidance of Hayter at the New School for Social Research. At Atelier 17, Citron and Fuller came into contact with leading European avant-garde artists who, along with Hayter, espoused certain aspects of the Surrealist philosophy of art. As apprentice printmakers, they also became involved with an investigation of the three-dimensional possibilities of the intaglio print that had originated at the Parisian workshop in the late 1920's. During their brief associa- tions with Atelier 17, both artists constantly assimilated and transformed new ideas concerning the philosophy of art and intaglio techniques that were circulating throughout the studio. Shortly after they started their apprentice- ships a revolutionary change occurred in the approaches of both Citron and Fuller to their print work. Influences at Atelier 17 acted as catalysts in gradually transforming their style from the literal representation of Social Realism, which they practiced in the 1930's, to the ab- straction imported into the United States by European ex- iles before and during the World War II years. Later, in the decades of the 1950's and 1960's, Citron used this free abstraction to develop her own style of expression in the field of painting; likewise, Fuller used the experience of non-descriptive line to develop her own style in the me- dium of sculpture. In general, the names of Minna Citron and Sue Fuller are recognized by curators in both the print and the twentieth-century painting and sculpture departments of 4 museums located in New York City. Included in this group of museums are the Brooklyn Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Whitney Museum of American Art, all of which have collected and exhibited the prints, paintings and sculptures of Citron and Fuller. Concerning published literature, the names of these two artists are rarely found. Occasionally, authors of the multitude of books discussing the history of twentieth- century American painting and sculpture mention their names in long lists of women artists. Due to the lack of pub- lished literature, the primary sources of information for the chapters in this thesis that focus on the artistic de- velopment of Citron and Fuller were exhibition reviews ap- pearing in the New York Times and various art periodicals, press releases from New York museums and galleries and ex- hibition catalogs and brochures. The large collection of private papers, writings, journals and memoirs donated by Citron and Fuller to the Archives of American Art proved to be a valuable source of personal insights and thoughts that each artist had concerning the purpose and evolution of her art. Minna Citron and Sue Fuller are representative of the majority of women who have been active in the art world for centuries, but have not been thoroughly researched or evaluated. The role of women in the history of art is an issue that has been addressed only recently, two of the 5 most substantial publications being Women Artists, 1550- 1950 (1976) by Anne Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin and Women and Art (1978) by Elsa Honig Fine. In presenting this thesis, I hope to aid in the recognition and appreciaton of Citron and Fuller, whose works are as significant as those of currently acclaimed artists--Irene Rice Pereira, Louise Nevelson, Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell-—for under- standing the role Atelier 17 played in the development of twentieth-century art in the United States. CHAPTER I ATELIER 17: HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT In May 1940 Stanley William Hayter, a British-born printmaker and painter living and working in Paris, sought refuge in the United States when Hitler's army invaded France. Soon after his arrival in New York City, Hayter's appointment to the staff of the New School for Social Re- search was announced in the October 1940 issue of Art Digest.l Here, in a small, top floor room, he established a workshop dedicated to experimentation with various print media and named it "Atelier 17," after the studio origi- nally organized in Paris.2 Stanley William Hayter and the Origins of Atelier 17 In 1901 Hayter was born near London into a family that, beginning in the eighteenth-century, was distin- guished by several generations of painters. Although Hayter's father encouraged him from the early years of his life to follow the family tradition, Hayter took his de- grees in chemistry and geology at King's College, Cam- bridge, in 1921; atmospheric impressionist studies in light and color that he produced during this period of scientific scholarship verify that Hayter's interest in art never subsided. In the early 1920's, while working 7 as an oil chemist with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in the Persian Gulf, Hayter became fascinated with the sights he observed daily in his environment. Inspired once again to paint and draw in his spare time, Hayter executed a number of studies which predominantly consisted of landscapes, seascapes, boats and the oil-refinery plant. It has been suggested that during his three-year sojourn in the Near East the young artist had been imbued with the "beauty of a non-figurative decorative art."3 After a decade of dor- mancy, this influence became manifest in Hayter's prints and paintings during the mid-1930's when he used Surrealist automatism as a means of beginning work on metal plates or canvases. Hayter left his job with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Com- pany in 1926 after deciding that he had inherited the tal- ent necessary to become a professional painter. This de- cision was prompted by a solo exhibition of his paintings at the London headquarters of this company which was held that same year. The show was quite successful and almost all the works were sold. Determined to follow his newly chosen career, the aspiring artist immediately set up residence in Paris, the traditionally recognized mecca of art activity in the Western world. Hayter abandoned a ca- reer of working with oil for cars and adopted the ambition of working with oil for art in a Paris studio. In April 1926, when Hayter arrived in Paris, the city was full of turbulence and excitement. In the art world, 8 the Dada movement was fading rapidly and Surrealism was be- coming the talk of the vanguard. Hayter rented a studio at 51 rue du Moulin Vert, where he actively pursued painting and drawing. The Surrealist sculptor Alberto Giacometti, Hayter's neighbor, may have been responsible for introduc- ing the Briton to several internationally recognized paint- ers and sculptors in avant-garde circles. It was not long before Hayter had befriended Yves Tanguy, Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso, Vasily Kandinsky, Jean (Hans) Arp and Alexander Calder.4 Although Hayter intended to study and work as a painter when he set up residence in Paris, he became in- terested almost immediately in printmaking and acquainted himself with the processes of aquatint, drypoint, etching, woodcut and lithography, but neglected engraving. Shortly after embarking upon his adopted studies, Hayter came into contact with the person who was destined to foster his life-long interest in intaglio, particularly engraving, and line: the Polish engraver, Joseph Hecht. Although few artists were exclusively printmakers in the 1920's, Hayter happened to meet Hecht, who recently had established his own studio in the neighborhood. Pre- vious to their encounter, Hayter had observed engravings executed by him and admired them for their concentration upon the character of line. In the opinion of Hayter, Hecht possessed in his engravings ". . . extreme sensitiv- ity to all the qualities of line - rigidity, flexibility, 9 resilience - and saw the character of life in the line it- self, not the description of life by means of the line."5 It was this that engaged Hayter's interest and gradually characterized his works for decades to come. Hecht's sensitivity to line is perceived easily in his engraving of c. 1930 entitled Bisgm, a direct and sim- ple depiction of that animal which is reminiscent of a prehistoric cave painting (Figure l). Employing a variety of 1ines--ranging from curt dashes to long horizontal strokes--Hecht suggests a number of different textures without rendering them in detail. For instance, areas of delicate gray squiggles denote several layers of soft fur on the bison's head and back while heavy dark strokes, de- lineating his legs and belly, convey a sense of hard mus- cle. Also, the absence of line defining the animal's hooves is as expressive of his brute strength as the dark contours of his horn and legs. Hayter's admiration for Hecht's work inspired him to take advantage of the opportunity to become an apprentice in the master's studio. While experimenting with the con- ventional intaglio techniques, he became fascinated in particular with engraving as a means for free, creative expression. In working with this technique, Hayter dis- covered that his college training as a chemist was im- mensely valuable. It enabled him to overcome technical problems encountered in engraving--discovering the maximum amount of pressure that can be applied without puncturing 10 the copper plate and observing the reactions of various Viscosities of ink used in printing. The characteristic of engraving that Hayter espe- cially liked was the way in which the burin travelled over and into the surface of the plate, creating a line that either suggested recognizable forms or functioned inde- pendently as a compositional element. By 1931, the year Hayter executed The Big Horse, he had gained an appreci- ation for line itself, rather than the form it delineated, as the vehicle of his expression (Figure 2). Although the image retains a connection with reality, it is apparent that the printmaker allowed his hand to wander across the plate without any particular attention to the anatomical correctness of the horse's belly, genitals, legs and tail. One continuous line reveals the free, roaming path that Hayter's burin followed. It is clear in The Big Horse that, for Hayter, ". . . the burin is a kind of plough which goes ahead of the manipulator in an exploratory and inventive way . ."6 Soon after Hayter commenced experimenting with en— graving at Hecht's studio, he realized the necessity of group workshop activity for the examination of intaglio processes. He explains why in his book New Ways of Gravure: When I met Hecht in 1926 I was very strongly impressed with the latent possibilities of his manner of using a burin and later, real- izing the necessity of collective work in a 11 group in order to develop these and other possibilities, I set up a workshop where all equipment was available for artists who wished to work in those media.7 The seed for Hayter's own printmaking workshop was sown in 1927 by two women who visited his home-studio in order to purchase some of his prints. One of them was Alice Carr de Creeft, wife of the sculptor Jose de Creeft who would join Hayter fifteen years later in New York. While visiting Hayter these women enthusiastically re- quested that he teach them various printmaking techniques. Attempting to discourage their wishes, he responded that a lack of both students and equipment made it impossible for him to fulfill their proposal. Within a few weeks the women had found a couple of friends who were also inter- ested in learning printmaking and they returned. Now that there was a small group of students, Hayter agreed to teach them and instruction soon began. With the financial as- sistance of Joseph Hecht, Hayter obtained his first print- ing press. By late 1927, many artists interested in ex- perimenting with the creative possibilities of intaglio printmaking had been attracted to the studio. In 1933, after six years of expansion, Hayter decided to relocate his workshop at a larger loft, 17 rue Campagne-Premier, where it acquired the name Atelier 17. Hayter's Concept of Printmaking When Hayter established Atelier 17 in Paris he em- barked upon his mission to revive and explore a creative 12 approach to intaglio techniques--engraving, etching, dry- point, mezzotint and aquatint. He maintained that since the sixteenth-century the direction of engraving and etch- ing, in particular, was deflected by artists toward purely reproductive purposes, thereby ignoring plastic and spatial resources that had been investigated throughout the develop- ment of painting and sculpture during this period. For four hundred years original printmakers working solely with the creative possibilities of the print represented a minority in comparison to the number of artisans who translated into prints ideas and images depicted originally in paintings. In his study of Prints and Visual Communication William Ivins, Jr., describes the situation that prevailed: The painter painted. The draughtsman for the engraver copied in black and white what the painter had painted . . . The engraver ren- dered the drawings of these draughtsman. The engravings in consequence were not only cop- ies of copies but translations of transla- tions.8 The same situation prevailed in etching as in engraving: the majority of artists failed to think of the original print as a creative medium independent of painting. When the industrial era matured in the mid-nineteenth— century, growing demands for illustrations and reproductions were filled gradually by new photographic and mechanical techniques. But, by this time, engraving and etching cer- tainly had lost those creative qualities that distinguished them at their birth in the fifteenth and sixteenth-century. Consequently, few artists could understand techniques that 13 involved direct work in metal. Leo Katz, a former member of the New York Atelier 17, considered the tragic condition of engraving and etching at this time when he declared: "Engraving as an art was buried and etching, without con- tact with vital modern art problems, was ready for the fu- neral. Suddenly, a strange man appears, opens the coffin and says: 'Rise, I see in you much life that never lived . . .'"9 This man was Stanley William Hayter. Hayter's mentor Joseph Hecht executed engravings, such as Bisgm, that dis- play an extreme sensitivity to the character of line. But, his attempts to revitalize intaglio techniques in Paris during the 1920's proved fruitless. They were not returned to the dynamic, expressive forms of the fifteenth and sixteenth-century until the founding of Atelier 17. Be- tween 1927 and 1940 the workshop achieved an international reputation, reviving techniques and introducing several in- novations in intaglio printmaking. Hayter's Transferral of Atelier 17 to New York In June of 1940 Paris was invaded and occupied by Hitler's army. In order to escape the Nazi destruction and intolerance of progressive artists, many of the lead- ing members of the avant-garde fled en masse to the United States. The majority of them found their way to the New York City area and joined those artists who had been im- migrating there since the late 1930's. l4 Included in this 1940 wave of exiles were several members of the Surrealist group-~Joan Miro, Andre Masson, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Sebastian Antonio Matta Echaurren and Stanley William Hayter. Neither Surrealist art nor the names of its creators were unheard of on the New York scene. The first examples of works by these artists were displayed to the American public in a 1932 exhibition at Julian Levy's Madison Avenue Gallery.10 This was followed four years later by the show Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism assembled by the Museum of Modern Art. Exhibitions fea- turing the paintings and sculptures of the European avant- garde in these and other New York museums and galleries kept American artists abreast of currents in the art world. The appointment of Hayter to the teaching staff of the New School for Social Research presented American art- ists with an opportunity to become involved in the modern stream of art. After instructing a summer session in San Francisco at the California School of Fine Arts, he agreed to re-establish his workshop in New York. Several of the Surrealists who had frequented the Parisian Atelier 17, such as Tanguy, Miro and Ernst, and immigrated to New York with Hayter decided to join him at his new workshop, where they could continue their explorations in printmaking. Printmakers, painters and sculptors working in the area who had become familiar with the names of Hayter and the other Surrealists associated with the workshop imme- diately enrolled in the Atelier 17 course. In addition 15 to museum exhibitions, American artists recognized these names through three other major sources: magazines, John Graham and neighborhood bars. During the 1920's and 1930's artists in the United States remained cognizant of recent developments in European art by having access to the latest issues of Cahiers d'Art and Minotaure. Both of these widely circulated periodicals included numerous reproduc- tions of works executed by the Parisian avant-garde. Many artists in New York probably saw, for example, the paint- ings of Andre Masson in Minotaure as well as Hayter's painting Pavane that illustrated David Gascoyne's article "Premier Manifeste Anglais du Surrealisme" published in a 1935 issue of Cahiers d'Art.ll A second, and more significant, recruiter responsible for Hayter's attraction to American artists was the painter and polemicist John Graham. During the 1930's and 1940's he acted as a bridge between the art worlds of Paris and New York City for many artists, including the European painters Willem de Kooning and Arshile Gorky and the American artists Barnett Newman and David Smith. For ex- ample, when Smith was about to depart for Paris in 1935, Graham suggested that he might want to visit Hayter's workshop there. As the reputation of Atelier l7 grew in the United States during the early 1940's, Graham played an active role in acquainting American artists with refugee Surrealists. One of these Americans was the painter Jack- son Pollock. Pollock had known of Hayter both from his 16 work and their mutual friend John Graham, but did not meet him until 1943. Actually, this introduction occurred not by the efforts of Graham but rather through the encourage- ment of Reuben Kadish, a long-time friend of Pollock and one of Hayter's first pupils at the New York Studio.12 By the Fall of 1944 Pollock was working on engravings at Atelier 17. He remained there until Spring 1945, when he began creating the large-scale canvases destined to become, within a decade, the epitome of the Abstract Expressionist movement. Because of his efforts Graham should receive at least partial credit for bringing to ". . . the New York 'provinces' a sophistication and original turn of mind that was sadly missing from that scene."13 The third and final channel through which the repu- tations of Hayter and Atelier l7 grew among New York art- ists was personal contact in neighborhood bars. As Hayter became friends with students who worked at the studio, he was frequently invited to join them for drinks and conver- sation at nearby taverns; the most popular of these bars were the Cedar Street Tavern, White Horse Tavern and Hotel Albert. At these social gatherings he probably initiated acquaintances with local artists, some of whom subsequently enrolled at Atelier 17. No matter which of the previously mentioned channels they used, adventurous artists from every corner of New York found their way to Atelier 17. The presence of the European vanguard at the studio was undoubtedly a l7 stimulating experience for them. Here American printmakers, painters and sculptors who had received training from Social Realists and Regionalists during the 1920's and 1930's were in the company of abstract artists. Among the less mature artists who were awakened to the possibilities of non- objective art were Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell and Mark Rothko. From their experiences at Atelier 17, these three painters realized that if they were to renew American art they would have to rely solely on their own thoughts and emotions and embody them in abstraction. This reali- zation proved to be the root of the Abstract Expressionist movement of the late 1940's and 1950's. What Signey Geist says regarding the role that the European avant-garde played in the development of art in New York City during the 1940's can be applied readily to Atelier 17: The presence of this brilliant constellation in and around New York provided an unequaled stimulus, especially to a group of artists who were in personal contact with them. Their personalities, ideas and works com- bined to have an effect that was both in- spiring and liberating. . . . American art from this moment on was to shed its pro- vincialism and become part of the inter- national stream.l4 Philosophical Continuity Between the Paris and New York Studios When Hayter established Atelier 17 in the United States, he reaffirmed the goals and practices that prompted him to set up the original studio. At the New York 18 workshop, Hayter, his Surrealist colleagues and American students continued to probe and rediscover intaglio tech- niques. The experimentation, workshop experience and shar— ing of knowledge which characterized the Paris Atelier 17 also came to distinguish the New York studio. Hayter's course attracted, and therefore brought into contact, artists from a wide variety of nationalities, levels of proficiency and artistic movements.15 Chilean painter Matta and the American sculptor Alexander Calder engraved plates in the company of the Hungarian printmaker Gabor Peterdi. Publicly acclaimed artists Joan Miro and Marc Chagall used the same table space and presses as as- piring printmakers, like Terry Haass, and those who would soon gain reputations in painting or sculpture throughout the United States, including Irene Rice Pereira and Louise Nevelson. Refugee Surrealists Andre Masson and Yves Tanguy shared their technical ideas and aesthetic experiences with American student-beginners who had not yet developed indi- vidual styles. In welcoming accomplished painters and sculptors to Atelier 17, Hayter did not require that they be highly skilled in intaglio techniques. He realized that with the knowledge and experience of various twentieth-century European art movements--Fauvism, Cubism, Dada, Surrealism-- they could bring a fresh look to their work. Prints that were mere reproductions of images previously represented in other media were absolutely banned from the workshop. 19 All prints that emerged from the presses had to be original works that were the results of investigating the potentials of engraving, etching or drypoint. As a balance to the ex- perience and established styles of the accomplished artists, Hayter also opened Atelier 17 to student printmakers. He felt that the apprentices, lacking adeptness with basic in- taglio techniques and still searching for individual styles, probably were more inclined to experiment with and exploit the new possibilities inherent in the metal plate. Part of the experimentation initiated by this diver- sified group consisted of applying the abstract visual im- agery of twentieth-century painting and sculpture to print- making. Hayter implied the need for this progress in the development of intaglio when he stated: I had in mind that something should be done about the graphic business. After all, in painting and construction, the world had been changing very rapidly. . . . [But] I knew it wasn't going to be done by one per- son working alone in a corner, that it had to be experimental.16 As a result of collective experimentation and a new creative approach to the plate, the New York group contin- ued to accumulate a number of discoveries which extended the expressive effects of intaglio--inn0vations in space, three-dimensionality, texture and color. For example, as in the Paris Atelier l7, printmakers at the New York studio employed the engraved line to create actual three-dimen- sional relief on the print surface, rather than relying on illusion. Or, when working with soft-ground etching, they 20 produced planes on the plate that approached three-dimen— sional space by the overlapping of textures and gradations in the strength of biting. For Hayter, as well as those artists who worked at Atelier 17 in both Paris and New York, experimentation formed the basis for advancing the spatial and plastic characteristics of intaglio prints to the level of twentieth-century painting and sculpture. The Workshop Experience This experimentation was pursued at Atelier 17 in an atmosphere of cooperation and friendship among artists, as they met and talked while working side by side on plates. Friendships inevitably flourished, for new ideas were ex- changed constantly and each artist called the other by his or her first name. Immersed in this congenial atmosphere, newcomers to Atelier 17 quickly became familiar with all phases of in- taglio printmaking, both through their own experiments on the metal plate and from observing the other, more skill- ful printmakers. As an introduction to intaglio, each ap- prentice was required by Hayter to produce a series of specimen plates utilizing ten different techniques.17 In this survey attention was focused on burin engraving, hard- and soft-ground etching and aquatint. Hoping to inspire him with an eagerness to experiment individually, Hayter discussed with the young printmaker how he and former col- leagues at the Paris workshop had re-invented or elaborated upon the conventional intaglio techniques during the 1930's. 21 He probably demonstrated, for example, the innovative process developed by Julian Trevelyan that involved the use of various textured materials in creating soft-ground etch- ings or the progress made by Kaiko Moti and Krishna Reddy in their continuing experiments to perfect a method whereby several colors could be printed simultaneously in one pas- sage through the press, rather than one passage for each color.18 After this introduction to intaglio techniques, each apprentice was encouraged by Hayter to select for further, more intense experimentation one or two of these techniques with which he felt most comfortable and that appeared to offer him the best possibilities for development. Then, the young printmaker was left to his own devices, to ex- plore different and unusual methods and ideas on the plate. Guidance or advice concerning any problems with a particu- lar project was supplied by Hayter only upon the request of a perplexed student. This self-directed study could potentially lead to exciting discoveries and, for the ap- prentice printmakers in the Atelier 17 group, provide at least the stimulating experience of pursuing their experi- ments beside Chagall, Miro, Tanguy or Lipchitz. The willingness and capacity to work independently and creatively were stressed from the preliminary stages of a student's association with Atelier 17. The purpose of emphasizing these two qualities was clearly stated in 22 the course description written by Hayter for the 1940-41 edition of the New School for Social Research Curriculum. The sentence reads: Atelier l7, originally organized in Paris, affords opportunity for artists already familiar with the ordinary techniques of etching and engraving, to carry on inde- pendent investigation with a View to evolving for each artist's requirements a personal and original medium.19 The potential to develop a personal visual idiom through self-directed work on the plate was even an important fac- tor considered by Hayter when interviewing candidates for admission. During each interview, Hayter examined the ap- plicant's portfolio of prints, drawings, paintings or sculptures. Only those artists whose works suggested an open-minded, creative approach to their media were admitted to the workshop. As long as Hayter directed Atelier 17, he remained adamant in his opinion that it should not resemble a con- ventional type of art school, where students merely learned various printmaking techniques from an instructor. His reasoning for this conviction was: It is indeed my practice to warn newcomers not to believe what I tell them for the obvious reason that, if I know something, they cannot know it simply by hearing me say it. It is the subject's own knowl- edge which is being sought for and this can arise only from his own experience6 as mine cannot be transmitted to him.2 Rather than teaching beginners the technical skills necessary to produce a print, Hayter preferred to serve as 23 a fellow researcher and guiding expert to whom students came for advice or criticism whenever problems arose. Whether there were five or thirty artists working in the studio at the same time, Hayter circulated and conferred personally with each one about his progress. Robert Broner, who ex- plored intaglio techniques at the New York Atelier 17, re- calls, with a tinge of humor, the favoritism Hayter dis- played in his path throughout the workshop: "He would go from one person to another. If you were young and pretty and female, he would visit you a little more often."21 In conferring with each student Hayter believed that the most beneficial method of guidance was ". . . to provoke, cajole, irritate, ask impossible questions and generally 'stir things up a bit' to get his victim to thinking and looking at fresh possibilities. Making art has got to be 'exciting' and an 'adventure'."22 When German printmaker Karl Schrag joined the Atelier 17 group at the New School for Social Research in 1945, he found Hayter's enthusiasm for intaglio to be quite contagious: "Hayter has a unique knowledge of and experience with all the endless methods of working on metal plates . . . He has the eloquence, the will and the gift to communicate this knowledge to other artists and to 'infect them' with the same burning enthusiasm."23 Infected with this "burning enthusiasm," each print- maker experimented with engraved or etched plates in at- tempts to solve various technical problems. Some of these problems corresponded to those previously addressed in the 24 evolution of twentieth-century painting and sculpture: space, texture, color. Others involved the elaboration of intaglio processes which had been developed in the 1930's by Atelier 17 members in Paris. As a participant in the workshop, each artist was required to share more than table space, inks and presses with his fellow researchers. Any technical discovery or innovation that occurred to him while working on a plate was considered common property for the benefit of all. This exchange of ideas and achievements among printmakers at Atelier 1? generated a sense of com- munity.24 The major advantage of this congenial atmosphere was the ever-present opportunity for colleagues to refine and improve the achievements of others. Gabor Peterdi, a printmaker who continued studies, initiated in Paris, at the New School for Social Research, supported the theory that Atelier 17 promoted the refinement of ideas. He wrote in his book Printmaking: "The graphic workshop is one of the few places where artists leaving the isolation of their studios can work together in a collective atmo- sphere. Technical experimentation and innovations are passed on and carried further immediately."25 The great potential for innovative technical develop- ment inherent in the workshop environment is demonstrated by an incident which Leo Katz recounted in his article "Atelier 17."26 This incident involved an apprentice printmaker named Sue Fuller, who had been experimenting 25 with the neglected art of lift-ground etching, and one of the leading painters of the Surrealist movement, Andre Masson. Soon after Fuller became a student at the New York studio in 1943 she was stimulated by reading E. S. Lumsden's treatise on The Art of Etching to revive and experiment with the lift-ground process.27 This technique, used by the Eng- lish painter Thomas Gainsborough in the eighteenth-century, was practiced infrequently by succeeding generations of printmakers, although knowledge of it was passed on to them. In New Ways of Gravure Hayter revealed that lift-ground etching had been investigated at the Paris Atelier 17 as early as 1929 but had been ignored gradually during the subsequent fifteen years.28 Katz recalled in his account that one evening Fuller, inspired with a new idea, went to the workshop carrying a bottle of Karo brand corn syrup from the A & P. Masson happened to be working on one of his own plates at that time and, eventually, asked the young printmaker to share with him the results of her experimentation. Fuller com- plied with the request and revealed to Masson her dis- covery of a new workable lift ground. Masson was so in- trigued with Fuller's Karo syrup technique that in 1943 he created his first etching using this method, entitled Improvisation (Figure 3).29 More significantly, Fuller's discovery, according to Hayter, represented a re-introduc- tion of lift-ground etching into the workshop repertoire.30 26 Through experiences similar to this one Atelier 17 had be- come by 1950 ". . . a vast storehouse of technical knowl- ege."31 As an instructor, Hayter constantly guided his stu- dents toward the development of a personal style of artistic expression. In spite of his efforts, several American art- ists who attended Atelier 17 in the 1940's produced prints that imitated the organic linear abstraction characteristic of works by Hayter and the other Surrealists. In addition, many of the former students continued to practice this linear abstraction in prints, paintings and sculptures they created throughout the 1950's and 1960's. This lingering tendency is apparent in Ezio Martinelli's painting of c. 1952 entitled $353, in which hundreds of delicate black lines curve and dart from point to point (Figure 4). In— terspersed throughout this tracery are hints of vegetable and anatomical detail. Could Martinelli's calligraphy have been created without an awareness of the linear rhythms featured in the works of Hayter, Masson or Matta? Also, the wire sculptures that James Kleege produced throughout the 1950's, such as the construction entered in the 1953 International Sculpture Competition on the theme of "The Unknown Political Prisoner," appear to translate into three dimensions the swift, looping burin lines that sweep across a Hayter or Masson print.32 These two artists and others from Atelier l7 progressed only far enough to become what might be referred to as "American Surrealists." 27 The lack of evolution by these artists can be attrib- uted to four major factors.33 First, without the security of a previously developed working style, many apprentices probably were perplexed when Hayter requested that they produce only experimental plates. Inevitably, they chose to imitate Hayter's Surrealist abstraction. A second fac- tor may be that some printmakers became fascinated with certain experiments that had been pursued at the Parisian workshop. Those involved in purely technical research tended to concentrate their work on such aspects as the swirling loops created with a burin or the variety of tex— tures which could be reproduced in soft-ground etchings. As a result, the development of an individual mode of ex- pression was impeded. Third, many apprentices were un- doubtedly influenced by the admiration of and close con- tact they had at Atelier 17 with European Surrealists who practiced biomorphic abstraction. Finally, suggestions and criticisms from Hayter must have had an impact on their working styles. For instance, Hayter probably conveyed his preference for engraving because it allowed the printmaker to create marvelous sensuous loops in the Surrealist vein. Nonetheless, there was also a large group of American printmakers whose experience at Atelier 17 proved to be liberating and, thus, a turning point in their artistic evolution. At the workshop, printmaking was in a state of renewal. The constant research and probing undoubtedly rendered to students a feeling of discovery and possibility. 28 In projects carried on independently, many talented stu- dents freely exercised their curiosity, usually resulting in breakthroughs and innovations. Often these achievements provided them with the opportunity to develop their own means of contemporary expression. One of these talented students at the New York work- shop was Jackson Pollock. The experience of using free ab- straction and non-descriptive line in creating intaglio prints was vital to his development of an original, revo- lutionary painting style. While enrolled in Hayter's class, he continued his fascination with the Surrealist concept of automatism. Pollock avowed his interest in this process when he stated in a questionnaire included in the February 1944 issue of Arts and Architecture: . . . the fact that good European moderns are now here is very important, for they bring with them an understanding of the problems of modern painting. I am par- ticularly impressed with their concept of the source of art being the unconscious.34 Inspired by automatism and its reliance upon the sub- conscious, he created in 1945 the engraving Untitled, which exhibits a free, swirling line and personal imagery (Fig- ure 5).35 According to Bernice Rose, by the time Pollock executed this print he had realized Hayter's "autonomy of line as a self—expressive force" and had discovered for himself "the allover linear configuration--the philosophy of risk underlying it . . ."36 29 While working with intaglio techniques at Atelier l7, Pollock was given the opportunity to examine the prints of other artists. Untitled indicates his familiarity with the work of Andre Masson. The rhythmic line and small abstract motifs characterizing Untitled suggested to Bernice Rose an influence from Masson's only automatic drypoint Rapt (Violated), created during the Winter of 1941 while the Surrealist was at the New York studio (Figure 6).37 Masson remained at the workshop until 1945 and Hayter may have shown Pollock Rapt as an example of the automatic tech- nique. The all-over configuration and free, swirling line featured in Untitled were carried over into canvases Pol- lock painted between 1947 and 1951. These paintings are usually referred to as "drip" paintings because, in cre- ating them, Pollock constantly moved about the edges of a huge canvas laid on the floor, dripping paint from sticks and blunt brushes and, occasionally, pouring paint directly onto the surface. The accidental effects which inevitably occurred--spillings, splatterings, drippings-- can be seen, for example, in Pollock's painting Number 1 of 1948 (Figure 7). Rather than attempting to clarify these spontaneous lines and splatters to suggest objects or fragments of anatomy, as Hayter and other Surrealists did in their prints and paintings, Pollock developed them into rhythmical linear swirls and puddles of pigment with- out recognizable subject matter. Therefore, the subject 30 of his "drip" paintings may be described as an over-all sense of automatism and spontaneity. In this way, Pollock transformed automatism, a process used by the Surrealists for inventing and generating images, into the process of painting itself. Michael Fried's analysis of Pollock's non-objective "drip" paintings of 1947 through 1950 clarifies how far he had pushed the concept of independent line: There is no inside or outside to Pollock's line or to the space in which it moves. . . . Line, in these paintings, is entirely trans- parent to both the non-illusionistic space it inhabits but does not structure, and to the pulse of something like pure, disembodied energy that seems to move without resistance through them. . . . Pollock has managed to free line not only from its function of rep- resenting objects in the world, but also from its task of describing or bounding shapes or figures, whether abstract or rep- resentational on the surface of the can- vas.38 This was Jackson Pollock's original and revolutionary style of painting which represented the birth of Abstract Ex- pressionism in the United States. Atelier 17, New York, in Retrospect The presence of well known and highly respected Euro- pean artists at Hayter's Atelier 17 in New York City pro- vided an inspiring catalyst for a select group of young American artists who came into contact with them through- out the 1940's and early 1950's. In the limited area of a printmaking studio, personalities, aesthetic ideas and technical innovations combined to create an effect that 31 was both stimulating and liberating. According to James Johnson Sweeney: "We cannot fail to be struck by the in- dependence with which the various members have worked to- gether under Hayter's technical guidance without conceding the individuality which has marked their work in other me- dia."39 The development of personal styles of working in some of these young artists contributed to the expansion of the frontiers of contemporary expression in printmaking, painting and sculpture in the United States and helped to make it an art center of the Western world. Indeed, it was an unfortunate day when Hayter dis- mantled the presses at the New York workshop and trans- ferred Atelier 17 back to Paris, where it continues to serve as a place for printmakers who wish to practice and creatively explore their craft. The press statement re- leased in the New York Times on 11 September 1955 an- nounced: "S. W. Hayter's 'Atelier l7,' which for the past fifteen years has been an important force in the revival of graphic work in this country, has disbanded its New York school and print center."4O During the years imme— diately following World War II, Atelier 17 provided one of the most stimulating settings for artistic creation in the United States. FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER I 1"Ate1ier 17," Art Digest 15 (October 15, 1940): 28. 2By 1945-1946 Hayter felt that Atelier 17 was well enough established in New York to survive independently, and he moved the workshop out of the New School for Social Re- search and into a loft on Eighth Street in Greenwich Vil- lage. When this section was torn down the studio was re- located to another loft on the Avenue of the Americas near the corner of Fourteenth Street. Then, in 1950, Hayter went back to Paris with the intention of reviving the original workshop. The New York Atelier 17 functioned precariously for the following five years under the di- rection of several long-time members--Karl Schrag, Terry Haass, Harry Hoehn, James Kleege, Peter Grippe and Leo Katz, successively. Hayter returned to the United States and visited the workshop in 1952 and 1953, but by 1955 it became obvious that it could not survive without his leadership. 3Jean Adhemar, Twentieth Century Graphics, trans. Eveline Hart (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971), p. 136. 4Essential biographical data is derived from Joann Moser, "The Significance of Atelier 17 in the Development of Twentieth-Century American Printmaking" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1976); John Rothenstein, Modern English Painters, Vol. 3: Wood to Hockney (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977), pp. 30-40; Alexander Watt, "8. W. Hayter," Studio 166 (July 1963): 32-35. 5Stanley William Hayter, New Ways of Gravure, 2nd ed. (London; New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 210. 6Richard T. Godfrey, Printmaking in Britain (New York: New York University Press, 1978), p. 124. 7Hayter, New Ways of Gravure, p. 213. 8William M. Ivins, Jr. Prints and Visual Communica- tion (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M.I.T. Press, 1953; reprint ed., 1978), p. 67. 9Leo Katz, "Atelier 17," Print 14 (January-February 1960): 53. 32 33 10Sidney Janis, Abstract and Surrealist Art in America (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1944), p. 86. llDavid Gascoyne, "Premier Manifeste Anglais du Surrealisme," Cahiers d'Art, nos. 5-6 (1935): 106. 12Bernard Harper Friedman, Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1972), p. 73. 13T. B. H. "John Graham, 1881-1961," Art News 60 (September 1961): 51. 14Sidney Geist, "prelude: The 1930's," Arts 30 (September 1956): 55. l58ee Appendix for a list of artists who worked at the Atelier 17 in New York from 1940 to 1955. 16Stanley William Hayter, quoted in Adrienne Farrell, "A Half Century of Lasting Imprint," Smithsonian, September 1978, p. 90. 17The New School for Social Research Curriculum (New York: The New School for Social Research, 1940-1941), p. 77. 18Joann Moser, in her introduction to the catalog Atelier l7, Elvehjem Art Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison (1977), pp. 36-39. 19The New School for Social Research Curriculum, p. 77. 20Hayter, New Ways of Gravure, p. 219. 21Robert Broner, quoted in Joann Moser, "The Impact of Stanley William Hayter on Post-War American Art," Archives of American Art Journal 18 (1978): 2. 22Farrell, "A Half Century of Lasting Imprint." p. 91. 23Karl Schrag, "The artist alone versus the artist in the workshop," New University Thought 5 (Autumn 1967): 5. 24The idea of a workshop where artists work as mem- bers of a group, pooling their ideas and communicating their discoveries and achievements, was something rela- tively new in the United States when Hayter established Atelier 17 at the New School for Social Research. The first workshop came in 1935 when the United States govern- ment created the Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.). 34 Under the W.P.A. the Federal Art Project had a graphic arts section which organized local studios and shops all over the country where techniques were explored and expanded. Daily meetings of artists produced a constant exchange of ideas. Also, in 1936, the Mexican muralist David Siqueiros founded an experimental workshop in New York City. 25Gabor Peterdi, Printmaking (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1959), p. xxii. 26Katz, "Atelier 17," p. 57. 27Moser, "The Significance of Atelier 17 in the De- velopment of Twentieth-Century American Printmaking," p. 120. This process is sometimes called lift-ground aqua- tint, "sugar bite," "sugar lift," the "pen method," or the "sugar method." Sue Fuller refers to it as "direct black aquatint." 28Hayter, New Ways of Gravure, p. 74. 29Moser, "The Significance of Atelier 17 in the De- velopment of Twentieth-Century American Printmaking," p. 171. 30Hayter, New Ways of Gravure, p. 74. 31Schrag, "The artist alone versus the artist in the workshop," p. 5. 32"Letters: 'Unknown Political Prisoner' Competi— tion," Art Digest 27 (March 1, 1953): 19. 33Moser in her introduction to the catalog Atelier 17, p. 45. 34Jackson Pollock, quoted in "Jackson Pollack" [sic.], Arts and Architecture 61 (February 1944): 14. 35Pollock's Atelier l7 engravings remained unknown until 1967, when William S. Lieberman and Lee Krasner found them in a warehouse. The six plates were printed post- humously and published by his estate and Marlborough Gal- leries, New York. 36Bernice Rose, Jackson Pollock: Works on Paper (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1969), p. 18. 37Ibid., pp. 18-19. 38Michael Fried, in his introduction to the catalog Three American Painters: Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Frank Stella, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cam— bridge, Massachusetts (1965), p. 14. 35 39James Johnson Sweeney, "New Directions in Gravure," Museum of Modern Art Bulletin 12 (August 1944): 5. 40Howard Devree, "Hayter Atelier Closes," New York Times, 11 September 1955, sec. II, p. 11. CHAPTER II ATELIER 17: PHILOSOPHY AND TECHNIQUES OF PRINTMAKING Among those artists attracted to the Paris Atelier 17 during the late 1920's and early 1930's were many Surreal- ists who represented the vanguard of the time. Surrealist painters Jean (Hans) Arp, Max Ernst, Andre Masson and Joan Miro printed some of their best plates at the workshop, while the sculptor Alberto Giacometti created some of his early prints there. Hayter probably gave Giacometti a bit of technical assistance in 1934-35 when he was cutting the plate for the engraving Invisible Object (Hands Holding Enid), which was simultaneously one of his first prints and sculptures.1 They went to Atelier 17 because of the philosophical compatibility of Hayter's point of view with their own and the rich possibilities for technical experi- mentation. The close working relationship that Hayter had with several of the artists eventually developed into friend- ships. As a result, he was invited occasionally to par- ticipate in Surrealist exhibitions during the 1930's. Two major shows that included his name on the program were the International Surrealist Exhibition held in London in 1936 and an exhibition sponsored by the Ratton Gallery in 1936.2 36 37 But it was not the exhibitions alone that drew Hayter into the Surrealist movement for, because of the large number of Surrealists who congregated at the workshop, by 1934 Atelier 17 may have been the graphic center of that move- ment. Automatism and Stanley William Hayter Perhaps the most important aspect of Hayter's asso- ciation with the Surrealists, in terms of his development as a printmaker, was his initiation into the practice of automatism. In the creation of their prints, paintings and sculptures, the Surrealists regarded automatism as a means of liberating creative forces from the conscious fac- ulties. In other words, this process made it possible for an artist to represent on paper or canvas an image of his personal thoughts and desires. The assertion that automa- tism was central to the Surrealist movement is proven by the fact that in his 1924 manifesto Andre Breton defined Surrealism as: "Pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express verbally, in writing, or by other means, the real process of thought. Thought's dictation, in the absence of all control exercised by the reason and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations."3 In a similar vein, Max Ernst considered automatism as Surreal- ism's most liberating innovation because these "... pro- cedures serve the journey of discovery into the uncon— scious."4 38 As an example, according to automatic procedure, an artist would begin work on a painting by allowing his hand to travel rapidly across the surface of a canvas. The squiggles and jottings created by his brush then served as starting points to liberate his imagination. As work con- tinued, the artist might recognize hints of images--frag- ments of human anatomy, animals, plants--interspersed with- in the lines of his abstract painting. Although many Sur- realists frequently exercised freedom in changing or adding to these images to make them more recognizable, the results usually remained open to multiple interpretation by the spectator. Appropriately, works of art which contained ambiguous fragments of images that suggested human organs, animals and plants belonged to that branch of Surrealism referred to as "organic Surrealism" or "biomorphic emblematic." The organic, linear abstraction distinctive of "biomorphic em— blematic" Surrealism was strikingly dissimilar in both character and purpose to the representational, super-real direction, followed by Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Paul Delvaux and others, which was distinguished by meticulous detail, recognizable scenes and a fantastic, dream-like world. In contrast to the concentration on Freud's theo- ries of the subconscious and the significance of dreams by the naturalistic Surrealists, the biomorphic Surrealists adhered to an atavistic point of view. Through automatism, and the consequent drawing of anthropomorphic images from 39 the artist's subconscious, they hoped to be able to dis- cover and express the universe, hinted at in primitive re- ligions and ancient myths, that continues to live in the subconscious of each human being. This approach was an- ticipated by psychologist Carl Jung's theory of the "col- lective unconscious." In accordance with this approach, the Surrealists were capable of separating invalid from valid images by noting the continuous reappearance of the latter in a succession of works. Valid images are part of the subconscious of every human being and, therefore, should stimulate a response in all beholders. Stanley William Hayter described his selection procedure of these valid subconscious images, which was quite similar to that process chosen by the Surrealists, when he stated: "Some fade quickly; others are just as insistent after three months. These, I then feel, are a kind of general image which is a part of the collective human Subconscious, not just my own Subconscious."5 The liberating effect that automatism had on Hayter's print work in the 1930's is perceived easily in a compari- son between the topographical drypoint Rue des Plantes, created in 1926 when Hayter was an apprentice at Joseph Hecht's studio, and the engraving Combat, executed in 1936 while the artist was part of the Surrealist circle (Fig- ures 8 and 9). In Rue des Plantes, Hayter employed a rather conventional perspective and design in presenting a View of the Paris street near his first studio. But, 40 an exploring mind and hand are suggested by the dark, hunched, hurrying pedestrians. In contrast to this some- what nostalgic scene are the tortured Surrealist shapes and lines that render to Combat an overwhelming sense of pain and anguish. Created at the time of the Spanish Civil War, Combat expresses the suffering that was felt by victims involved in the destruction and inhumanity caused by that conflict. For artists of Spanish descent the war was par- ticularly horrifying, and in 1937 it also served as the inspiration for Pablo Picasso's Guernica and Joan Miro's painting Still Life With Old Shoe. In Combat Hayter com- municates a feeling of pain and terror through the use of long lines that freely bend back upon themselves with great speed and capture within their web fragments of hu- man anatomy, such as hands and feet. Aspects of automa- tism predominate, for the lines have a life of their own, as if Hayter completed them spontaneously and with his eyes closed. In the late 1930's, while Hayter detached himself from the Surrealist circle, he retained from these forma- tive years the process of automatism and a complete free- dom in the use of expressive means. These two practices persisted during the decade, from 1940 to 1950, that he spent in the United States and they continue to appear in his contemporary work. In New Ways of Gravure Hayter stated his position in relation to the Surrealist movement: 41 Although, for personal reasons, I am no longer an active member of the Surrealist Group, the source of the material in all my work is un- conscious or automatic. That is to say, an image is made without deliberate intention or direction. The impulse to make an image is definite, but no particular image is sought consciously. Automatism and Atelier l7 When Hayter established Atelier 17 in New York his advocation of automatism became one of the last remnants of Surrealist influence. The Surrealists who joined Hayter at his American workshop continued, through this process, to extract the images in their prints from the subcon- scious. But what was different and distinct about the New York studio was the presence of American students who were drawn to Atelier 17 by the opportunity to explore print- making with members of the European avant-garde. It was not only a desire to learn technique that attracted these students: they also were interested in experimenting with automatism. Jackson Pollock hinted at this twofold attrac- tion of the workshop for American artists when he claimed that the availability of Surrealist philosophy and prac- tices transferred from Europe by the exiles ". . . inter- ests me more than these specific painters do . . ."7 From the beginnings of their associations with Atelier 17 students were strongly encouraged by Hayter to employ automatic drawing in creating an image on the metal plate. Through his insistence on the exercise of this 42 process, Hayter hoped to impress on his students the notion that the final image did not have to depict, or even sug- gest, a recognizable object. It was not the product, but the act of approaching the plate with a sense of explora- tion and discovery that was important. Whether incising a plate with a burin or tracing into a wax ground with a stylus, the printmaker should allow his hand to travel swiftly and spontaneously across and into the surface. While work progressed on the plate there always existed the possibility of an accident--the burin cutting a hole in the thin copper plate or chemicals reacting in an un- expected way. These accidents, in conjunction with the image that was unfolding almost organically on the plate, constantly acted upon the imagination of the artist, in- spiring his next step. According to Hayter, this type of experience was valuable to both the artist and his work: "It is in exposure of his idea and his plate to the acci- dents of method, to the imminent risk of destruction, that the greatest result may occur in the work and the most valuable experience in the artist."8 Hayter advised his students that once the basic linear structure was created through automatic drawing they ought to proceed with the plate in a careful, rational man- ner; hence, they should pull a proof at each major stage of development so that the effects of previous actions could be studied. Then, the artist should clarify and strengthen his ideas through the elaboration and refinement of lines 43 or the imposition of color upon linear areas to complete rhythms and patterns. Thus, there was at Atelier 17 a com- bination of structured and free creativity. When the act of printmaking was undertaken experimentally an infinite number of possibilities for development existed. Accord- ing to Hayter, the subject was most exposed to ". . . the possibility of discovery. This is the possibility of a real discovery, a discovery of things unknown to us and often different from the discoveries of others . . ."9 Through the liberating procedures of spontaneous drawing, unexpressed latent images stored in the artist's subconscious would be brought into visible reality. And, in turn, by contemplating the lines, textures and colors, the spectator should discover various meanings and associ- ations which are similar to those in his own subconscious. In this way, Hayter wrote, a print becomes ". . . a mirror window through which every man can see into his own in- ternal reality."10 Further, . . . it is to be supposed that in the con- templation of the exceptional print, which by chance is able to engage completely the Spirit of the observer, he may be able to escape, as through the doorway in a dream, out of the banal conformism of our every- day banal existence into a fuller life of the spirit.11 Printmaking Techniques at Atelier l7 Hayter stressed at Atelier 17 the achievement of at least technical skill, if not virtuosity, in processes of gravure. Through experimentation and the exploitation of 44 the mechanics of these techniques, Hayter and his col- leagues developed and elaborated the potentials of intaglio prints--adding effects of depth, texture, color and three- dimensionality. The scope of innovations ranged from new ways of creating an image on the plate to new methods of printing plates, in order to make the intaglio media more responsive to the needs of contemporary abstract expres- sion. Knowledge of the mechanics of intaglio processes, according to Hayter, was valid only in the degree to which it permitted the transmission of unrealized aspects of re- ality, or imaginative experience, having, in the words of Herbert Read, ". . . depths and dimensions that extend be- yond the individual, that are racial and archetypal and only to be expressed in symbolic form."12 In addition, Read pointed out that: . . . the artist, in his pursuit of reality, is uSIng certain instruments, certain mate- rials; and that the success of his pursuit depends on his exploitation of these means. There has always been an intimate connexion between the functioning of the plastic imagination and the manipulation of the plastic means.13 A number of detailed researches with various tech- niques were carried on by Hayter and his associates at both the Paris and New York workshops. An inclination toward the direct manipulation of the plate led these art- ists to revive old printmaking techniques--mezzotint, en- graving, crible, lift-ground etching--and to invent new ones, including simultaneous color printing and a method 45 whereby textures were produced on a plate by impressing many materials into soft ground. Three of the techniques that were developed at Atelier 17 have direct application to the careers of Minna Citron and Sue Fuller, two artists who studied at the New York workshop and are examined in the second part of this thesis. They are engraving, soft- ground etching and color printing. Engraving Hayter and his students revived on a large scale the centuries-old technique of line engraving by using the original and classic tool--the burin--to incise lines in a metal plate. Basing his approach on automatism, an en- graver allowed the burin to cut directly and freely into the copper, pushed solely by the unconscious movements of his hand. A change of direction in the path of the burin was achieved by the rotation of the plate with the other hand. This procedure involved a constant twisting and turning of the plate, which compelled the artist to move with the cutting point of his tool inside the linear de- sign growing before his eyes. Lacking the arm's length perspective of a painter or sculptor, he became very in- volved with the image, looking and considering it from every possible point of view. This aspect of engraving was particularly valued by artists at Atelier 17 who worked in an abstract idiom, at- tempting to create a shifting, dynamic expression of space. When the engraver drives the burin against the surface of 46 a turning copper plate, he is involved directly in the cre- ation of a three-dimensional line. The penetration of the burin below the surface of the plate is felt physically by the artist. As a result, he experiences the sensation of moving in three-dimensional space. Hayter described this experience as ". . . the sensation of navigating inside the web of his design which turns as the landscape seems to turn beneath a banking plane."l4 For the engraver, the sensation of travelling in three dimensions is not mere illusion. In printing, the engraved plate is initially overlaid with a coating of black ink. Then, the flat surface areas of the plate are wiped clean with a cloth, leaving all grooves and furrows full of ink. The next step involves placing a damp sheet of paper on the plate and passing it through a press. Under the force of the press the soft paper squeezes into the indentations cut in the flat metal surface, with the result that the paper absorbs the ink. Therefore, the lines appearing in the print are actually hillocks of black ink, and, if one touches the surface, it is possible to feel the raised lines. This relief is readily apparent in a comparison between a loop drawn with a pen or pencil and one printed from an engraved plate.15 The loop drawn with the pen easily can be imagined to lie flatly on the paper. But, when cut with a burin into a copper plate, the loop will print in relief above the surface of the paper, as shown in an enlargement (Figure 10). It can III. 47 be perceived only as a line in three dimensions. With this image in mind, Roger Vieillard, a pupil of Hayter in the pre-war period, wrote: ". . . engraving is nearer to bas- relief, and therefore nearer to sculpture than to painting and drawing. The printing of the copper plate on paper is the moulding of a has-relief."16 In the early 1930's, Hayter undertook investigations into the sculptural possibilities of the engraved line. This experimentation led to the introduction of elements of white relief into his engravings, one of the first being the print Oedipus, which was completed in 1934.17 While cutting wide, deep gouges into the copper plate with the burin, he noticed that if these indentations were of a depth greater than one millimeter they would not retain ink. At Atelier 17 Hayter and his colleagues exploited this knowledge by deliberately hollowing out lines and spaces in plates with a tool called a scorper or by drill- ing holes. The results were referred to as gauffrage-- the French word for embossing--because when the plate was passed through the press the hollowed out, uninked grooves formed white, raised or embossed, lines and spaces on the print. In 1948, while working at the New York-based Atelier l7, Hayter executed the engraving Death by Water in which the three-dimensional effect of the image is elaborated upon through both the linear patterns of the burin and the white lines and small areas channelled out 48 of the copper plate (Figure 11). Under the pressure of the printing press, the dampened paper squeezed into deeply carved furrows in the plate, producing white lines and areas of design which appear in relief above the printed surface. Slight traces of ink, driven into the edges of the hollows when the inked plate was wiped with a cloth, form dark halos around these embossed areas. Consequently, they appear more white than the paper itself. The white reliefs, isolated and detached from the black linear ele- ments, project in front of the picture plane of Death by Wnpgp, extending the appearance of depth and space. Al- though these elements are raised above the surface of the paper they occasionally appear to recede from the specta- tor's eye. In this ambiguity there may be an allusion to the contradictory role of water as a source of both life and death. The tendency to explore the relief possibilities of the metal plate with the burin was carried to an extreme at Atelier 17, New York City, in the engraving of Pierre Courtin. Following the hollowed out lines and forms char- acteristic of Hayter's engravings of the 1930's and 1940's, Courtin developed a technique through which he built com- positions from irregular blocks. This technique involved the use of a jeweler's tool in carving out a zinc plate to a depth of as much as two millimeters. After a slight general inking with some black and a bit of colored ink, damp paper was moulded to the plate and passed through the 49 press. The resulting print, as exemplified by Courtin's Composition of 1956, is a relief in itself (Figure 12). Composition consists of distinct blocks of relief, hollows and furrows which render to it the character of a sculp- tural bas-relief. Although the actual dimensions of the print are rather small, the embossed blocks give the ef- fect of a sculpture carved on a monumental scale. Also, like the cutout relief forms of the Surrealist Jean (Hans) Arp, these embossed blocks project from the picture plane in defiance of the Renaissance notion of the picture plane as a window behind which the artist creates an illusion of perspective. For Courtin, as for other printmakers at Atelier l7, "engraving is a tactile art . . ."18 Soft-Ground Etching Hayter personally preferred engraving over other in- taglio techniques because the burin comes into direct con- tact with the plate; hence, there is not the interference of grounds, acids and chemicals in creating an image on the plate. However, in the 1920's he began experimenting with the process of soft-ground etching in his endeavors to discover tonal areas that would contrast with the ac— tive lines of the burins. Through the contrast of lines and neutral areas Hayter wanted to produce in his prints an illusion of depth, in the same way that backdrops cre- ate a sense of space on a stage. In the 1930's the English artist Julian Trevelyan was so stimulated by Hayter's previous experimentation 50 with soft—ground etching that he devised a method of im- pressing textured materials into the ground coating a plate. This technique was used extensively in the follow- ing decades by Hayter and other printmakers who were at- tracted also to collage or Max Ernst's technique of fppp: Eggg. This interest of Atelier 17 artists in the printing of various textures and materials may have stemmed from a knowledge of the papier colles created by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso at the turn of the century. The process of soft-ground etching, as practiced at Atelier 17, involved, first of all, the creation of a basic linear structure on the plate. This was completed either by cutting directly into the metal surface with a burin, which was the usual procedure, or by sealing the plate with an acid-resistant coating and drawing into it with a sty- lus. This part of the process was particularly attractive to printmakers because it permitted a great degree of spontaneity and freedom of expression. If the drawing had been made by means of the coating procedure, the artist's next step was to immerse the plate in a bath of acid. The lines and areas where the stylus had pushed the ground aside, exposing the metal beneath, were then attacked, or "bitten," by the mordant. -Depending on the length of time each section was subjected to the action of the acid, dif- ferent gradations of line were apparent when the plate was inked and printed on paper. Thus, lines that were bitten briefly were gray while those bitten for a longer period 51 of time were black and, as in engraving, were physically higher in relief above the surface of the paper than the shallower cut. Also, when the mordant was allowed to bite holes completely through the plate the result in printing was embossed white reliefs, or creves, similar to the gauffrages of engraving.19 For Atelier 17 printmakers, the next stage of de- velopment on the plate involved the laying of various ir- regular textures over the basic linear structure. Because a soft ground consists of a hard ground (asphaltum, bees- wax and resin) with vaseline, tallow or grease added, it never really hardens. Remaining malleable and sticky, it registers anything from the delicate gauze web of a silk stocking to the coarse fibers of a burlap bag. Hayter and his colleagues conducted the most extensive exploration of these possibilities with a wide range of materials: Julian Trevelyan used burlap in The Cow of 1933; Andre Masson used a leaf and burlap in his Le Petit Genie du Ble of c. 1942; Stanley William Hayter used various fabric textures, an irregular mesh of gauze, several closely woven silks and crumpled paper to create Amazon in 1945; and Joan Miro pressed his fingerprints into the wax ground for his Composition No. 2 of 1947.20 Once the fabrics had been placed to conform with the line structure previously in- cised in the metal surface, a sheet of wax paper was laid over the plate and it was passed through the press. When the paper and materials were peeled off, impressions of 52 individual patterns remained visible in the ground; for the textures had pulled away the wax and the metal was again open to attack by the acid. According to the length of time each exposed area of the plate was bitten by the mordant, it was possible to achieve a series of contrast- ing textured areas ranging from light gray to dark black. Thus, white, gray and black on the print became the equiva— lent of color in painting. Because many textures exposed only a small percent- age of the plate surface to the action of the acid, the above process could be repeated by using the same textures again or by using different ones. A second or third ground carried these textures so that they would be superimposed over those already etched in the plate. The resulting im- age was an arrangement of interpenetrating and overlapping textures that were seen, one through the other, as if they were transparent films or sheets of cellophane. The in- terference and overlapping of these translucent patterns, which appeared to be at various distances from the picture plane of the print, created the impression of advancing and receding space. But, this sense of depth was not mere il- lusion: the patterns in the print repeated and emphasized the sculptural relief and, therefore, space and recession, already existing in the plate. In 1947 Alice Trumbull Mason, a student at Hayter's New York-based workshop from 1944 to 1947, executed a soft- ground etching entitled Indicative Displacement which is an 53 excellent example of how textures were meant to be used at Atelier 17—-functioning within the plastic content of the print, never as surface decoration (Figure 13). In her print, Mason employed white forms floating against a gray and black background of various superimposed textures to give a visual impression of great depth and infinite space. At first glance, the spectator is aware of four levels of space: a dark black area in the background suggesting an abysmal void; a flat, solid gray area suggesting some sort of wall or floor; a more voluminous area consisting of sev- eral superimposed and interpenetrating gray and black tex- tures and organic forms that float at various ambiguous distances from the picture plane; and flat gray oblong shapes that appear to be parallel to the picture surface. The pervading sense of mystery and ambiguity is enhanced by white squares which, like the white reliefs of engrav- ing, function in Indicative Displacement as both depth and surface. In this way, the displacement alluded to in the title is expressed clearly: if at moments one thing ap- pears behind the other you will soon find it reversed nearby. Colored Prints After a plate has been incised with a burin in en- graving or bitten by acid in soft-ground etching, a rather large portion of its surface remains unused. On these areas may be placed thin layers of color, one superimposed 54 upon the other. The method usually employed by printmakers involved the preparation of two or more plates: one inked for intaglio and individual ones for each color to be printed over the black lines. When the plates were sent successively through the press the problem of imperfect registration of lines and color inevitably occurred with each passage. An important step toward the resolution of this prob- lem was taken in the early 1930's at Hayter's Paris Atelier 17. Experiments that explored the possibility of combining surface and intaglio processes on a single plate were performed by several resident printmakers. Their re- searches eventually resulted in the development of a novel process through which engravings and etchings were over- printed with color simply by inking a plate for intaglio and then immediately applying layers of pigment to it with rollers. Exercise of this process meant that a single inked plate was passed through the press only once to create the final image on paper. An innovative variation of this technique was intro- duced by Hayter, soon after his arrival in the United States, during the Summer of 1940. After the plate had been inked in black for intaglio printing in the conven- tional manner, color was added to selected areas of the surface by pigmented silk-screens. While teaching at the California School of Fine Arts, Hayter became familiar with this process as a medium for artistic expression. In 55 1938 a group of New York printmakers employed by the Federal Art Project experimented with silk-screen and gradually con- verted it from a devise for commercial advertising to a me— dium utilized by artists for communication of their personal ideas. Hayter's introduction to artistic silk-screening obviously had a great impact on the experimentation he was conducting at that time. By 1946 most of the technical problems associated with his method of color printing had been surmounted. Because experimentation had always in- volved members of either the Paris or New York Atelier 17, results were disseminated rapidly throughout the workshop group over the years, as emphasis gradually changed from black and white engravings and etchings to color prints. One of the most successful prints that Hayter cre- ated through the use of a plate printed with three colors and intaglio in one operation was his Cinq Personnages of 1946 (Figure 14). Hayter's application of pigment to the plate surface was governed by the fact that the inks would appear in reverse order when printed on paper. Therefore, before printing the layers of color ink were laid on the plate in the following order: black intaglio (the deepest), then red-violet, orange and blue-green. In the print the color levels are reversed and the pigments appear beneath the black lines and textures, which stand in relief above the surface of the paper. In addition, white gauffrages, completed through the removal of portions of the plate with a scorper, are raised in relief above all other components. 56 Due to the thinness of the films of ink transferred from the plate to the paper, a great deal of transparency in color has been achieved in Cinq Personnages. Conse- quently, the layers of red-violet, orange and blue-green spasmodically overlap and blend, creating an additional three shades of color. This interpenetration of color re- sults in the formation of several distinct planes located at various levels in relation to the picture surface. Each color, being so thin and transparent, is perceived easily through the other colors. In this way, the sense of ad- vancing and receding space created by color repeats and emphasizes that already achieved in Cinq Personnages through the sculptural relief of the intaglio elements: engraved lines, gauffrages and the overlapping of trans- parent bitten textures. The Influence of Atelier 17 on American Students At Atelier 17 Stanley William Hayter consistently promoted an atmosphere that was conducive to free and cre- ative exploration of intaglio techniques. From its con- ception in Paris through its re-establishment in New York City, the workshop was never intended by Hayter to function as a traditional type of printmaking school where students received instruction from a teacher. Rather, printmakers, painters and sculptors, with or without previous working knowledge of intaglio processes, conducted their own ex- periments, probing technical problems or certain aspects 57 of a technique that captured their interest. These inde- pendent investigations were carried out with the goal of evolving in each apprentice printmaker a personal and original medium of expression. For talented American artists at the New York work- shop during the 1940's, this experience of independent technical investigation opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Through Surrealist automatism, students were exposed to the notion that the image created on the plate is insignificant in relation to the act of working in a spontaneous manner. The immediate experience of un- directedly manipulating the burin, intuitively impressing textures into a soft ground or uninhibitively applying color to the print is more important than the final work. Also, through working on the plate, artists were exposed to the idea that accidents, which inevitably occur when dealing with tools and chemicals, offer a wide variety of new possibilities. Hayter encouraged his students to ex- ploit these chance effects by allowing them to excite the imagination and act as sources of inspiration. Finally, because of the emphasis at Atelier 17 on exploring the in- herent potentials of the intaglio plate--experiments, for example, involving the alteration of the plate surface to create sculptural relief--line and abstraction came to characterize the majority of prints executed by American students. 58 This special importance placed on individualism and a do-it-yourself mentality particularly appealed to young American artists reared in a democratic society. It opened up vast new roads of exploration and change to a generation of post-World War II artists in search of new means of ex— pression after rejecting the descriptive realism that had distinguished the country and city scenes of the Region- alists and Social Realists throughout the 1920's and 1930's. Two New York Atelier 17 students of this genera- tion were Minna Citron and Sue Fuller. FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER II lRiva Castleman, Prints of the Twentieth Century (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1976), p. 81. 2Dawn Ades, in her catalog Dada and Surrealism Re- viewed, Hayward Gallery, London (1978), p. 308. 3Andre Breton, What is Surrealism?, trans. David Gascoyne (London: Faber & Faber, 1936), p. 59. 4Max Ernst, quoted in Uwe M. Schneede, Surrealism, trans. Maria Pelikan (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1973), p. 30. 5Stanley William Hayter, quoted in Rosamund Frost, "The Chemically Pure in Art: W. Hayter, B. Sc., Surreal- ist," Art News 40 (May 1941): 31. 6Stanley William Hayter, New Ways of Gravure, 2nd ed. (London; New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 143. 7Jackson Pollock, quoted in "Jackson Pollack" (sic.), Arts and Architecture 61 (February 1944): 14. 8Hayter, New Ways of Gravure, p. 277. 9Ibid., p. 219. 10Hayter, quoted in Frost, "The Chemically Pure in Art: W. Hayter, B. Sc., Surrealist," p. 31. lJ-Stanley William Hayter, About Prints (London; New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 116. 12Herbert Read, in his preface to Hayter, New Ways of Gravure, p. vi. 13Ibid. 14Stanley William Hayter, "Atelier l7," Graphis 10 (1954): 395. 158tan1ey William Hayter, "Line Engraving: Tech- nique," Print 1 (March 1941): 58. 59 60 16Roger Vieillard, quoted in Jean Adhemar, Twentieth Century Graphics, trans. Eveline Hart (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971), p. 229. 17Hayter, New Ways of Gravure, p. 92. 18Pierre Courtin, quoted in Georges Boudaille, "Pierre Courtin: 'Engraving is a Tactile Art ...'," Artist's Proof 1 (1961): 2. 19There is a distinction between a creve and a gauf- frage. A creve results from a line whose depth is too shallow for its width. Ink is not held in the center, where a gray appears between two black margins, because the walls alone retain the ink. This term also refers to an area on the surface of a plate or ground that is damaged by the overbiting of lines laid too closely together. On the other hand, a gauffrage is so deep that it prints as an embossed line. Joann Moser, "The Significance of Atelier 17 in the Development of Twentieth-Century American Printmak— ing" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wis- consin, Madison, 1976), P. 170. 20Atelier l7, Elvehjem Art Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison (1977), p. 59. Hayter, New Ways of Gravure, pp. 90, 270. Diane Cochrane, "Atelier l7: Revo- lutionary Force or Historical Footnote?," American Arts & Antiques 1 (November-December 1978): 82 CHAPTER III MINNA CITRON: ". . . ACHIEVING THE THIRD DIMENSION" Minna Citron (b. 1896) was among the first of the post-World War II generation of American artists to absorb the European avant-garde invasion of New York City. As an apprentice at Hayter's Atelier 17 from 1946 to 1950, she experimented with various methods of intaglio, including engraving, soft-ground etching and color printing. Her researches were conducted in the company of those Surreal- ists--Chagall, Miro, Matta and Masson--who had joined Hay- ter at his New York workshop while in exile from war-torn France. Together, they formed a minor artists-in-exile colony at the New School for Social Research. As a student influenced by avant-garde tendencies, such as the Surrealist practice of automatism and its reli- ance upon intuition and spontaneity, Citron's style of ar- tistic expression underwent a drastic metamorphosis. Soon after her enrollment in Hayter's course, she transformed the descriptive realism, which had dominated her art during the late 1920's and 1930's, into semi-abstraction, exhibit- ing in particular a new interest in line. In Citron's prints of the late 1940's lie the roots of her enduring 61 62 fascination with achieving an actual third dimension in all her works. This fascination culiminated in the unusual method of building collages and paintings she devised in the 1950's and 1960's after leaving Atelier 17. The third dimension is realized fully through overlapping layers of paper and paint, calligraphic lines, thick encrustations of paint and, most importantly, found concrete objects. Throughout her article "In Deep Relief" Citron re- counts the occasion of her awakening to the revolution in intaglio printmaking that was represented in the works of European and American artists at Atelier 17.1 Early in the 1940's, prints created by studio members began circu- lating throughout New York City under the patronage of some of its more prestigous museums and galleries. Conse- quently, the name of Atelier l7 and those of printmakers associated with it were becoming recognized by the general public as well as art critics and collectors. One of the most influential of these exhibitions, sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art in 1944, displayed to the American public prints illustrating the various intaglio techniques, as revived and elaborated by Hayter and his colleagues. This exhibition, which subsequently circulated throughout the United States and South America, was followed a year later by a show at the Willard Gallery. Undoubtedly, the impact of these shows firmly established the reputation of Atelier 17 in New York City. 63 Before becoming acquainted personally with Hayter, recalled Citron in "In Deep Relief," she viewed his colored engraving and soft-ground etching Cinq Personnages some- where on the New York art scene (Figure 14). She was im- pressed immediately with, as well as puzzled by, the possi- bilities of intaglio printmaking that it exhibited. The elements in the print which particularly intrigued her were the thick white lines projecting from the surface of the paper in almost sculptural relief, as if they had been built up with white gouache. Citron's interest was cap- tured: "I had to find out how it was done, of course. So I went to work at Atelier 17 . . ."2 During the four—year Span that she worked there Citron responded strongly to the example of Hayter and her other Surrealist co-researchers, gradually adopting non-objective abstraction as a libera- tion from the realism that had characterized her earlier artistic ventures. Citron and Social Realism, 1924-1945 From the very beginning of her career as a print- maker and painter, Minna Citron had been involved constantly with contemporary social issues. In 1924, at the age of twenty-eight and already a wife and mother, she felt the need for self-expression and a new direction in her life apart from the domestic scene. In order to satisfy this desire Citron began studying art locally at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences during the 1924-1925 aca- demic year. After this period of basic training, the 64 young artist decided to attend classes in New York City first at the School of Applied Design for Women from 1925 to 1927 and, then, for the following seven years, with Kenneth Hayes Miller and the group associated with him known as the "Fourteenth Street School" at the Art Stu- dents' League. As a member of the Fourteenth Street School Citron emulated Miller by sketching and drawing subjects which she repeatedly observed at Union Square and other city loca- tions: pedestrians walking the streets, travellers wait- ing at Pennsylvania Station, patrons attending the opera and women sitting in beauty parlors. The variety of visual material which this environment provided for the artist is reflected in the acute observations, tainted with humorous and satirical overtones, of peoples' characters and their disparate social roles seen in Citron's painting of 1936 entitled Dress Circle, Carnegie Hall (Figure 15). Pon- dering her early Social Realist works Citron once said: "The warp and woof of my efforts, whether verbal or visual, painted, pasted or printed, is people, or the situations in which they find themselves."3 As an observer rather than an initiator of pictorial situations in her early paintings and prints, Citron tended to choose subjects with which she felt a personal bond. Being a woman herself, Citron was especially interested in the role of persons of that sex in contemporary society. Appropriately, her first solo exhibition, held at Midtown 65 Galleries in 1935, was entitled Feminanities. In this ser- ies of works Citron satirized the shallowness and vanity of modern women involved in daily activities, such as frequent- ing the beauty parlor or regularly attending concerts for "culture." Included in Feminanities was the painting She Earns "An Honest Living" of 1934 which shows a lower class woman, the antithesis of beauty and culture conscious women of the upper strata of society, who has been forced by eco- nomic circumstances of the Depression to sell newspapers in a subway station (Figure 16). Similar views of the impact of early twentieth-century American culture and society on women were created by Isabel Bishop at the Fourteenth Street School. Like Citron, Bishop portrayed in her drawings and paintings, such as On the Street of 1932, somber young women who dream of a better way of life as they go about their routine of city living.4 Soon after terminating her association with Miller and the Fourteenth Street School in the mid-1930's, Citron be- came employed by the Federal Art Project of the Works Prog- ress Administration and earned a reputation as a muralist. After four years on the project she was invited by the gov- ernment to execute two forty-eight-foot murals for the post office in Newport, Tennessee. These murals, as well as two paintings entitled Lilly of the Tennessee Valley and The Magic Box, realistically illustrate the great changes-- electricity and economic growth--brought into the lives of the Southern people by the Tennessee Valley Authority.5 In 66 the introduction to the brochure for an exhibition subse- quently held in New York, David D. Lilienthal wrote that these paintings ". . . portray not only the things T.V.A. is building but the spirit in which they are being built."6 Citron and Atelier 17, 1946-1950 By 1945 Citron began to sense that her work in the Social Realist vein was too confining, because of its plain descriptive representationalism as well as its focus on city scenes. After seeing Hayter's Cinq Personnages at a New York gallery the following year, she was awakened immedi- ately to the opportunity for "greater expansiveness" of- fered to an artist through the exploration of new styles and various intaglio techniques. Citron responded to her revelation by joining Hayter's Atelier 17 in Greenwich Village.7 Viewing this decision to study intaglio print- making as the major catalyst in her later development as an abstract artist, Citron stated: ". . . something was lacking, and I decided to break away from representational drawing to seek more dynamic creative expression in line, form, texture and, above all, color."8 This metamorphosis in Citron's stylistic and tech- nical evolution, as well as in her self-image as an artist, is parodied in the progressive states of her etching and aquatint Men Seldom Make Passes ... executed in 1946 (Fig— ure 17). The poem "News Item," published in 1936 by the American writer Dorothy Parker, inspired Citron to depict a bespectacled artist, whose portrait curiously resembles 67 that of Citron, working on a canvas at an easel. From one state to the next, the elements of this representational sketch of a painter become more and more abstract. Al- though the woman is still identifiable in the final print, the darkening of the background and the overlapping of planes of color added to the foreground transform the con- tours of her figure into an hourglass design. In Men Seldom Make Passes ..., as in all Citron's prints created in the late 1940's, the literary content which had been present formerly gave way to a greater emphasis on compositional elements. When Citron began her work with intaglio printmaking at Atelier 17 she devoted much time and energy to engrav- ing, etching and experimentation with techniques innovated by Hayter and his colleagues during the 1930's. In her in- itial year as an apprentice Citron executed her first com- pletely abstract print Whatever, which pointed to a new direction in her development as an artist (Figure 18). This small print illustrates Citron's practice of the method de- vised at the Paris workshop to create white reliefs, or gauffrages, as major elements of an engraved image. The design of Whatever is composed of an interlacing white line, produced through cutting deeply into the metal plate, which floats in relief above a receded black area. As alluded to in the title given by the artist, the subject of Whatever is to be personally determined by each spectator. This en- graving, executed in a style similar to that of Hayter's 68 prints, reflects the first step in Citron's work toward sim- plification and abstraction. Thereafter, these two tenden- cies dominate both her prints and paintings. Citron and Automatism In the creation of her prints during the late 1940's Citron was influenced by more than a concern with the re- lationship of design e1ements--form, line, texture, color-- that preoccupied Hayter and his Surrealist friends. As a result of her association with these Surrealist artists, the young printmaker was introduced to the practice of automa- tism for initiating work on a plate. Automatism involves the Vigorous and spontaneous application of lines to the surface of the metal plate with either a burin, in engrav- ing, or a stylus, in soft-ground etching. In this way, the material for the design is provided by latent forces and images stored in the subconscious. In a passage reminiscent of lines contained in Andre Breton's Surrealist manifesto of 1924 Citron commented in 1956 on her conception of au- tomatism in relation to the artist: "The artist deals with a content primarily sensory, tapping the resources of the unconscious, the unconscious rooted in the past of the in- dividual, of the race, and perhaps even of the species and of all life."9 Following the example of her European col- leagues,{Citron adopted the process of automatism for start-4 ing original designs on plates. Thus, she was initiated into the ranks of the avant-garde: 69 As an artist, Citron shares much of the prevailing faith in the principles of the vanguard; her approach to individual prob- lems of creating a work of art makes use of these devices and attitudes of experi- ment and spontaneity which are common currency of the past century in art.10 Perhaps the most significant event in Citron's de- velopment as an artist was the first time she experimented with automatism and became aware of the infinite possibili- ties of "the creative use of random or fortuitous ele- ments."11 Not only did it lead to a whole series of new prints, but it also resulted in her pursuing an "uncharted course" in all her work. It all started at Atelier 17 when, in the course of an etching process, the zinc plate broke after Citron cut too deeply into it.12 It was repaired and, twice thereafter, the plate broke and was repaired again. Subsequent to the final mending, the sections where the cuts and breaks occurred disclosed so novel a pattern of solder on the back of the plate that they became the starting point of several new prints--made from the reverse side of the plate. This early experimentation with the zinc plate demon- strates Citron's ability to invent, exploit and use to her advantage the technical slip-ups which inevitably occur during a graphic process. In this way, elements of chance and accident-—both in the intuitive response of the artist and in the mechanical and chemical effects that take place on the plate--play an active role in the growing stages of the image on the plate. But, while Citron did rely on 70 spontaneity and chance in the initial stage of creating her design—~starting from the cuts and breaks in the plate—-she followed the path of Hayter and the other Surrealist prac- titioners of automatism by putting her conscious, rational faculties to work in the final stages of its development. As encouraged by Hayter, Citron pulled proofs to check the evolution of her work on the plate. After rational con- sideration of each proof, she would elaborate on her design by adding lines or layers of color. Thus, Citron's prints created at Atelier 17 are characterized by an inventive sensibility which strikes a balance between intuitive im- pulses and rational processes. Sixteen years later Citron looked back upon her in- cident with the broken plates and, from the perspective of experience, wrote a general statement about her method of working: Some stimulus--some thought, something seen, something imagined, some unarticulated impulse of the artist's unconscious--starts a free sensuous expression upon the canvas. Without quenching its spontaneity, she fol- lows where the fancy leads, and counts as a work of art the record of a sensuous cre- ative experience, its themes taken from wherever they may come, and followed coute que coute wherever they may lead. She main- tains a constant awareness of what is hap- pening, bringing to bear (consciously or unconsciously) the sense of "just-rightness," a feeling for plastic organization and form. The artist constantly selects, rejects, re— directs; but just because she is not afraid of her impulses, they are not inhibited by conscious controls and the delicate balance between them can be maintained without either the conscious or the unconscious dominating and suppressing the other. 71 Eventually the work begins to fall into shape; the artist sees what it is leading to; its inchoate potentialities become visible to the imagination; and at that point conscious control takes over and brings the work to its completion. To those who intuitively sense the dynamic process which produced the com- pleted work, the artist communicates the creative activity of which it is both the product and the expression.13 Inspired by the freedom to generate and explore new ideas and techniques on the plate, Citron experimented with various textures--lace, netting, silk stockings--and color in her prints of the late 1940's. One of the first plates in which she impressed patterns of fabrics into a soft ground was that for her engraving and etching Squid Under the Pier of 1948 (Figure 19). In the article "Interpreta- tion Is Second With New York Artist," Citron described the intricate process she performed on the plate that occupied her for two years: to begin, white areas were spontaneously scratched on one side of the plate in reverse of the way they were to be when printed; then, a piece of ironed and starched veiling was laid carefully on the plate; and, fi- nally, color was added with a stencil and black lines strengthened with either further engraving or etching.l4 The most striking aspect of the composition of Sgnid Under the Pier is the entanglement of deep black lines floating above layered planes of olive green and light blue occupying the background. Rotating in an elliptical pat- tern around the body and two button-like eyes of the squid, these agitated lines, in conjunction with the propeller- like form imprinted by the veiling's texture, convey a 72 sense of the squiggling and squirming motion of the sea creature in water. This sense of agitation and movement characterizing the squid's tentacles is set in contrast to the quiet, interpenetrating planes of olive green defining the pilings of the pier and the fluid, open areas of light blue delineating the sea and sky in the distance. The overlapping and interpenetration of these layers of trans- parent and opaque color, produced in the print through the use of stencils, create the same sense of depth and space that Hayter achieved in his Cinq Personnages through the use of silk-screen (Figure 14). The effect of movement through ocean depths, which pervades Citron's Squid Under the Pier was achieved also by Hayter in many of his prints executed after 1940 through line and color. Like Citron's work, these prints were given water—related titles, such as Death by Water (1948), Fire Under Water (1955), Poisson Rouge (1957), Water Veiled (1960) and Sgpid (1966). The depiction of creatures in water reflects the interest of both artists in using images of nature--animals, plants, fragments of human anatomy--in- terspersed within a web of lines to discover and express the universe, suggested in ancient myths and primitive re- ligions, that continues to live in the human subconscious. In accordance with this philosophy, Citron revealed in her interview with Sara Lukens that she thinks of the black tentacles of the squid as the difficulties of life, but, looking through them, she sees the blue sky of hope.15 73 Citron's Post—Atelier 17 Years: The Fifties Citron continued to experiment with line, texture and color in her engravings and etchings at Atelier 17 until 1950, when Hayter returned to Paris with the intention of reviving the original workshop. Although she was no longer under the immediate tutelage of Hayter, Citron retained an interest in utilizing the same experimental approach, meth- ods, and materials in her prints and paintings of the 1950's that she had nurtured during her four-year association with the New York workshop. But, instead of remaining in the shadow of Hayter's Surrealist style, she used this experi- ence with European avant-garde styles and techniques as a stepping stone to the development of her own medium and style of artistic expression. In 1946, when Citron first became familiar with the prints executed by Hayter and his associates, she had been captivated by their interest in achieving a sense of ad- vancing and receding space on a two-dimensional sheet of paper. With retrospect, the artist wrote in her article "In Deep Relief": "At the same time that I began to work with Hayter, I developed what has become an enduring inter- est in achieving an actual third dimension in painting and printing."16 In her efforts to obtain greater spatial and plastic dimensions in her works, Citron, while continuing to exe- cute intaglio prints, started to explore the medium of collage in the 1950's. During the following decade these 74 collages led to the development of a new and unusual means of expression which Citron referred to as "constructions." Both collages and constructions involved the use of paint and found objects on canvas or wood in unexpected combina- tions. What Citron had accomplished in her engravings and etchings with lines, texture, paper and color was extended further into the third dimension in her assemblages of the 1950's and 1960's through the presence of overlapping planes of paper, thick encrustations of paint, glue-like callig- raphic lines and found objects attached to and projecting from the flat surface of the canvas.) In her collage of 1955 entitled Measure of Fate Citron explores in greater depth the problem posed by Hayter in his prints from the 1930's and 1940's: "how do we see the third dimension when created in terms of lines, shapes and color on a two-dimensional surface?" (Figure 20). Citron offered a solution to this problem when she built her collage by gluing successive layers of pieced newspaper and construc- tion paper to a canvas and then partially overlaying them with additional strata of construction paper and black oil paint. To commence her work on Measure of Fate, the artist covered the large canvas with a thin layer of gray paint; only a hint of it remains in the right section of the com- pleted collage. In contrast to the rough texture of canvas penetrating the gray undercoat, the left side of the com- position is filled with smooth clippings of newsprint from 75 the New York Times. The third layer of texture consists of several small, roughly rectangular strips of orange, tan and gray construction paper. Citron's spontaneity is ap- parent in the jagged contours of these tiny strips, sug- gesting that the paper was torn rather than cut. Finally, the layers of newspaper and construction paper have been tinted by two oblong strips of black, the one on the left composed of paint and that on the right being another piece of construction paper. The manner in which letters and num- bers of newsprint sporadically appear beneath the thin coat- ing of paint, along with the torn pieces of construction paper, indicate Citron's enduring commitment to practicing the automatic, spontaneous approach, adopted by the Sur- realists, to which she had been introduced at Atelier 17 ten years earlier. Interestingly, this aspect of Citron's work corre- sponds to the philosophy of the Surrealist painter and sculptor Jean (Hans) Arp, who frequented the Paris Atelier 17 in the 1930's but chose not to re-join Hayter in New York City. In creating collages, such as Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance, completed in 1916-17, Arp was convinced that great profundities were revealed by the element of chance residing in the hands as they tear the paper and give birth to-forms without meditation.17 In 1915 Arp wrote, speaking of his works: "[They] are constructed with lines, surfaces, forms, and 76 colours which seek to attain, beyond the human, the infi- nite and eternal . . ."18 In Measure of Fate the flat strata of newspaper, con- struction paper and paint are connected by thin lines that reveal where they overlap one another. In addition to the spatial layering, these planes of color seem to hover over each other in three-dimensional space. Opposing the Renais- sance notion of perspective, the series of overlapping planes of black appear to come forward while the planes of brighter color--tan, orange, gray--appear to recede in varying degrees. In this way, a sense of inverted space has been obtained in the collage in actuality as well as through illusion. Citron's desire to create an impression of advancing and receding space in her works is revealed in a statement from her article "In Deep Relief": "In col- lage the overlapping planes of paper, board, or canvas of- fered gratuitously that step after step into space that I so coveted."19 Citron was paralleled in her investigation of three- dimensional space by Irene Rice Pereira, a contemporary American painter-printmaker who studied briefly with her at Hayter's New York studio during the 1940's. In Pereira's rectangular composition of 1947 entitled Undulating Arrange- ment she achieved the impression of one plane hovering over another (Figure 21). As in Citron's Measure of Fate, this impression was accomplished in Undulating Arrangement in actuality, rather than just illusionistically in paint: a 77 pane of glass, with a geometric pattern painted over it, was set above an opaque ground which carried a different pattern, and these two patterns are in spatial opposition to each other.20 As a result, a sense of limitless depth is evoked, leading where the eye cannot see. This impres- sion of advancing and receding space attained both physi- cally and illusionistically by Citron in Measure of Fate and by Pereira in Undulating Arrangement is similar to that achieved in Alice Trumbull Mason's Indicative Displacement through planes of various textures and in S. W. Hayter's Cinq Personnages through planes of transparent colors and textures (Figures 13 and 14). Citron's Post-Atelier 17 Years: The Sixties In Citron's commitment to an investigation of the three-dimensional implications of a printed or painted surface, she gradually evolved from the bold black lines and textures and planes of color in Squid Under the Pier of 1948 through the layers of construction paper, news- paper and paint in her collage Measure of Fate of 1955 to the concrete, everyday objects introduced into her con- structions of the 1960's. With these works the artist not only began to employ oil paint on a canvas, but to this flat surface she also applied discards and accumulated odd trouves—-wire, chains, rags, sponges, tar paper, camera film, tin can lids. Because these paintings are created by actually assembling various materials on the surface of 78 the canvas she, not surprisingly, refers to them as con- structions. Citron expresses her reason for collecting these objects in her article "In Deep Relief": "In line with my attempt to achieve an actual third dimension, no bit of detritus is too lowly for me to pick up and drag home, haboring it until that moment when I find just the right place for it in a painting, collage or print."21 The foundation for the artist's ability to select certain objects from her environment to incorporate into her art was laid probably by her two former instructors: Kenneth Hayes Miller, who encouraged her to observe and use every- day objects and events as subject matter, and Stanley William Hayter, who prompted her to impress the textures of various common materials into soft-ground wax to pro- duce a print. For Citron, not only is a discovered piece of junk an object to be applied to a painted canvas or collage, but the qualities indigenous to it--rough or smooth, soft or hard-~act as stimuli that constantly inspire her to initi- ate, improvise, invent and expand spontaneously. Citron wrote of this automatic process of creation: I began to follow an "uncharted course" in all my work. I do not accept the business- man's motto: "Plan your work and work your plan." Instead, I start with whatever hap- pens to capture my interest, and manipulate it this way and that until a pattern begins to suggest itself. Then, in large part, I let the suggestion direct its own further development.22 79 By assembling found objects through the exercise of chance, randomness and discovery, Citron followed the ex- ample originally set by the Dadaists at the beginning of the century and continued in the works of the Surrealists, who dominated the art world of Paris in the late 1920's and 1930's. The commonplace object played a major role in the "ready-mades" by the Dadaist Marcel Duchamp--bicycle wheel, bottle rack, urinal, snow shove1--and in the collages and sculptures of the Surrealist Joan Miro. For example, in Miro's Object of 1936 a mood of fantasy is transmitted through the unexpected assemblage of familiar components-- a stuffed parrot, mannequin's leg, map, hat and plastic fish.23 In the works of the Dadaists and Surrealists, as well as in Citron's constructions, junk is detached from its intended function and rendered new expressive powers. In this way, discarded objects gleaned from junk yards, second-hand stores and attics are elevated to the rank of fine art. Detritus becomes art just because the artist says it is. Citron's chance encounter in the early 1960's with tar paper scraps abandoned on the floor of a partially de- molished railroad station in Germany inspired her with the idea of using debris to build constructions. The first properties that fascinated the artist were the tar paper‘s malleability, gritty surface, tearability, poor edges and dual texture. In a press release Citron related the inci- dent in detail: 80 For some time I have been interested in the possibilities of achieving a kinetic quality by the use of torn or crumpled materials. Last year, on my way to West Germany, for the opening of my exhibition of oils and collages at the Wupperal-Elberfeld Staed- tisches Museum, I was attracted by a scrap of tar paper from a partially demolished section of a railroad station. Intrigued with the plastic qualities, I tore and molded it; I mended it and combined it with other materials and media. With each new manipulation, new and pleasing possi- bilities were realized.24 Soon afterward, Citron discovered that tar paper dis- solved into a brown liquid in turpentine and could be used as ink in printing etched plates. Her enthusiasm for that type of paper was stimulated so much that she started com- bining it with paint. Thus was the beginning of Citron's enduring interest in assembling constructions. One of the first structures in which tar paper and oil paint co-exist is Construct No. 1, created around 1964 (Figure 22). Citron's fascination for utilizing the same materials and design in different media is exemplified in a visual comparison between Construct NO- 1 and her etching and aquatint of 1965 entitled Blue Band (Figure 23). In both the construction and the print a circular motif domin- ates the top square of the oblong composition while several rows of small squares with irregular contours occupy the lower square. Although the two works are identical in format, Construct No. 1 is characterized by the additional qualities of textural and tactile variation that are merely suggested in Blue Band. The gritty surface, tearability, poor edges and dual texture of tar paper that first 81 attracted Citron are exploited in the construction, and dis- play the same creative spontaneity that the torn edges of the construction paper did in Measure of Fate (Figure 20). In addition, the irregular contours and sandy surface dis- tinguishing the squares of tar paper in the construction contrast with the smooth nodules of thick paint that pro— trude in low relief from the untouched lid of a paint can. Working in unison, these found, three-dimensional objects assembled in Construct No. 1 express with greater depth the differences of textures and the achievement of relief in ink on paper that was sought in prints at Atelier 17. Projecting from the flat surface of the canvas, the thick impasto and fragments of tar paper encroach upon the environment occupied by the spectator. These relief ele- ments appear to invite the Viewer to approach and inspect in detail the work before his eyes. While visually de- lighting in the spontaneously torn edges of the tar paper and the encrustations of paint left to dry as they origi- nally settled on the lid of a newly opened can, he becomes absorbed in a sensuous and imaginative journey retracing the steps of Citron as she created Construct No. 1. By visually roaming around in the construction, the spectator can emotionally experience the forms, textures and colors without having to see and decipher any hidden meanings the artist might have been attempting to communicate through various images. In an essay written upon the submission of a painting to the Hallmark Art Award, Citron stressed that 82 in her works all meaning is absolved in the literalness of pure form: "I was not conscious of subject-matter when I started the painting. My concern was with the relationship of the elements of design--Form, Line, Space, Color and Texture--and with the problem of keeping my intuitive, emotional expression free and inventive."25 In this way, the spectator is relieved of the anxieties associated with translating the social or political message conveyed through a literal subject and is able to rely upon his own intuitive resources, identify with Citron in her creative act, and participate in the work. Consequently, each spectator may render to Construct No. l a new and completely personal in- terpretation. The same year that Citron completed her series of con- structions and prints inspired by fragments of tar paper she also finished Victoria the Queen (Figure 24). This large construction, featured in a 1964 solo exhibition at the Tasca Gallery, New York, and presently included in the per- manent collection of Kresge Art Gallery at Michigan State University, may be considered as the culmination of the artist's twenty-year exploration of the third dimension. In it she exploits completely the impression of advancing and receding space on a flat, two-dimensional canvas. This impression of space is accomplished both illusionistically-- through the interplay of line and color-—and physically-- with thick impasto and a concrete object. 83 In creating Victoria the Queen Citron used an ar- rangement of geometric shapes, which had fascinated her in the building of Construct No. 1. The oblong shape of the canvas area is composed of a square of dark green color in the bottom section and a horizontal rectangle of yellowish— green paint occupying the top area, both of which have been encompassed by pieces of wood. This set of rectilinear shapes is brought into the realm of illusionism by a series of painted, overlapping planes that apparently recede, step by step, into a limitless depth. One rectangle, pulled out from the flat surface of dark color by lime green linea- ments, seems to protrude from the lower section while an- other appears to recede into the background. Working in unison, these two elements illusionistically transform the two-dimensional surface of paint into an area character- ized by advancing and receding space. The vibrant flux or "push and pull"--to borrow the phrase commonly used to describe the paintings of Hans Hofmann--of this protruding rectangle and descending plane is repeated and reinforced by a series of white lines. These spontaneously applied scribblings of paint float on the sur- face of the canvas--both actually, because of their physical thickness, and illusionistically, because of their bright white color against the dark green background. This inter- play of line and color in Victoria the Queen probably stems from Citron's technical experiments conducted at Atelier 17 in which she used paint or varnish on a canvas or plate to 84 build impasto lines.26 In one of these early paintings, en- titled Thread of Ariadne, the labyrinth of white line over- laying patches of dark color creates a tension between the foreground and background (Figure 25). In this way, a sense of depth and space is produced. Through the interplay of line and color in both Thread of Ariadne and Victoria the Queen, Citron has successfully translated into oil paint on canvas the gauffrages and creves--thick white lines and areas of design--that characterize several of the engravings and soft-ground etchings executed by Hayter and other print- makers associated with the Atelier 17 workshop (Figure 11). Also, in the lower canvas of Victoria the Queen, tints of pink and an area of bright orange shatter the dark green surface at irregular intervals. These products of chance suggest that this canvas was either used by Citron on a previous occasion or that there is an undercoat of paint which the artist intentionally neglected to conceal with an additional layer of opaque paint. A similar situa- tion exists in Citron's collage Measure of Fate, where the print of the newspaper spasmodically appears beneath the thin layer of black paint (Figure 20). In both Victoria the Queen and the collage, the artist has allowed effects of chance and accidental splashes of paint, which occurred in the act of creation, to be integral parts of the work. Citron was exposed originally to this method of working at Atelier 17, where Hayter encouraged all his students to think of the metal plate as an arena of action in which 85 results of accidents and chance are welcome. Random ef- fects and fortuitous splashes and drips left by the path of the brush across the canvas were cultivated also by Jackson Pollock, who studied briefly at the New York workshop, for enhancing the sense of spontaneity in his "drip" paintings of the late 1940's and 1950's (Figure 7). The sense of three-dimensional space that is conveyed through the advancing and receding planes and the applica- tion of glue-like white lines to the lower canvas of Victoria the Queen is actualized by the rippling folds of a tablecloth appended to the upper right-hand corner of the composition. Previously nothing more than an old rag to be discarded, this cloth was put to artistic use when the sight of it stimulated Citron to impulsively attach it to the canvas that she had just finished painting.27 This "fragment of reality" protrudes from the flat surface in a manner reminiscent of sculptural has—relief, capturing rays of light in its undulating folds. The resulting flicker of light and shadow cast upon the surface of the cloth, as well as the shadow of its bordering tassels highlighting the painted canvas, render to the composition a liveliness and tactileness that make the spectator more aware of it as an object existing in space. This reliance upon the play of light and shadow across the canvas for an effect of three-dimensionaltiy is also an important factor in Citron's construction of 1965 entitled Pretty Shadows of 86 My Bonds, in which a rusty iron chain swags down across a dun-colored canvas like a fence (Figure 26). Citron's combination of spontaneous brushwork and a real, three-dimensional object in Victoria the Queen and Pretty Shadows of My Bonds reflects her enduring interest in effacing the boundary between art and life. In her will- ingness to fill this gap Citron resembles the American Pop artist Robert Rauschenberg who affixed refuse from New York City-~rusty nails, stuffed goats, pieces of rope, tires, fans, quilts--to canvases and splattered them with paint to create his "combine" paintings between 1953 and 1955. By allowing the contents of their paintings to spill out into the environment of the spectator, both artists literally began to fill the gap between art and life. Rauschenberg crystallized the problem for the artist taking this type of approach when he stated: "Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made (I try to act in the gap between the two)."28 In Victoria the Queen, as in all Citron's construc- tions of the 1960's, the found object projects from the flat canvas into the surrounding environment inhabited by the spectator. In this way, the object seems to assume the role of an intermediary between the abstract world of the artist's emotions and the mundane world of the spectator's daily ex- periences. Thus, a rapport between artist and spectator may occur when the artist has expressed effectively something which exists also in the unconscious of others. In support 87 of this notion, Citron wrote in her article "Uncharted Courses": "To those who intuitively sense the dynamic process which produced the completed work, the artist com- municates the creative activity of which it is both the product and the expression."29 In another publication entitled "Communication Be- tween Spectator and Artist" Citron emphasizes the need for direct confrontation and communication between the artist and spectator, with the work acting as the communicator.30 Citron invites each viewer to approach her art not from an intellectual point of view, trying to "see" or to "under- stand" what she presumably saw or meant, but to roam freely within the picture. After having undergone a stimulating experience, the artist constantly moves around the canvas, viewing it from various perspectives and making this move- ment an important part of the work. Not merely does she say "this is what I perceive or feel," but also "this is what I am doing." The spectator is invited to imagina- tively surmise about the process which the artist pursued while involved in the act of creation. By experiencing the lines, forms, textures, colors, rhythms and interpene- trating patterns and responding to them in a personal man- ner each spectator gives to the work a broader meaning. The Dadaist Marcel Duchamp sensed the intimacy that can be achieved when the artist concedes to the spectator the right to determine for himself the significance of a work of art. He stated in his essay "The Creative Act" that 88 ". . . the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the ex- ternal world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contributions to the cre- ative act."31 Looking at any one of Minna Citron's constructions, the spectator has a chance to intuitively and freely bring his own personal and associative meanings to it, while sym- pathetically understanding the creative effort of the art- ist. In the words of Minna Citron, you, the spectator, are invited to explore and emotionally experience the: Tensions in dynamic interplay Rhythm in exciting variety Color in harmonic juxtaposition And . . . Planes in interpenetrating patterns.32 Afterward, you may be rewarded with making a happy discovery for which you were not searching. Minna Citron in Retrospect From the very beginning of her career as a printmaker- painter Minna Citron has been rewarded with a series of "happy discoveries." After accidentally encountering Stanley William Hayter's engraving and soft-ground etching Cinquersonnages in the mid-1940's, she was inspired to terminate her association with the Social Realist Kenneth Hayes Miller and his Fourteenth Street School and join the circle of European avant-garde artists at Atelier 17 in the New School for Social Research. Here, she creatively ex- plored the technical possibilities of intaglio printmaking 89 and the aesthetic potentials of the Surrealist practice of automatism. The intaglio processes that Citron experimented with--especia11y engraving, etching and color printing--laid the foundation upon which she based her enduring interest in achieving an actual third dimension in all her work. For twenty-five years after her Atelier 17 experience, the art- ist fully realized a sense of depth and space in her col- lages of the 1950's through the use of overlapping layers of paper and paint, and in her constructions of the 1960's through the presence of calligraphic lines, thick encrusta- tions of paint and found concrete objects. In addition, her concern for pursuing an "uncharted course" when working and then considering the completed painting as an intermediary between the unconscious of the artist and that of the spec- tator, is rooted in her familiarity with Surrealist automa- tism. Citron wrote about the spectator: "To those who intuitively sense the dynamic process which produced the completed work, the artist communicates the creative ac- tivity of which it is both the product and the expres- sion."33 This is the "happy discovery" that Minna Citron hoped to experience jointly with the spectator, a shared unconscious communication. FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER III lMinna Citron, "In Deep Relief," Artist's Proof 6 (1966): 33. 2Ibid. 3Minna Citron, quoted in Anne Scott Kone, "Pratt Graphic Center," in From the Eightngears of Minna Citron, with an introduction by Max Chapman (New York: Wittenborn Art Books, 1976), P. 20. 4Nancy Heller and Julia Williams, The Regionalists (New York: Watson - Guptill, 1976), p. 147. 5"American Honors - T.V.A.," in From the Eighty Years of Minna Citron, p. 12. 6David B. Lilienthal, quoted by William S. Lieberman, in his foreword to the catalog Minna Citron Paintings and Graphics, 1947-52, Hacker Gallery, New York (1952), p. 6. 7Citron was joined in her decisiOn to attend Atelier 17 by the Social Realists Isabel Bishop and Reginald Marsh, who had also been strongly influenced by Kenneth Hayes Miller. But, they were not particularly interested in experimentation with new techniques or styles and worked with Hayter only a short time. 8Minna Citron, quoted by Karl Kup in his introduction to the catalog The Graphic Work of Minna Citron, 1945-1950, New School for Social Research, New York (1950), P. i. 9Minna Citron quoted in Paul Palmer, "Visiting Artist Minna Citron Equates Women's Rights with Resolving Fears," State Journal (Lansing, Michigan), 20 December 1970, sec. F, p. 6. 10George Butcher, in his introduction to the catalog Minna Citron, Jason Gallery, New York (1967), p. i. llCitron, "In Deep Relief," p. 33. 12Joseph Frank, in his introduction to the catalog 16 Years After ... Minna Citron, Howard University, Washington, D. C. (1963), P. ii. 90 91 13Minna Citron, quoted in Frank, 16 Years After ... Minna Citron, p. ii. l4Sara Lukens, "Interpretation Is Second With New York Artist," (1965). See Archives of American Art, Minna Citron, Roll 268, frame 760. lSIbid. 16Citron, "In Deep Relief," p. 33. 17H. Harvard Arnason, History of Modern Art, 2nd ed. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1977), p. 351. 18Patrick Waldberg, Surrealism (London: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1965), P. 35. 19Citron, "In Deep Relief," p. 33. 20Irene Rice Pereira, quoted in Sidney Janis, Abstract and Surrealist Art in America (New York: Reynal and Hitch— cock, 1944), P. 71. 21Citron, "In Deep Relief," p. 33. 22Ibid. 23Malcolm Haslam, The Real World of the Surrealists (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1978), p. 152. 24Minna Citron, quoted in a press release for the ex- hibition Minna Citron Collages and Graphics, Ruth White Gallery, New York (1962), p. i. 25Minna Citron, essay written upon the submission of the painting Memories of Childhood to the Hallmark Art Award, Yaddo Foundation, Saratoga Springs, New York, 1946. See Archives of American Art, Minna Citron, Roll 268, frame 883. 26Citron, "In Deep Relief," p. 33. 27Interview with Minna Citron by the author on 6 November 1978. 28Mario Amaya, Pop Art ... And After (New York: The Viking Press, 1965), p. 51. 29Minna Citron, quoted in Frank, 16 Years After ... Minna Citron, p. ii. 92 30Minna Citron, "Communication Between Spectator and Artist," College Art Journal 14 (1955): 147-153. 31Marcel Duchamp, "The Creative Act," in The New Art, ed. Gregory Battcock (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1973), pp. 25-26. 32Citron, "Communication Between Spectator and Artist," p. 149. 33Minna Citron, quoted in Frank, 16 Years After Minna Citron, p. ii. CHAPTER IV SUE FULLER: SPINNER OF WEBS Soon after S. W. Hayter established Atelier 17 at the New School for Social Research, news of its program rapidly disseminated throughout the New York City area. Sue Fuller (b. 1914), an American printmaker and painter trained during the 1930's in the Social Realist style, was one of the first artists to learn of the workshop's existence. Upon consult- ing a friend about her search for a printmaker who could teach her the process of engraving on jewelry, Fuller was advised to enroll in Hayter's course.1 In his recommenda- tion of Atelier l7, Fuller's friend may have been influ- enced by acquaintances he formed with workshop members who frequently gathered for conversation and drinks at taverns visited by other Greenwich Village painters and sculptors. Fuller's desire to explore the potentials of deco— rating jewelry drew her to Hayter's workshop in the Fall of 1943, where she remained for nearly two years. After a short period of research and experimentation with engraving and other intaglio techniques, the young printmaker de- serted her plans for engraving on jewelry and developed a fascination with the process of soft-ground etching. Not only did Fuller become involved in a new area of interest at Atelier 17, but she worked in association with several 93 94 prominent European Surrealists, who similarly had been at- tracted to Hayter's printmaking facilities and avant-garde atmosphere. As a result, Fuller's introduction to both soft-ground etching and vanguard styles and ideas severed the last shreds of any tendency to do "what was popular." Rather, ever since the time of her membership in the Atelier 17 community, Fuller has devoted herself to the creation of abstract, hand-crafted string constructions. As a student printmaker searching for various unusual textures to impress in the soft ground coating a plate, Fuller was awakened to the possibility of using webbed frag- ments of lace as compositional elements. Gradually, out of this experimentation, she developed a method of impressing single strands of thread or string into the wax to produce a grainy texture in her prints. This interest in using threads and strings to create prints was the root of Ful- ler's invention of a personal form of sculpture. Her pieces are composed of innumerable strands of thread, brightly colored or transparent, which have been crossed and woven into neat, geometric designs. These construc- tions were framed by sheets of transparent Thermo glass in the 1950's and by solid blocks of plastic in the 1960's. Since she began building her sculptures in the late 1940's Fuller has referred to them, appropriately, as "string compositions." In the introduction to the catalog for a 1947 solo exhibition Fuller commented on the relationship of her string compositions to her previous experience as 95 a printmaker: "Soft-ground etching is an unusually versa- tile medium and one rarely used by etchers. It is the ex- ploration of the possibilities of this medium of etching that has formed the basis of my work."2 Fuller and Social Realism, 1934-1943 Fuller's initiation into the world of non-objective art and the avant-garde occurred ten years prior to her as- sociation with Hayter and Atelier 17. While receiving aca- demic art training at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the young artist enrolled for the Summer of 1934 in a six-week class at the Thurn School of Art in Gloucester, Massachusetts.3 Here, she briefly encountered the painter Hans Hofmann and was introduced to the most advanced concepts of European art. Fuller re- called their meeting: "I'd studied with Ernst Thurn pre- viously. Thurn had many art books and a strong feeling for Cezanne. He directed me to modern art. Hofmann, how- ever, was vitally important. He was the first giant I had contact with."4 Through Hofmann, Fuller undoubtedly was exposed to the great potential for individual expression present in abstract art. Hofmann taught, as he had at an influential art school in Munich from 1915 to 1932 and at his Eighth Street School in New York during the late 1930's, that: . . . creative expression is . . . the spirit- ual translation of inner concepts into forms, resulting from the fusion of these intuitions with artistic means of expression in a unity 96 of spirit and form. Imitation of objective reality is therefore not creation but dil- ettantism, or else purely intellectual performance, scientific and sterile.5 As if by coincidence, Fuller had the good fortune to attend the Carnegie Institute's International Exhibitions of European vanguard art upon returning to her hometown of Pittsburgh after completion of her course with Hofmann. At the exhibition Fuller saw her first examples of early twentieth-century European art: the Fauvist works of Andre Derain and paintings and sculptures by the Cubists Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso.6 But more introductions were necessary. Further acquaintance with European styles of abstraction was imperative for Fuller's future artistic development. Fuller's immersion into the world of non-representa- tional art was postponed temporarily in 1936 when she de- cided to enroll as a master's degree candidate at Columbia University Teachers' College in New York City. Here, she spent the three years following her graduation from the Carnegie Institute of Technology learning and probing tra- ditional printmaking and painting techniques under the guidance of the Social Realist Arthur Raymond Young. By 1940, as a result of the strict academic training she re- ceived at Columbia and Carnegie, Fuller had become well- grounded in the representational, Social Realist style of painting and draughting that was popular in the 1930's. And, as she says, "I had learned to control myself" as an artist.7 97 Fuller's acquired proficiency in the style of tradi- tional realism is attested to by the fact that in 1942 her watercolor Sonnenschein Umbrella Company was awarded the Carnegie Institute's Prize for thematic originality (Fig- ure 27). In creating this conventional Social Realist scene of immigrant women working in a sweatshop, the im- pressionable young artist probably borrowed devises used by the German Expressionists during the early portion of the twentieth-century. Sonnenschein Umbrella Company is characterized by angular, almost Gothic, curves, a tilted perspective and a confined but well organized space. How- ever, Fuller's scene lacks the emotional vibration that gives the German Expressionist vision on intensity and dynamism. A further indication of the connection between Fuller's watercolor and that European art movement may be the German word Sonnenschein (sunshine), humorously in- cluded in the title. Obviously, Fuller's Social Realist style of painting was influenced by the German Expression— ist works that circulated throughout New York City's muse- ums during the 1930's as a result of the arrival of refugee artists.8 Shortly after receiving the award for Sonnenschein Umbrella Company, Fuller decided that she no longer felt any desire to continue issuing more prize—winning pictures in the Social Realist style. As an alternative, she chose to pursue her exploration of those printmaking processes to which she had been introduced at Columbia University. 98 And so, Fuller's particular wish to learn to engrave on jewelry brought her to Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17 in the Fall of 1943.9 Fuller and Atelier 17, 1943-1945 Although Fuller was interested specifically in en- graving when she began attending classes at the New School for Social Research, she also gained through experimentation a working knowledge of other intaglio techniques, such as etching, aquatint and drypoint. Consequently, the prints she executed during her one and one-half years at the work- shop were completed either by employing only one of these processes or through a combination of engraving, soft- ground etching and aquatint. Soon after her initiation into the potentials of an experimental, creative approach to intaglio printmaking, Fuller became so thoroughly engrossed in the process of soft-ground etching that she abandoned her original plans to engrave on jewelry. The child-like enthusiasm which Fuller experienced when she first realized the possibili— ties for exploration and self-expression offered by the soft-ground medium was revealed when she stated: Every school child has at some time or another taken a penny, placed a piece of paper over it, rubbed a lead pencil over the surface and behold! A picture of Lincoln! In the same Spirit an artist uses textures of fabric when making a drawing in soft-ground etching. . . . It was Stanley William Hayter who introduced me to this process in 1944. . . . Fired with enthusiasm I set to work in this fruitful field--collage in a metal plate medium.10 99 After Hayter had awakened his apprentice printmaker to the collage possibilities of soft-ground etching, she immediately ventured to explore the grain of many diverse fabrics——nets, veiling, linen, canvas and, above all, lace. In Cacophony of 1944, one of Fuller's earliest etchings, she exploited the unusual texture of an old garlic bag (Figure 28). In creating this print, Fuller's inspiration was rooted in her recent awareness of textures acquired at Atelier 17 as well as knowledge gained from an outside source. While working at Hayter's studio Fuller had be- come so fascinated with the collage possibilities of soft- ground etching that she attended in 1944 a privately ar- ranged, eight-week course instructed by the former Bauhaus associate Josef Albers. This class, conducted at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, dealt directly with color and engineering problems involved in creating col- lages. Through Albers, Fuller undoubtedly was introduced to the principles of composition, design and color that he had promoted as one of the instructors of the Foundations Course at the Bauhaus. Albers and the sculptor Laszlo Moholy-Nagy taught the course together from 1923 until 1933, when Hitler's regime condemned the school and closed it. The Bauhaus curriculum had stressed that every artist Should first of all be a craftsperson and learn to respect the materials with which he or she was working; hence, all pupils explored the functions of various materials and 100 learned techniques appropriate to their interests. The faculty and students believed that by working with industry they could influence the quality of daily life, a belief also held by their contemporary Russian Constructivists. In addition, the Bauhaus curriculum placed an emphasis on the notion that the form of a work of art should be the embodiment of ideas, rather than an image of objects found in nature. This stressing of creative invention in the production of art probably reminded Fuller of Hans Hofmann's theory of the "spiritual translation of inner concepts into forms," to which she had been exposed ten years earlier. During one of the sessions that Fuller spent with Albers, he passingly explained an obsolete technique in- volving the use of drawn threads to decorate linen. Inte- grating her textural experiences at Atelier 17 with this newly learned process, Fuller impressed the grain of an old garlic bag into a soft ground to create Cacophony. In the final image, the loose grid pattern of the fabric de- fines the freely sketched, faceless figures of two nude women engaged in conversation. Other areas of the print were completed by the artist through pressing additional objects into the wax ground. For instance, a granular, rough-woven texture, perhaps burlap, produced the heavy modeling on the figures, and in the upper corners of the print the background seems to bear the impression of paper doilies. As a result, Cacophony appears to be a collage of several disparate textures and patterns. 101 After having reached a level of confidence in her new medium, Fuller began in 1945 to achieve the most skilled utilization of textures and fabrics since Julian Trevelyan developed the method of collage on a metal plate at Atelier 17 in the early 1930's. The artist's inheritance of a ". . . raft of threads to sew with, crochet with, knit with, just kicking around . . ." from her mother, who had died recently, prodded her into invention.11 Fuller, in a statement reminiscent of her contemporary printmaker-painter Minna Citron, explained why She felt compelled to incorpo- rate these old threads into her print work: ". . . they were so wonderful I couldn't let them go to waste."12 From this bequest of assorted old threads, laces and decorative edge came Fuller's inspiration for her etching and engraving of 1945 entitled Hpn (Figure 29). This print received a certain amount of notoriety four years later when it was featured in the exhibition Master Prints from the Museum Collection at the Museum of Modern Art. In Hen, as well as in most of the prints Fuller created during her association with Atelier 17, rather than using a precon- ceived drawing as a starting point, she allowed the in- herent texture and structure of a piece of material to determine her successive actions on the plate. Fuller discovered a partially finished collar of Arabian lace among her mother's fabrics, one of the type, in vogue dur- ing the 1890's, where the printed pattern and manufactured edging was supplied and the fancy needlework was to be 102 completed by hand. For the artist, not only was the collar an object to be impressed into a soft ground, but its in- digenous qualities acted as stimuli that prompted her to spontaneously initiate and improvise while involved in cre- ating a print. Work on the plate for Hgn began when Fuller cut the elaborate lace collar into three pieces and arranged them according to chance in various positions. Then, she placed a sheet of wax paper over the plate and ran it through the press. When the wax paper and fragments of lace were peeled off, those areas of metal that remained unprotected by the wax were exposed to and consequently bitten by acid. Inspired by the elliptical shape of the resulting collage of texture, Fuller added a few engraved lines. Gradually, the patterning was transformed into a semi-abstract image of a hen with mottled feathers--the geometric design of the lace forming the body and bold engraved lines denot- ing the bird's star-shaped eye, elliptical beak, feet and additional feathers. Fuller's fascination with producing a variegated feather-like pattern of laces and nettings is revealed in other studies of birds executed around the time she created Hgn. This method of initially approaching the plate in a spontaneous way and then, once the basic linear structure was created, proceeding with work in a conscious rational manner was promoted by Hayter at his workshop. Fuller, by beginning work on the plate without any intention of 103 creating a specific image, was practicing Surrealist au— tomatism as learned at Atelier 17. In adopting this process for her own artistic purposes, Fuller was acting similarly to Minna Citron and Jackson Pollock, who had also studied with Hayter. As Fuller continued in her new medium she eventually became dissatisfied with the immobility of the ready-made materials--laces and nettings--which she impressed into soft ground. Although Fuller expressed in her article "Twentieth Century Cat's Cradle" that she felt working with these materials was too limiting and exasperating, Joann Moser contends that ". . . her arrangements and com- binations were often more spontaneous and innovative than the designs of her colleagues."13 Fuller's search for more control over the elements involved in creating soft- ground etchings ultimately stimulated her to analyze the Structure of various fabrics: she starched and stretched nets, rearranged threads of loosely woven textures and, finally, reduced the structure of both materials to their least common denominator--one thread. Recalling her ex- perience as a printmaker exploring fabrics and threads in the mid-1940's, Fuller stated: "As I think of it, tracing back what happens to oneself is difficult, but above all I was discovering. Everything! Finding out about threads!"l4 In this way Fuller's string compositions were born; the na- ture of the process Simultaneously demanded that her expres- sion become non-objective. 104 One of Fuller's first experiments involving use of individual filaments of thread was her soft-ground etching Sailor's Dream, executed in 1944 (Figure 30). For this print, as well as for her later string compositions, Fuller did not pick up a stylus to begin work on the plate, but string and thread. Once the plate had been covered with wax, muslin was impressed into it and a small portion of the metal exposed. After filling some of the deeper lines and areas with wax subsequent to the first biting, Fuller imposed upon the grainy texture a rope pattern which con- sisted of sewing threads, ribbons from a candy box wrapper and strands of stiff cord. The plate was again immersed in acid and then inked. The final image is literally a composition of threads and strings. In an interview with Joann Moser on 21 November 1974 Fuller referred to Sailor's Q£§§m_as her "first scribble in threads" because all the lines that appear in the print were completed by randomly arranging single filaments of thread, string and ribbon on the plate.15 These Slender fibers were looped, knotted, twisted, entwined and pulled taut so that in Sailor's Dream their intersections become three-dimensional. The statement that Josef Albers, Fuller's former instructor, wrote de- scribing the course he taught at the Bauhaus may be applied also to Fuller‘s adoption of an abstract idiom in Sailor's Eggnm. Albers Said that the search for a ". . . new contem- porary visual idiom . . . led from an emphasis on personal expression and individualistic graphic and pictorial 105 representation of material to a more rational, economic and structural use of material itself . . . and so, to a more impersonal presentation."l6 Perhaps the title Sailor's Dream was inspired by a visit that Fuller paid to the Cooper Union Museum, New York, shortly after she completed work on the print. Elisha Dyer, a curator at the museum, examined Fuller's "first scribble in threads" and commented that she had employed, unknow- ingly, the two basic methods of lacemaking--the buttonhole stitch and the bobbin technique. More significantly, Dyer added that the printmaker had intertwined and looped some of the cords into traditional sailors' knots. Fuller may have entitled her etching Sailor's Dream because it is an image that could be revealed to a seaman in a nightmare--knotted ropes floating in the midst of an indeterminate Space re- sembling ocean depths. Fuller confirmed Dyer's latter sup- position by referring to an illustrated book on sailors' knots that she discovered in her search for more threads and strings. She recalled this adventurous journey: The search for threads, twine, cords was . . . interesting, leading from the water front up to the Empire State building--from fishermen to research chemists, with the discovery of Captain Ashley's book of sailors' knots as a great treasure unearthed en route. Surely, I thought, the whole world revolves around string! During those few months that Fuller had been enrolled in Hayter's Atelier 17 course her visual idiom had changed dramatically, from realistic representation to abstraction 106 and from the depiction of objects to a consideration of the object itself as a work of art. Fuller's Post-Atelier 17 Years: 1945-1946 In February of 1945, a year and one-half after she be- came a printmaker at Atelier l7, Fuller terminated her asso- ciation with Hayter and his workshop. This separation caused an abandonment of her interest in creating intaglio prints. Fuller was probably rather amused by the fact that between 1948 and 1950, long after her fascination with soft-ground etching had subsided, she received the Guggenheim and Tif- fany Fellowships and a one-thousand dollar National Insti- tute of Arts and Letters grant for printmaking.18 Everything fermenting--her exposure to the Cubism of Picasso and Braque, the non-objective approach to painting of Hofmann, the craft- and industry-oriented attitude of Albers toward art and, finally, the scientific, experimental approach to printmaking that Hayter promoted--fused and pro— vided Fuller with the stepping-stone to her development of a personal and unique visual idiom. Her fascination with compositions in lace, threads and strings, which had served as intermediate steps in the creation of her soft-ground etchings, evolved into an interest in building geometric designs with string and thread. Recalling the moment when all these influences were finally assimilated and she was awakened to the possibility of producing an original, ab- stract form of sculpture, Fuller stated: ". . . when I started experimenting with fabrics, I knew little of the 107 possibilities of string. Through experimentation and the generous encouragement of many others devoted to their fields, a whole new world opened up to me."19 This was the world of abstract string compositions which Fuller con— structed of colorful fibers of twine and thread during the late 1940's and of glowing strands of plastic monofilament throughout the 1950's and 1960's. When Fuller began constructing string compositions in 1945, she substituted the wax ground and single threads and strings used in soft-ground etching for an open frame, pegs and spools of thread and twine. Fuller's first attempts at building the frames and then stringing them with layers of thread proved immediately that as a carpenter she was an unskilled craftsman.20 She carefully lined up and sank pegs into the narrow edges of a square frame composed of 2.54 by .64 centimeter strips of wood and began stretching threads across it. Through mathematical calculations Ful- ler determined, for example, that tiny 1.27-centimeter brads set .64 of a centimeter from the inner edge of the frame and light sewing thread offered the possibility of working on small compositions, with dimensions on either side less than 25.40 centimeters, while .48-centimeter dowels set 1.90 centimeters from the inner edge of the frame and heavy cord would be used for a mural-Size compo- sition. Unfortunately, as soon as Fuller began looping the strings around the pegs of her experimental composition the sides bowed in and lifted off the table. Finally, through 108 further trial-and-error experimentation, the young carpenter solved her initial engineering problems with the tension of threads by changing the designs of her compositions and the construction of her frames. Rather than progressing in a straight line from top to bottom and left to right as she wove the thread around the pegs, Fuller started stretching them diagonally across a rectangular frame. In composing with string, as in paint- ing on canvas, Fuller evolved a theme, usually consisting of a series of X's. One of the notions that Josef Albers had impressed on her during their brief association was: "Design is order, care, planning. Stick to one principle and be consistent."21 The first strand of thread was tied to a peg on one side of the frame and extended diagonally to the opposite site, where it was looped around the cor- responding peg. The next step consisted of stretching this thread across itself and around the peg to the right of the one originally used. This procedure was continued, building up layers of thread fibers within the frame until, for instance, a 25 degree angle of the final strand was achieved. Then, another X might be completed to echo the first form. Next, the color of thread could be changed and the series of X's repeated in reverse, using the other two sides of the frame. Eventually, a series of tangents was built up whose optical appearance was a curved, not a straight, line. 109 In all Fuller's string compositions the colorful X- design was repeated several times, accumulating layers of thread which protrude slightly into space and resemble a has-relief. In this way, they combine the two-dimensional surface of a framed painting with the three-dimensional structure of a Sculpture. Thus, Fuller's compositions represent, in their projection into space, an effacing of the traditional distinction between painting and sculpture. The artist's insistence upon constructing her "pictures" in three dimensions reflects the Russian Constructivist aesthetic which the sculptor Naum Gabo described in his book Abstract Creation: "We call ourselves Constructivists because we no longer paint our pictures or carve our sculp- tures, and because both are 'constructed' in Space and with the help of space. Thus we break down the old distinction between painting and sculpture."22 As Fuller's art evolved from representationalism to abstraction in style, so did the types of titles she gave to her works. In her social commentary paintings of the 1930's and the prints she created at Atelier 17 from 1943 to 1945 Fuller used titles that described the images de- picted. They were sometimes given with a touch of humor, as in Sonnenschein Umbrella Company, or simply identified the subject, as Hen. But the subjects of the string com- positions do not depend on a recollected experience, ob- served object or any kind of associations for their 110 meanings. Rather, the "picture" is constructed without any preconceived notions and the artist relies on her own in- tuition and inner promptings in determining the form of each work. As Fuller wrote about the creation of a string composition: "Usually it is not consciously predetermined in its entirety. It is really improvisation."23 In this way, the lines, colors and shapes possess their own powers of expression, independent of any connection with the ex- ternal world. By creating designs that do not imitate physical reality and which do not have titles that suggest particular images, Fuller has allowed every viewer of her string compositions the freedom to interpret them in a new and personal way. Fuller expressed the reason for her rejection of descriptive titles when she wrote: "It is for these intangible realities I work. My appreciation of our culture is for qualities of thought, therefore my ex- pression is abstract."24 It is not by coincidence that Fuller refers to her sculptures as "string compositions," for they are liter- ally compositions built of string. Also, as a composer writing a sequence of musical compositions begins with symphony number one, for example, and continues until the termination of his career, so Fuller simply numbers her string compositions, beginning with String Composition 1 of 1946 and continuing with hundreds more. Fuller's in- spiration for titling her sculptures in this manner may have come from Josef Albers. In his numerous variations ._—-~_-_‘D A.W— VA... A... . 2U (k 111 of the theme generically called "Homage to the Square," Albers explored the possibilities of color, order and sim- plicity. But, with titles such as Homage to the Square: Ascending, his paintings still retain overt connotations and suggestions pertaining to the represented image. The first artist to write on the importance of serial art, which occupied both Fuller and Albers, was the Purist Amedee Ozenfant. Fascinated with painting as a kind of manufacture, he saw working in a series as a means of purifying a con- cept. Ozenfant concluded that in industry ". . . the first examples of a model to be turned out are always partly spoilt because turning the machinery up to concert pitch is a long business."25 A Similar motivation for abstract, serial imagery appears in the string compositions of Fuller as well as in the compositions of the engraver Pierre Courtin and the numbered "drip" paintings of Jackson Pol- lock, who had also studied with Hayter at the New York Atelier 17. Fuller's Post-Atelier 17 Years: 1946-1949 Fuller's first successful web of sewing threads was created in 1946, one year after She began experimenting with the idea, a piece she fittingly entitled String Com- position 1 (Figure 31). Engineering problems that she had encountered with her experimental compositions were solved through the use of a special wooden frame, devised by the artist, that could withstand the great pull of the strings. The "picture" consists of an elliptical meshing of threads 112 wound diagonally from one peg to another in a colorful pat- tern. Seemingly endless lines extend across a dark, roughly- woven panel and, depending on the points where they are at- tached to the pegs, either parallel the Straight lines of the framing edge--as in the upper left-hand corner--or form diagonals--as in the center. The resulting design consists of a series of delicate cross-hatchings which resemble "a fanfare of arches in a Gothic cathedral."26 In the center of String Composition 1 several threads, which have been stretched diagonally from one peg to an- other, converge and twist at midpoint. These points of looped string, referred to by Fuller as "nerve center" crossings, were anticipated in the artist's soft-ground etching Sailor's Dream (Figure 30). In both String Com- position 1 and the print these three-dimensional inter- sections appear to float before an indeterminate back- ground, rendering to the compositions a sense of depth and space. Depth is enhanced in String Composition 1 by the way in which the threads, actually strung in straight lines, combine to create two curvilinear arcs that form an el- liptical design in the center. This ellipse is an optical illusion. The lines, based on a horizontal and vertical grid system, are built up into a series of tangents whose visual appearance is curved lines. They are really straight lines at various angles and on different levels. In addi- tion, as light plays on the threads, these arcs are high— lighted. Through the alternation of light and shadow, the 113 ellipse appears to protrude from the dark background and become an entity on its own. The imagery of String Composition 1, consisting of only lines, arcs and squares, relies chiefly on elementary geometric components. Fuller may have been introduced to geometric abstraction through Josef Albers. In his search for order and simplicity, Albers restricted the forms of his paintings to the square. Albers, along with the De Stijl theoretician Piet Mondrian, whose paintings are characterized by intersecting right angles and rectangles of primary colors, played a principal role in introducing geometric abstraction to artists in the United States—- both through their works and presence in New York during the 1940's. The paintings of Albers and Mondrian investi- gate the problems that arose from the mechanistic char- acter of contemporary society. In their works, as in Fuller's String Composition 1, a sense of pleasure is de- rived from the purity, order and "rightness" of the geo- metric components, as if they had been produced by precision tools. The result is a kind of impersonal beauty that re- minds one of the German art critic Johann Winckelmann's famous dictum: "Pure beauty, like pure water, is taste— less."27 The brightly hued geometry of String Composition 1 is set in contrast to a dusky, coarse-textured backdrop. The effect of interlacing and criss-crossing lines before an indeterminate space recalls that which was achieved by 114 Hayter in his prints. For example, Hayter's engraving Death py Water consists of a white-toned piece of paper which has been overlaid with a complex labyrinth of bold black lines (Figure 11). These web-like lines run through the print, suggesting vibrant intersections and rendering a feeling of movement and force. Fuller, in String Com- ppsition l, and those built in the following two decades, converts the errant linear trails and anthropomorphic shapes of Hayter's automatic drawing into precise, three- dimensional, geometric configurations. It appears that the sculptural concept Fuller extracted from Surrealist au- tomatism was the "line in space." Fuller's Post-Atelier 17 Years: The Fifties After Fuller had completed her first successful com- position in string, she pursued her recently discovered medium with enthusiasm, experimenting with various types of strings, threads and textures. String compositions began to fill her New York studio in the late 1940's. In "Twentieth Century Cat's Cradle," Fuller recalled those days when she felt that her sculptures had a compelling presence of their own, but had not been recognized or ac- quired by the official art establishment. Fuller remi- nisced: Around my studio there appeared compositions in neutral tones of hemp, linen and cotton; in various widths of the fisherman's seine twine in all white; in gay colors of tatting 115 threads, silk and nylon sewing threads, upholsterers'cord and weaver's textured and metallic threads. I thought they were beautiful. Would anyone else?28 In 1948, two years after Fuller executed String Com- position 1, She started to receive a certain degree of no- toriety throughout New York City and the United States. In that year, one of her string compositions was displayed at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery. Another of her colorful pat- terns was produced in the 31 October 1949 issue of Eifg magazine.29 The Museum of Modern Art included one of her compositions in its 1951 exhibition of Abstract Art in America. And in 1953 Strinngonstruction, Number 51, which had been strung that year, was purchased by the Whitney Museum of American Art (Figure 32). This marked the first time that a Fuller "picture" had actually been added to a museum's permanent collection. By acquiring String Construction, Number 51, the Whitney Museum became the owner of one of the earliest com- positions which reflects, in both its materials and scale, the debt that Fuller owes to modern industry. In her 1953 sculpture Fuller used an aluminum frame and plastic threads, known as monofilament or Saran, which had just begun to be produced commercially by the plastics industry. Four years earlier the artist had stumbled upon a screen made of plas— tic thread in a hardware store and soon afterward started composing her abstract designs with these filaments. This discovery, like Minna Citron's accidental encounters with urban detritus, was a happy discovery for Fuller. These 116 plastic threads were destined to become the main components of her compositions for the next two decades. In the early 1950's Fuller was allowed access to in- dustrial research facilities in order to test the permanence of the recently invented monofilament. This investigation was very important to the artist's career because it opened new avenues in her continuing search for a durable palette, which began in 1946 when the sewing threads composing her first constructions faded rapidly upon exposure to light. Between 1949 and 1953, Fuller, in her attempts to resolve the problem, enlisted the help of a physicist who examined the plastic threads for lightfastness. As a result, she discovered the few threads that could retain their color despite exposure to between six hundred and one thousand hours of light; in comparison, a commercially acceptable lightfastness, according to Fuller, is only eighty hours.30 As part of her quest to protect her string composi- tions from the deteriorating effects of the environment, Fuller was also searching at this time for a frame that would Shield her intricate designs from dirt and dust. Plastics had allowed her the freedom to expand her compo- sitions in both size and complexity, so that they had reached proportions of 60.96 by 91.44 and 91.44 by 121.92 centimeters. The artist invented an aluminum frame, to be built by a machinist, which could withstand the great pull of the stretched plastic strings composing the rather large designs. She then negotiated with the Pittsburgh 117 Plate Glass Company to enclose each of her constructions between two sheets of double-paned Thermo glass. In an in— terview with Rosalind Browne, Fuller was questioned about the tremendous amount of time and money that she had ex- pended in her search for the quality materials that would give her string compositions durability. She commented: I really feel if your work is going to be found in a museum, then the museum should have the guarantee that you've done your best to make it permanent. If you're going to record your time, which is what most artists do whether they make their work permanent or not, they might as well make it permanent if it's within their capabilities to do $0.31 The foundations for Fuller's dedication to her craft and willingness to experiment with new materials were prob- ably laid by her two former instructors: Stanley William Hayter and Josef Albers. The constant exploration for and experimentation with unorthodox materials for her string compositions may have been rooted in Fuller's experience as a printmaker searching for new textures to impress in soft-ground wax. On the other hand, the artist's use of plastic threads, an aluminum frame and Thermo glass pos- sibly was inspired by her contact with Albers, who, as a Bauhaus associate, encouraged his students to be crafts- men designing with industrial materials. Fuller's use of industrial materials in the 1950's was not an isolated phenomenon. In the years following World War I the brothers Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner, both born in Russia, evolved a new aesthetic called 118 Constructivism. Like Fuller, Gabo and Pevsner constructed, rather than carved, their sculptures with modern materials-- especially industrial plastics, wire, polished metals, (glass. For example, Gabo's Linear Construction in Space, Dhnnber 4, executed in 1958, consists of webs of taut stain- lenss steel strings suspended between frames of transparent pliastic sheets (Figure 33). In this sculpture, as in all Gabo's works, the translucent materials allowed him to at- txain a degree of transparency, light, line, weightlessness arui movement unprecedented in the medium. In 1948 sculptures by Gabo and Pevsner were exhibited :for the first time in the United States at the Museum of lflodern Art. Fuller, who had been building string compo- sitions for three years, attended the Show. She was fasci- nated particularly by the precise shapes and lucid clarity Of the transparent and reflective materials that the two Constructivists used in their works. Fuller recalled her excitement upon observing her first examples of Con- structivist sculpture: "They were so transparent! I'd just seen Gabo and Pevsner in the Museum of Modern Art and the sight of all that string and lucite overwhelmed me. It gave me ideas."32 Some of the ideas that Fuller gained from observing these sculptures are demonstrated in String Construction, Epmber 51, a work completed in 1953 (Figure 32). In this "Picture," colorful strands of commercially produced mono- filament have been suspended diagonally between the edges 119 of an aluminum frame. Enclosed within double-paned Thermo glass and placed before a roughly woven panel of tan fabric, the thin, delicate lines of iridescent plastic seem to float in an indefinite Space. The many abstract linear patterns and geometric shapes consist of countless transparent chords, intermixed with a few translucent orange and green ones, instead of the heavy sewing threads that Fuller used previously to build String Composition 1 (Figure 31). De- spite the fact that the 1953 "picture" is much more complex in design than the earlier one, a sense of weightlessness and elegance pervades it. This sense of lightness is simi- lar to that achieved by Gabo in his Linear Construction in Space, Number 4. In the center of String Construction, Number 51 nu- merous transparent filaments, which have been stretched taut between two tangential sides of the frame, converge and twist at midpoint. These junctions of knotted threads form eight "nerve center" crossings, or three-dimensional triangular structures, which resemble those distinguishing the artist's String Composition 1. These crossings func- tion as reference points that divide the "picture" into nine rectangles, three rows of three; the box located in the center, echoing the rectangular shape of the frame, is particularly recognizable. In addition, the mixture of variously toned--orange, green and transparent--threads helps to define the outlines of each rectangle. This visual illusion is even more complexly and elaborately 120 presented in Fuller's square construction of 1961 entitled String Composition 104, which involves the interplay of al- ternate black and white areas that appear to be a series of squares imposed on a series of arcs (Figure 34). In both of these works the rectilinear shapes have not been made directly, but built to this semblance as the compositions progress toward the center. The imagery of String Construction, Number 51, con- sisting of straight vertical and horizontal lines, is based chiefly on elementary geometric shapes. As in String Compo- sition l, the filaments, stretched diagonally across the frame in a grid pattern, accumulate in the center to cre- ate arcs which illusionistically form the contours of an ellipse. These geometric components are so exact that they render to the 1953 construction an "untouched-by-human- hands" look, reliant upon mathematical accuracy and scien- tific technology. This suggests that Fuller rejected the whim of the individual as the only guide in artistic cre- ation, the major element of Surrealist automatism to which she was introduced at Atelier 17. Impersonal artistic beauty, derived from the rightness and purity of geometric components, also distinguishes the sculptures of Gabo, such as Linear Construction in Space, Number 4, and Pevsner. As light shines and moves along the outlines of the geometric configurations forming String Construction, Number 51 they are kaleidoscopically transformed. When bathed in light, the orange, green and transparent chords 121 of monofilament magically become translucent, glistening like brilliant rays of sunlight. The transparency and lu— minosity of her string compositions have reminded Fuller of images of nature: "Another aspect of these string compo- sitions which I loved was their transparency. It was like spiders webs or looking through grasses or the pendant streamers or willow trees or rain. . . . Transparent!"33 Unlike an oil painting, where the colors remain constant and two tones may be incorporated to create a third, very different one, the blending of colors in String Construc- tion, Number 51 occurs only in the eye of the spectator. For instance, when a cluster of orange threads overlaps a concentration of green chords the mixing of the two colors into a brownish tone takes place through a visual illusion, not in physical reality. Therefore, the tones of the fila- ments can be transformed as a result of the slightest vari- ation in the color of the background panel, the viewing position of the spectator, or the light thrown on them. In addition, the interplay of light and shadow re- flected on the various linear and geometric elements-- transparent diagonals existing on different planes, "nerve center" crossings, the e11ipse--render to the construction a sense of vitality and dynamism. This same radiance and shimmer is an important component of Gabo's Linear Con- struction in Space, Number 4. In Fuller's string sculpture and Gabo's construction the alternate translucency and opacity of meshed filaments creates a continuous flow of 122 motion, forcing the eye of the spectator to move across and into the composition. Rosalind Browne described Fuller's mastery of this effect in String Construction, Number 51: . . . Within the confined area of her own synthesis of volumes, planes and colors, She guides her multiple arcs, tangential diagonals and the variegated meshes of their fusions to vibrate in total dimen- sion, to contract, expand, stretch and tryst with shapes beyond their perime- ters.34 Fuller's Post-Atelier 17 Years: The Sixties By the mid-1960's the improvement of synthetic plas— tics had allowed Fuller to enlarge her string compositions in both scale and complexity. These latest developments inspired her to once again elaborate upon her original method of constructing sculptures. Fuller's new idea in- volved firmly fixing her string compositions in a sur- rounding matrix of transparent plastic--a relatively sim- ple procedure resembling the cooking process in which small pieces of fruit float in gelatin. It is no surprise that Fuller has referred to these Sculptures as "plastic embedments" since she started constructing them. Shortly after the artist began experimenting with plastic embed- ments they grew into three-dimensional pieces, expanding her string idea into sculpture in the round. In 1969 Fuller was awarded a patent (number 3,451, 879) from the United States government for her unique method of building sculptures with synthetic plastics. The patent described in detail the steps involved in 123 creating a plastic embedment. To begin, a mold was filled partially with a liquid monomer of syrupy consistency which was allowed to solidify until it could support either a sheet or block of Plexiglas. Transparent notches on this Plexiglas block had been strung with colorful strands of Saran, or plastic thread, in an abstract pattern. The de- sign, as usual with Fuller's compositions, consisted of elementary geometric shapes, but now they were set in an elliptical or circular format rather than a rectangular arrangement. The second step involved immersing this disk of Saran upright or at an angle in the relatively firm monomer and then baking the whole construction in a cur- ing oven. Once this stage was completed the Plexiglas block was embedded permanently in a cube made of the same transparent material, and its outlines were not recogniz- able. The resulting image was a drawing of colorful, translucent plastic threads floating in the middle of a crystal clear cube. This harmonious union of plastic within plastic culminated Fuller's concern with geometric principles of composition and technological principles of materials that had occupied her for almost twenty years. In 1970, a year after she received her patent, Fuller completed one of the most successful of her plastic embed- ments, String Composition 901 (Figure 35). By then the artist had advanced from the rectangular frame and double- paned Thermo glass, in which she enclosed her 1953 String Construction, Number 51, to a frameless encasement of 124 solid plastic. In the middle of this transparent mass, Saran threads, wound to form an intricate constellation- like composition, appear to be floating in space. Count- less fine lines, coming from equally spaced points on a disk, sweep across one another, forming diagonals that fre- quently grow into interlacing curves, ellipses and twisted crossings. It has been suggested that the manner in which these lines cross and intersect to create geometric con- figurations recalls the "lines connecting galaxies or the beauty of geometrically precise course-charting devices."35 This impression of galaxies or constellations is re- inforced by the fact that String Composition 901, arti- ficially lit by bulbs concealed in the base, glows iri- descently. In addition, the protective covering of the plastic encasement also optically diffuses the bottom il- lumination, enhancing the amount of light reflected on the meshed surfaces. As a result, the delicate filaments of plastic thread are magically transformed into translucent, Shimmering rays of variously colored light. When installed at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York, in 1970 String Composition 901, a fairly large piece measuring over 75 centimeters in height and over 130 centimeters in length, probably formed an environment of glowing elliptical con— volutions. Rosalind Browne, in a review of a 1969 exhi— bition of Fuller's embedments, ended her paragraph with two lines that can be applied to the beauty of String Composition 901: "Breathtaking precision fans thousands 125 of taut hairlines into interlacing curves. Yet no formula could capture the subtle thrusts of asymmetry that turn mathematical configuration into poetry."36 Spectators, in viewing String Composition 901, are permitted to walk around and observe it from various van- tage points. As they move from one side to the next, viewers receive discontinuous refracted and reflected ima- ges of the translucent webbed design. From this visual evidence, the real concern of Fuller in her three-dimen- sional string composition may be described as the "multi- plicity of disembodied space."37 In String Composition 901, elements of mass (clusters of translucent plastic threads) and void (the block of transparent plastic) act together to create a space that flows through as well as around the translucent materials. This optical illusion reflects Fuller's desire to communicate directly to the spectator of her plastic embedment elements of light, color, trans- parency and space as phenomena, or purely visual experi- ences. The ability of her art to communicate with the spectator through the use of current technology and ex- pressive means has been described by Fuller: Inspired by the engineering genius of our times and civilization, expressed in trans- parency, light and balance, I found the form of lineal geometric progression more significant for this extension of thought. In other words, though I fully appreciated the products of the engineer--airplanes, bridges, skyscrapers--mere representation of these symbols was not enough to convey my feeling. My appreciation of our culture was for qualities of thought, therefore my expression was abstract.3 126 Sue Fuller in Retrospect Fuller's means of artistic expression became abstract only after she developed an interest in experimenting with soft-ground etching at Atelier 17. Previously, she had been trained in the representational Social Realist style of painting and printmaking that was popular during the 1930‘s. Having achieved success in this genre, Fuller felt the need to evolve artistically, so she joined Atelier 17 where she could freely explore various intaglio techniques. Fuller became intrigued almost immediately by the possi- bilities for experimentation and self-expression offered by soft-ground etching. At the same time, the printmaker's enthusiasm for impressing diverse textures into soft ground prompted her to attend a class taught by Josef Albers that centered on collages. Experimentation with soft-ground etching eventually stimulated Fuller to reduce the struc- ture of the fabrics with which she was working to one filament. Through the influence of both Hayter and Albers a whole new world opened up to Fuller—-the world of ab- straction. Fuller's interest in using individual fibers of lace and thread to create her prints laid the foundations for her development, in 1945-46, of colorful geometric patterns of threads stretched across wooden frames that she called string compositions. Three years later Fuller attended an exhibition featuring the sculptures of Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner, whose works inspired her to use recently 127 developed industrial materials. As a result, her construc- tions of the 1950's are formed of aluminum frames and trans- lucent plastic threads that create a sense of weightlessness and delicacy. In the 1960's, continuous efforts to master the tech- nological aspects of her sculpture led Fuller to devise a unique process of permanently embedding her string compo- sitions in a surrounding matrix of transparent plastic. These plastic embedments were drawings of colorful, light- filled threads floating in the midst of indeterminate space-- the culmination of Fuller's post-Atelier 17 experience. She converted the labyrinths of interlacing lines that render a feeling of movement and space in Hayter's automatic draw- ings. into precise geometric configurations that exist in three dimensions. Fuller visually communicates to specta- tors of her plastic embedments what she considers to be symbols of twentieth-century American culture—-elements of light, color, transparency and space. FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER IV lJoann Moser, "The Significance of Atelier 17 in the Development of Twentieth-Century American Printmaking" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1976), pp. 15-16. 2Sue Fuller, quoted by Andre Smith in his introduction to the catalog Etchings of Sue Fuller, Research Studio, Maitland, Florida (1947), p. i. 3Rosalind Browne, "Sue Fuller: Threading Trans- parency," Art International 16 (January 20, 1972): 38. 4Ibid. 5Hans Hofmann, quoted in Barbara Rose, American Art Since 1900, rev. ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975), p. 128. 6Browne, "Sue Fuller: Threading Transparency," p. 39. 7Ibid. 8Daniel M. Mendelowitz, A History of American Art, 2nd. ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1970), p. 146. 9When Fuller joined the workshop in 1943 she could not afford to pay the tuition. Hayter generously allowed her to compensate by acting as an assistant who helped with the printing of plates. As a result of this agree- ment, Fuller paid no tuition for the first year and for the remaining six months paid half of the tuition fee. The latter payment was actually a compromise with the ad- ministration at the New School for Social Research who, contrary to the opinion of Hayter, thought that all stu- dents should pay full tuition. Moser, "The Significance of Atelier 17 in the Development of Twentieth-Century American Printmaking," p. 22. 10Sue Fuller, "The Artist on His Work — 6: "Trans— parency, Light and Balance,‘" Christian Science Monitor, 22 September 1965, p. 8. 11Sue Fuller, quoted in Browne, "Sue Fuller: Thread- ing Transparency," p. 38. 128 129 lZIbid. l3Moser, "The Significance of Atelier 17 in the Development of Twentieth-Century American Printmaking," p. 113. 14Fuller, "The Artist on His Work - 6: 'Trans- parency, Light and Balance,'" p. 8. 15Moser, "The Significance of Atelier 17 in the Development of Twentieth-Century American Printmaking," p. 113. 15Josef Albers, quoted in George Rickey, Constructiv- ism: Origins and Evolution (New York: George Braziller, 1967), P. 46. 17Sue Fuller, "Twentieth Century Cat's Cradle," Craft Horizons l4 (March-April 1954): 22. 18"Grants to Spur Six Artists," Art Digest 24 (May 15, 1950): 19. 19Fuller, "Twentieth Century Cat's Cradle," p. 24. 20Fuller, "The Artist on His Work - 6: 'Trans- parency, Light and Balance,'" p. 8 and "Twentieth Century Cat's Cradle," p. 24. 21Josef Albers, quoted in Fuller, "Twentieth Century Cat's Cradle," p. 24. 22Naum Gabo, quoted in Carola Giedion-Welcker, Contemporary Sculpture (New York: George Wittenborn, Inc., 1960)! p0 178. 23Fuller, "The Artist on His Work - 6: 'Trans- parency, Light and Balance,'" p. 8. 24Ibid. 25Amedee Ozenfant, quoted in Rose, American Art Since 1900, p. 212. 25M. F. "Sue Fuller" (Bertha Schaefer Gallery), Art News 48 (April 1949): 48. 27Mendelowitz, A History of American Art, p. 595. 28Fuller, ll'Twentieth Century Cat's Cradle," p. 22. 29"String Patterns: Artist Works with Colorful Twine," Life (October 31, 1949): 77. 130 30Fuller, "The Artist on His Work - 6: 'Trans- parency, Light and Balance,'" p. 8. 3lsue Fuller, quoted in Browne, "Sue Fuller: Thread- ing Transparency," p. 38. 32Ibid., p. 39. 33Fuller, "The Artist on His Work - 6: 'Trans- parency, Light and Balance,'" p. 8. 34Browne, "Sue Fuller: Threading Transparency," p. 37. 35Alice Adams, "Sue Fuller" (Bertha Schaefer Gallery), Craft Horizons 25 (July-August 1965): 36. 36R. B. "Sue Fuller" (Bertha Schaefer Gallery), Art News 68 (October 1969): 16. 37Cornelia Justice, "Webs of Beauty Woven," Ledger- Star (Norfolk, Virginia), 7 March 1967, n.p. 38Fuller, "Twentieth Century Cat's Cradle," p. 24. CONCLUS ION Stanley William Hayter greatly influenced many Ameri— can artists during the decade that his printmaking workshop Atelier 17 was located in New York. His ideas and direct contact with numerous printmakers, painters and sculptors stimulated the development of intaglio printmaking as a medium of original and personal artistic expression in the United States. Minna Citron and Sue Fuller are New York artists who were introduced to new techniques of making prints and the open-minded attitude toward the possibili- ties of printmaking at Atelier 17 during the years immedi- ately following World War II. Both women received a con- servative art education focusing on social commentary in the 1930's, and their paintings of this period, which achieved a certain degree of notoriety, reflect this style. Then, in the early 1940's, opportunities to become versed in advanced European concepts and styles of art were made available by the presence of members of the Parisian avant- garde at Atelier 17. At different times, Citron and Fuller enrolled in Hayter's course at the New School for Social Research in Greenwich Village; prints made at Atelier l7 captured the interest of Citron and a desire to learn en- graving on jewelry attracted Fuller to the workshop. 131 132 Atelier 17, with the Parisian vanguard and its emphasis on experimentation and change, revolutionized the art of both women. A number of contrasts easily can be perceived in the work of Citron and Fuller although both were trained as Social Realists and passed through Atelier 17 in the 1940's. After their introductions to new techniques of making in— taglio prints and Surrealist methods and aesthetics at the workshop, the visual idiom of these artists became abstract and distinctly personal. Citron explored the potentials of the third dimension in her collages of the 1950's and painted constructions of the 1960's. In contrast, Fuller's interest focused on the development and perfection of her sculptural string compositions from the late 1940's into the 1970's. Differences exist between the two artists in the choice as well as the use of materials. Citron employed impermanent fabrics and objects, detritus such as old tablecloths, rusty chains, discarded tar paper, paint can lids and yellowed newspaper, in assembling her construc- tions. These materials, susceptible to rapid fading and deterioration over the years, reflect her View of contem- porary society as a place where everything is subject to constant change and obsolescence. Citron put the waste of twentieth-century American society to good use in her constructions. 133 In opposition to Citron, Fuller saw her string com- positions as products of the highly technological aspects of her time. Throughout her career she was concerned about the detrimental effects of the environment on her sculp- tures. As a part of her search for materials that would not fade or perish, Fuller began in the early 1950's to build her constructions of industrial plastics, including monofilament, Plexiglas, aluminum and Thermo glass. She even commissioned a research physicist to test the dur- ability of various synthetic materials. Consequently, Fuller sculptures have consisted of products of contempo- rary American technology since the 1950's. Another major difference exists between the creative approaches of these two artists. Citron's constructions were the product of automatism and improvisation, which allowed the spontaneity find whim of the artist to deter- mine the form of each work. As a result of this method of approach, accidental effects and gestures made by the art- ist during the act of creation are perceived readily by spectators. The hand of the artist can be detected in the spontaneous brushwork and torn edges of paper that remain obvious on the canvas as well as in the selection and arrangement of familiar objects. In the 1940's Citron was exposed, at Hayter's Atelier 17, to the artistic ap- proach characterized by an intense personal involvement with every aspect of a work. From the conception of a print, through the automatic manipulation of tools and 134 materials, to the final elaborations, each work presented a challenge and inspiration to the artist. The suggestive titles of Citron's constructions prompt the viewer to dis- cover the process and meaning of the creative act of which they are the product. The emotional and personal aesthetic that dominates the art of Citron is replaced in Fuller's work by a cool and intellectual geometric abstraction. Fuller's construc- tions rely more on mathematical precision than the personal whim of the artist. The subject matter of all the string compositions is based chiefly on simple, but precise, geo- metric shapes, angles and line. These shapes are so ac- curate that they have an impersonal and mechanistic "untouched-by-human-hands" look. The machine-like quality of Fuller's sculptures reflects the influence of Bauhaus and Constructivist works that she observed in New York, and the numerical progression of titles is also suggestive of contemporary technology and industrialization. Although the arrangement of threads on the string compositions was controlled by notches located on the frames at specific, mathematically calculated intervals, some room for impro- visation remained in the forms of the designs, the colors and textures of background panels and the colors of threads. But, in general, impersonal imagery and technological ef- fects characterize Fuller's constructions. In contrast to the intense involvement of the artist with his work that 135 dominated Atelier 17, after Fuller left the workshop, she distanced herself from the process of creation. Both Minna Citron and Sue Fuller exemplify the tran- sition from representational to abstract visual idioms ex- perienced by numerous American artists after 1945. Many European artists who immigrated to the United States during the disruption and destruction caused by World War II acted as prisms for art, dramatically changing its evolutionary direction. For Citron and Fuller, Hayter and Atelier 17 were the major catalysts. Each absorbed various aspects of the technical expertise in printmaking and Surrealist practices and philosophy offered at the workshop, trans- forming them to suit their own artistic expressions. It is probable that further research would bring to light the fact that other American printmakers, painters and sculp- tors who frequented Atelier 17 during the 1940's experi- enced similar transitions and developed individual styles of abstraction. Because Citron and Fuller are women art- ists they are of current interest. Nonetheless, they and other female and male artists are of vital importance in understanding the role Atelier l7, and European artists associated with it, played in the revolutionary develop- ment of art toward abstraction in the United States during the post-World War II era. APPENDIX APPENDIX ARTISTS AT ATELIER 17, NEW YORK The following list of artists who worked at Atelier 17 in New York City from 1940 to 1955 has been extracted from the appendix of Joann Moser's dissertation "The Significance of Atelier 17 in the Development of Twentieth-Century Ameri- can Printmaking." It represents the most complete group of names gathered to date. According to Moser, no written records of the studio membership were kept and, therefore, it was impossible for her to determine exact dates for when a particular artist was at Atelier 17. Ellen Abbey E. B. Adam Adolf Aldrich Garo Antreasian Nemencio Antunez Irene "Fif" Aronson Lily Ascher Margaret Balzer William Baziotes Frederick G. Becker Bens Ben-Zion Harriet Berger (Nurkse) Isabel Bishop Grace Borgenicht Louise Bourgeois Paul Brach Cynthia Brandts Theodore Brenson Robert Broner Letterio Calapai Alexander Calder Sylvia Carewe Marc Chagall 136 Margaret Cilento Minna Citron Le Corbusier Ed Countey Pierre Courtin Ruth Cyril Salvador Dali Worden Day Dorothy Dehner William de Kooning Sari Dienes Werner Drewes Virginia Dudley Carlos Dyer Thomas Eldred Christine Engler Francine Felsenthal Perle Fine James Flora Teresa Fourpome Jean Franckson Friedrich Friedel Sue Fuller Robert Gardner 137 Jan Gelb Milton Gendel James Goetz Douglas Gorsline Peter Grippe Salvatore Grippi Jose Guerrero Alan Gussow Terry Haass Stanley William Hayter Joseph Heil Anita Heiman Fannie Hillsmith Harry Hoehn Harry Holtzman Ian Hugo Lotte Jacobi Raymond Jordan Reuben Kadish Sam Kaner Philip Kaplan Leon Karp Leo Katz Mar Jean Kettunen Dina Kevles (Baker) Kenneth Killstrom James Kleege Chaim Koppelman Wilfredo Lam Armin Landeck Mauricio Lasansky Ruth Leaf Jacques Lipchitz Ryah Ludens Malazinshas Reginald Marsh Ezio Martinelli Maria Martins Alice Trumbull Mason Andre Masson Matta (Sebastian Antonio Echaurren) Richard Meyers Joan Miro Frances Mitchell David Moore Norma Morgan Jean Morrison Robert Motherwell Seong Moy Lee Mullican Louise Nevelson Hubert Norton Lillian Orloff George Ortman Vevean Oviette Harold Paris Robert Andrew Parker Joellen Peet Irene Rice Pereira Gabor Peterdi Dmitri Petrov Helen Phillips Ron Pierson Philip D. Platt Jackson Pollock Joseph Presser Lucia Quintero Andre Racz Abraham Rattner Henry Regis Jean-Paul Riopelle Kurt Roesch Louis Ross Mark Rothko David Ruff Alfred Russell Anne Ryan Louis Schanker Karl Schrag Bess Schuyler Kenneth Scott Doris Seidler Rufino Tamayo Yves Tanguy Ruthven Todd Molly Tureske Anne Weinholt Pennerton West Jonathan Williams Larry Winston Madeleine Wormser Ana Rosa de Ycaza Enrique Zanartu BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY Books Adhemar, Jean. Twentieth Century Graphics. Trans. Eveline Hart. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971. Amaya, Mario. Pop Art ... And After. New York: The Viking Press, 1965. Arnason, H. Harvard. History of Modern Art. 2nd ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1977. Battcock, Gregory, ed. The New Art. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1973. Breton, Andre. What is Surrealism? Trans. David Gascoyne. London: Faber & Faber, 1936. Castleman, Riva. Prints of the Twentieth Century. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1976. Fine, Elsa Honig. Women and Art. Montclair, New Jersey: Allanheld and Schram, 1978. Friedman, Bernard Harper. Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1972. From the Eighty Years of Minna Citron. Introduction by Max Chapman. New York: Wittenborn Art Books, 1976. Giedion—Welcker, Carola. Contemporary Sculpture. New York: George Wittenborn, Inc., 1960. Godfrey, Richard T. Printmaking in Britain. New York: New York University Press, 1978. Harris, Anne Sutherland, and Nochlin, Linda. Women Artists: 1550-1950. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978. Haslam, Malcolm. The Real World of the Surrealists. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1978. 138 139 Hayter, Stanley William. About Prints. London; New York: Oxford University Press, 1962. . New Ways of Gravure. Pref. by Herbert Read. Rev. ed. London; New York: Oxford University Press, 1966. Heller, Jules. Printmaking Today, A Studio Handbook. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1958. Heller, Nancy, and Williams, Julia. The Regionalists. New York: Watson-Guptill, 1976. Ivins, William M., Jr. Prints and Visual Communication. Cambridge, Massachusetts; London: The M.I.T. Press, 1969. Janis, Sidney. Abstract and Surrealist Art in America. New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1944. Mendelowitz, Daniel M. A History of American Art. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1960. Moser, Joann. "The Significance of Atelier 17 in the Development of Twentieth-Century American Print- making." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1976. O'Hara, Frank. Jackson Pollock. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1959. Peterdi, Gabor. Printmaking. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1959. Rickey, George. Constructivism: Origins and Evolution. New York: George Braziller, 1967. Rose, Barbara. American Art Since 1900. Rev. ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975. Rose, Bernice. Jackson Pollock: Works on Paper. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1969. Rothenstein, John. Modern English Painters. Vol. 3: Wood to Hockney. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1974. Rubin, William S. Dada, Surrealism, and Their Heritage. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1968. Rubin, William S., and Lanchner, Carolyn. Andre Masson. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1976. 140 Sandler, Irving. The Triumph of American Painting: A History of Abstract Expressionism. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1970. Schneede, Uwe M. Surrealism. Trans. Maria Pelikan. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1973. Waldberg, Patrick. Surrealism. London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd, 1965. Whitney Museum of American Art. Catalogue of the Collec- tion. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1974. Who's Who in American Art. New York: R. R. Bowker Company, 1978. Zigrosser, Carl. The Book of Fine Prints. Rev. ed. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1948. . Prints and Their Creators. 2nd rev. ed. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., c. 1974. Periodicals Ashton, Dore. "Atelier l7 Exhibits." Art Digest 26 (October 1, 1951): 16. . "Hayter's Atelier 17." Art Digest 26 (October 1, 1951): 16, 33. . "The Situation in Printmaking." Arts 30 (October 1955): 15-17, 60. "Atelier 17." Art Digest 15 (October 15, 1940): 28. Barr, Alfred H. "Modern Prints and the Museum." Museum of Modern Art Bulletin 16 (1949): 4-8. Boudaille, George S. "Pierre Courtin: 'Engraving is a Tactile Art ...'" Artist's Proof 1 (1961): 2-5. Browne, Rosalind. "Sue Fuller: Threading Transparency." Art International 16 (January 20, 1972): 37-40. Citron, Minna. "Communication Between Spectator and Artist." College Art Journal 14 (1955): 147-153. . "In Deep Relief." Artist's Proof 6 (1966): 30-39. 141 Cochrane, Diane. "Atelier 17: Revolutionary Force or Historical Footnote?" American Arts & Antiques 1 (November-December 1978): 78-85. Devree, Howard. "Hayter Atelier Closes." New York Times, 11 September 1955), sec. II, p. 11. Farrell, Adrienne. "A Half Century of Lasting Imprint." Smithsonian, September 1978, pp. 89-92. Frost, Rosamund. "The Chemically Pure in Art: W. Hayter, B. Sc., Surrealist." Art News 40 (May 15-31, 1941): 12-13, 30-31. . "Graphic Revolution: Studio 17." Art News 43 (August 1-31, 1944): ll, 28. Fuller, Sue. "The Artist on His Work - 6: 'Transparency, Light and Balance.'" Christian Science Monitor, 22 September 1965, p. 8. . "Twentieth Century Cat's Cradle." Craft Horizons 14 (March-April 1954): 20-24. Gascoyne, David. "Premier Manifeste Anglais du Surrealisme." Cahiers d'Art, nos. 5-6 (1935): 106. Geist, Sidney. "Prelude: The 1930's." Arts 30 (September 1956): 49-55. "Grants to Spur Six Artists." Art Digest 24 (May 15, 1950): 19. Hayter, Stanley William. "Atelier 17." Graphis 10 (1954): 392-395, 430-432. . "Line Engraving: Technique." Print 1 (March 1941): 51-63. "Jackson Pollack [sic]. Arts and Architecture 61 (February 1944): 14-15. Justice, Cornelia. "Webs of Beauty Woven." Ledger-Star (Norfolk, Virginia), 7 March 1967, n.p. Katz, Leo. "Atelier 17." Print 14 (January-February 1960): 52-57. Lasanky, Mauricio. "On Technical Processes in Printmaking." College Art Journal 9 (Winter 1949-50): 203-204. LeRoux, Le Roux Smith. "William Hayter and the AbstraCt Movement." The Listener, 24 January 1952, pp. 136-138. 142 "Letters: 'Unknown Political Prisoner' Competition." Art Digest 27 (March 1, 1953): 4, l9. Moser, Joann. "The Impact of Stanley William Hayter on Post-War American Art." Archives of American Art Journal 18 (1978): 2-11. New School for Social Research Curriculum. New York: New School for Social Research, 1940-1941. Palmer, Paul. "Visiting Artist Minna Citron Equates Women's Rights with Resolving Fears." State Journal (Lansing Michigan), 20 December 1970, sec. F, p. 6. Peterdi, Gabor. "Thoughts on Printmaking." Artist's Proof 1 (1961): 18-23. "Pittsburgh Artists: a 32nd Annual." Art News 41 (March 1-14, 1942): 6. Sandler, Irving. "The Surrealist Emigres in New York." Artforum 6 (May 1968): 24-31. Schrag, Karl. "The artist alone versus the artist in the workshop." New University Thought 5 (Autumn 1967): 3-12. "String Patterns: Artist Works with Colorful Twine." Life, 31 October 1949, p. 77. Sweeney, James Johnson. "New Directions in Gravure." Museum of Modern Art Bulletin 12 (August 1944): 3-5. T.B.H. "John Graham, 1881-1961." Art News 60 (September 1961): 46, 51-52. Todd, Ruthven. "Hayter Paints a Picture." Art News 49 (October 1950): 28-31, 63. Watt, Alexander. "Paris Letter: Printmakers." Art in America 48 (Summer 1960): 110-112. . "S. W. Hayter." Studio 166 (July 1963): 32-35. Zigrosser, Carl. "American Prints Since 1926: A Complete Revolution in the Making." Art Digest 26 (November 1, 1951): 26-27, 71. 143 Exhibition Catalogs and Brochures Citron Exhibitions A.C.A. Gallery, New York. Minna Citron. Introduction by Gyorgy Kepes. 1946. Hacker Gallery, New York. Minna Citron Paintings and Graphics, 1947-52. Contributions by Jose Gomez Sicre, Jean Cassou, William S. Lieberman, Karl Kup, Irene Hamar. 1952. Howard University, Washington, D. C. Exhibition of Paintings and Prints by Minna Citron. Introduction by Franz Rapp. 1946. . 16 Years After . . . Minna Citron. Introduction by Joseph Frank. 1963. Jason Gallery, New York. Minna Citron. Introduction by George Butcher. 1967. New School for Social Research, New York. The Graphic Work of Minna Citron, 1945-1950. Introduction by Karl Kup. 1950. Tasca Gallery, New York. Citron. 1964. United States Post Office, NeWport, Tennessee. Two Murals of T. V. A. for the Post Office, Newport, Tennessee, by Minna Citron. Introduction by Donald Lilienthal. 1940. Vassar College Art Gallery, New York. 7 American Women: The Depression Decade. Introduction by Karal Ann Marling and Helen A. Harrison. 1976. Fuller Exhibitions Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C. Collages, Prints, String Compositions: Sue Fuller. 1951. Research Studio, Maitland, Florida. Etchings by Sue Fuller. Introduction by Andre Smith. 1947. Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York. String Compositions, Plastic Embedments, Watercolors, Prints and Collages by Sue Fuller. 1966. 144 Hayter Exhibitions Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C. Stanley William Hayter: Paintings, Drawings and Prints, 1928-1950. Introduction by Jacob Kainen. 1973. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The Engravings of S. W. Hayter. Introduction by Graham Reynolds. 1967. Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. S. W. Hayter: Retro- spective. Introduction by Bryan Robertson. 1957. Atelier l7 and Other Exhibitions Brooklyn Museum, New York. 14 Painter-Printmakers. Introduction by John Gordon and Una E. Johnson. 1955-1956. Elvehjem Art Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Atelier 17. Introduction by Joann Moser. 1977. Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachu- setts. Three American Painters: Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Frank Stella. Introduction by Michael Fried. 1965. Hayward Gallery, London. Dada and Surrealism Reviewed. Text by Dawn Ades. 1978. Laurel Gallery, New York. Atelier 17. Contributions by Herbert Read, James Johnson Sweeney, Hyatt Mayor, Carl Zigrosser, Stanley William Hayter. 1949. Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Vanguard American Sculpture, 1913-1939. Introduction by Joan M. Marter, Roberta K. Tarbell and Jeffrey Wechsler. 1979. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Geometric Abstraction in America. Introduction by John Gordon. 1962. Willard Gallery, New York. Prints by 35 Members of the Atelier 17 Group. Contributions by Herbert Read, James Johnson Sweeney and Carl Zigrosser. 1945. 145 Exhibition Reviews Citron Exhibitions Bird, Paul. "Gambling and Minna Citron" (Midtown Gallery). Art Digest 12 (November 1, 1937): 18-19. Boswell, H. "Citron Rules the 'Waves'" (Midtown Galleries). Art Digest 17 (April 1, 1943): 19. Breunig, Margaret. "Citron Less Caustic" (A.C.A. Gallery). Art Digest 19 (November 15, 1944): 20. . "The Questioning Art of Minna Citron" (Norval Gallery). Arts 35 (December 1960): 48-49. Feinstein, Sam. "Philadelphia" (Dubin Galleries). Arts Digest 29 (November 15, 1954): 15. G. B. "Minna Citron" (Jason Gallery). Arts Magazine 41 (December 1966-January 1967): 64. Holliday, Betty. "Minna Citron" (Wittenborn Gallery). Art News 52 (June-July—August 1953): 51. J. G. "Minna Citron" (Tasca Gallery). Art News 65 (March 1966): 12. K. L. "Minna Citron"(Tasca Gallery). Art News 63 (November 1964): 14. M. B. "Citron Abstractions Sacrifice Wit" (Van Diemen- Lilienfeld Gallery). Art Digest 27 (May 1, 1950): 18. "Minna Citron" (Howard University). The Washington Post, 28 April 1963, sec. G, p. 6. N. E. "Minna Citron" (White Gallery). Art News 60 (February 1962): 57. Reed, Judith Kaye. "Minna Citron Changes Interest and Approach" (A.C.A. Galleries). Art Digest 20 (January 1, 1946): 21. Fuller Exhibitions A. L. "Sue Fuller in the Village" (Village Art Center). Art Digest 21 (March 1, 1947): 19. Aach, Herb. "Sue Fuller" (Bertha Schaefer Gallery). Craft Horizons 29 (November-December 1969): 55-56. 146 Adams, Alice. "Sue Fuller" (Bertha Schaefer Gallery). Craft Horizons 21 (November-December 1961): 40. "Sue Fuller" (Bertha Schaefer Gallery). Craft Horizons 25 (July-August 1965): 36. B. K. "Fuller Advantage of String" (Bertha Schaefer Gallery). Art Digest 24 (July 1, 1950): 19. D. S. "Sue Fuller" (Bertha Schaefer Gallery). Art News 49 (September 1950): 46. F. P. "Sue Fuller" (Bertha Schaefer Gallery). Art News 52 (June-July-August 1953): 51. . "Sue Fuller" (Bertha Schaefer Gallery). Art News 54 (February 1956): 52. J. B. "Sue Fuller" (Bertha Schaefer Gallery). Arts Magazine 39 (September-October 1965): 67. Johnston, Jill. "Sue Fuller" (Bertha Schaefer Gallery). Art News 64 (September 1965): 10-11. K. L. "Sue Fuller" (Bertha Schaefer Gallery). Art News 66 (Summer 1967): 18. M. B. "Sue Fuller" (Bertha Schaefer Gallery). Art Digest 27 (June 1953): 17. M. F. "Sue Fuller" (Bertha Schaefer Gallery). Art News 48 (April 1949): 48. M. L. "Casein and String" (Bertha Schaefer Gallery). Art Digest 23 (April 1, 1949): 23. R. B. "Sue Fuller" (Bertha Schaefer Gallery). Art News 68 (October 1969): 16. "Sue Fuller" (Village Art Center). Art News 46 (April 1977): 51. Atelier 17 and Other Exhibitions F. P. "Ezio Martinelli" (Willard Gallery). Art News 51 (May 1952): 45. L. C. "Painters - Print-Makers" (Stable Gallery). Art News 52 (June-July-August 1953): 51. Lowengrund, Margaret. "Prints by Members of Atelier 17" (Laurel Gallery). Art Digest 23 (March 15, 1949): 20. 147 Mellow, James R. "14 Painter-Printmakers" (Brooklyn Museum). Arts 30 (December 1955): 20-21. Preston, Stuart. "Prints of Atelier 17" (Associated American Artists). New York Times, 19 February 1962, p. 22. Unpublished Materials Archives of American Art Minna Citron. Microfilm Roll 97, 268, 630, N82. Sue Fuller. Microfilm Roll 997, N89. Stanley William Hayter. Microfilm Roll BR23, N68/65, N91. Alice Trumbull Mason. Microfilm Roll 630. Press Releases Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York. "New Works by Sue Fuller at Bertha Schaefer Gallery." 1956. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. "Minna Citron Prints." 1949. Tasca Gallery, New York. "Citron." 1964. Village Art Center, New York. "One-Man Exhibit by Sue Fuller." 1947. White Gallery, New York. "Minna Citron Collages and Graphics." 1962. Miscellaneous Minna Citron. Interview by the author. November 6, 1978. Minna Citron. "What and How Does Modern Art Communicate?" Unpublished lecture delivered at the Pan American Cultural Society, New York. 1952. FIGURES 148 mcoflmcmeflp .OCH>mwmcm .ommH .0 .GOmflm .czocxcs .usomm sameS .H mummflm 149 Figure 2. Stanley William Hayter. The Big Horse, 1931. Engraving, 25.4 cm x 19.7 cm. 150 Figure 3. Andre Masson. Improvisation, 1943. Drypoint, aquatint and lift-ground etching, 20 cm x 15.2 cm. Figure 4. 151 Ezio Martinelli. Tarn, c. 1952. on canvas, dimensions unknown. Oil 152 Engraving and drypoint, 1945. Untitled, Jackson Pollock. 37.8 cm x 44.8 cm. Figure 5. 153 ’ ¢;,' _ _ ' ' . ', -\ I “' III,’ ~\ 'r’l’l'. ' ’I I 7 I ‘ \ Q7 ' I / ‘ i / ~ I ‘ 1' .‘ \ y i " 0" l 1‘ 'WW‘ 4 fig“. , ' . ‘. , ‘ x .. 1M ,4 Wilm;~ Ra t (Violated), 1941. Drypoint, 30.8 cm x Andre Masson. 40.6 cm. '1 U .. 4v“ [Iv-... ,. 'l .‘fl ‘fi‘lwngl . I _ M, )fi . .. .J .. - ¢ v . ; ’ , ’ ‘_ ,_ . ' . a. .(I’y/ . u _ :4 -'. 1"...” ._ ...:o - ' Figure 6. 154 Oil on canvas, 172.7 cm 1948. Number 1, Jackson Pollock. Figure 7. x 264.2 cm. 155 26.7 cm x 20.9 cm. Drypoint, Stanley William Hayter, Rue des Plantes, 1926. Figure 8. 156 '\ , _ ’4 . a p [\“(l :4,., . , ' ., 4 1| 3' \“ 115w . ‘_ . ‘f y.“‘ s! ,‘;a*“”‘ . rt", 'f , I, “is.“ . . v . "K‘ ' A. .0 Engraving and soft- Combat, 1936. Stanley William Hayter. Figure 9. ground etching, 39.4 cm x 48.9 cm. 157 Figure 10. Enlargement of the Print of a Burin Line. 158 .EU h.mm x E0 m.vm .ma..n>mumcm .35..” .kumz Na summo .Hoummm 8.3.3:» moanmum 1: wunwam .x #1»: WWW v‘ i . Q a 1 / — ‘ ‘).. 1, m . V . r/ 1 1 . . 1 1 .. uh. h; ... \ », Heavy. . . HRH" 1.3M“: e I . a. ,0 ; ,. 1 I. .. . A . _ , V . .... . a . . .J - . i . ‘ t c . . 4 L 4 . w , . \ 4 A . . ... , u . W, . . 1 . < . u . ,. . . . ,u , . . . . z. . . z a» "r ‘. .,. . %:,,, . . . v , : .. . n , aft , . | . . L . , . ... v .. , y y . . . . . A . f 4 ,I i . . . . . .. I. z ... . , a... u. . . . A . . . , .7. ., .. ., , . r. n ..\. ‘ , , u p a A: , . r . . F 159 EU ¢.NN .msfl>mnmsm .mmmH .QOHuHmomEou .Eo m.vm x .afluusoo wnumflm .NH musmflm 160 lacement, 1947. DlSp Indicative Trumbull Mason. Soft-ground etching, 26 cm x 40 cm. Alice Figure 13. 161 .80 m.om x 50 m.wm .mHoHoo woman :fl Umucfium msflsouw undoumIDMOm tam mcfi>mumcm .mvma .mm assemumm GAO .mmummm EMHHHHB hmasmum .va whamam 162 .50 m.Hm x ED m.mm .mm>smo so HHO .wmma .Hamm wfibwcumo .wHoHHo mmmum .COMDHU macflz .mH musmflm 163 Figure 16. Minna Citron. She Earns "An Honest Living," 1934. Oil on pressed wood, 64.8 cm x 40.6 cm. 164 .80 H.vN x EU H.mm .ucwum msam mmwmum 03p .mmumam Hoaoo 03» .acwwmswm was .cowpflo mafia: mcflsoum .mwma ~00- wmmmmm wxmz Sowawm cw: .sa munmfim P :. k. t L Figure 18. 165 Minna Citron. Whatever, c. 1946. Etching and engraving, 6.4 cm x 3.8 cm. 166 .50 H.m¢ X EU m.m.m can mcflnoum .mvma .Hmfim map HOGGD Uflfimm .mmumam Hoaoo o3u .mcH>muocm .couaflu mcqflz .mH gunman 167 Figure 20. Minna Citron. Measure of Fate, 1955. Oil and paper collage on canvas, 121.3 cm x 80 cm. 168 Figure 21. Irene Rice Pereira. Undulating Arrangement, 1947. Oil on compo— sition board and glass, 59.4 cm x 43.8 cm. 169 1, Construct No. Tar paper on 011, 1964. 88.9 cm x 48.3 cm. Minna Citron. c. Figure 22. 170 Figure 23. Minna Citron. Blue Band, 1965. Etching and aquatint, 58.4 cm x 27.9 cm. 1 171 CITRON NOVUHBER (UH) lHROl ’(.H mm, [964 (,,-\1 UR)‘ II( )L'lx’) [177 M()T\‘l)r\)PS/\7URDM [AV A CAN I R) mm MAD/N )\‘ /\\'l NU! AI 73ml filRHT )L’ 8- 5 100 Figure 24. Minna Citron. Victoria the Queen, 1964. Oil, fabric and wood, 158.8 cm x 121.9 cm. 172 .oumon so ago .mvma .Eo m.om x SD m.om .wcpmaud mo pmoHSB .couuHU macaz .mm gunman 173 " ‘~ .\~\\~ "O"“.\.~-nuxv {'2}? \, 9%? ”V ‘t "f“ ”'96:! Figure 26. Minna Citron. Pretty ShadOWS of My Bonds, 1965. Oil and metal, 76.2 cm x 63.5 cm. 174 Figure 27. Sue Fuller. Sonnenschein Umbrella Company, c. 1942. Watercolor, dimensions unknown. 175 it! gnfifimmmflnflu \ up Soft- 29.8 cm x 1944. I . ing , Caco hon ground etch Sue Fuller. and hard— 22.2 cm. Figure 28 (a..- 176 Figure 29. Sue Fuller. Hen, 1945. Soft-ground etching and engraving, 37.1 cm x 30.2 cm. 177 Figure 30. Sue Fuller. Sailor's Dream, 1944. Soft-ground etching, 22.2 cm x 14.6 cm. 178 mcflzmm cam @003 .50 m.ow x 50 h. .mvma .H GOHDHmOQEOU mcfluum m4 .cmmunu .Hmaasm mam .Hm mnsmflm 179 .EU m.mHH x Eu H.mm .Umounp oaummam cam EdcflESH¢ .mmma .Hm Hmbfidz seaposuumcou msflnum .Hwaasm mum .Nm wusmflm {”...}. .413 5.:deva i \,..\p,!W\v§Mi .uwx, , .m?t $5.; gar 180 Figure 33. Naum Gabo. Linear Construction in Space, Number 4, 1958. Plastic and stainless steel, 101.6 cm x 53.3 cm. 181 Figure 34. Sue Fuller. String Composition 104, 1961. Saran thread, 60.9 cm x 60.9 cm. 182 upmnfiw UHummHm .EU H.NMH x EU N.wb .DGwE .uwaasm mum .osma .Hoa cofluflmomsoo mcflnum .mm musmflm "11111111711111ES 113