printmakers

"If men be fighting over there [across the channel] for their possessions and their bodies against the Corsican robber [Napoleon], they are fighting here to be first in Ackermann's shop and see Gillray's latest caricatures. The enthusiasm is indescribable when the next drawing appears; it is a veritable madness. You have to make your way in through the crowd with your fists."

"There's something special about Gillray. I feel an affinity with him, because he was the first to have an obsession with politics and to do characters as intense as Fox and Pitt. My favourite Gillray is The Apotheosis of Hoche, a mock-elegy for a French revolutionary general. We don't remember now who Hoche was, but the print is so strong that it leaps out at you, including millions of decapitated heads singing the general's praises."

"The golden age of English caricature, from 1780 to 1830, was dominated by an artist of genius, James Gillray, who lifted the art of political caricature to a higher plain."

"It is the intention of this book to offer as complete an insight into the works and times of James Gillray as may be consistent with the limits of one volume...and...not losing sight of the responsibility of rejecting such subjects and matters as, after consideration, seem either too ephemeral and uninteresting to deserve preservation, or too boldly coloured with the coarseness of an age which did not hesitate, in its most polished circles, to treat of subjects that modern refinement has decided to pass over in silence."

"Certainly, the private life of James Gillray was disastrous; yet so clear-sighted was he, so ruthless in his regard for truth as he saw it (even in himself), that his drawings have a bitter verity almost unknown elsewhere in British art: a cruel rigour that makes him seem, in spirit, closer to the satirists of the Continent, where his art was, in fact, much admired. However remote the politics of Gillray's day may seem, to look at his caricatures is to be caught up, almost in spit of oneself, in the frenzies of this patriotic radical."

"The main objection [of the Victorians] to Georgian caricaturists was their indulgence in personality: their bitter attacks; scurrility; impugning of individual character; and ruthless exploitation of private vices to damn public figures. James Gillray was the main culprit. Even the Prince of Wales (later George IV) and Napoleon did not deserve the derision which Gillray regularly visited upon them. In 1851, the Morning Chronicle carefully distinguished between modern cartoons, which were satires, and Gillray's caricatures, which had been "libels" on the subject; they were unfair, damaging, and destructive."

"Gillray tells us more about the eighteenth century than most written histories."

"James Gillray...stands without dispute at the head of the English caricature tradition, and his boldly drawn prints are not merely masterpieces of caricature but also highly original examples of the etcher's art."

"Gillray too frequently lent his powerful talents to attack private character in a manner not justifiable."

"I first came across Gillray at about the age of eight. My sister brought home an Illustrated History of Britain, and I nicked it. The book was full of images by Gillray and other artists, and it became my primer in cartooning. I love Gillray's 'F*** you' attitude... I love Gillray's hearty contempt, especially when he shows Pitt as Midas shitting money on the Commons. Gillray really goes for it – he's full of scatological exuberance, and here he punches the solar plexus by saying money is shit."

"He attacked powerful people in a most ferocious way, with brilliant draughtsmanship. Gillray opened the whole thing up. I share his scatological humour and obsession with movements of the body. Gillray also seemed to notice every wrinkle and crease – he's equally good at extremes of girth and thinness. I love Pitt as Death on a Pale Horse in Presages of the Millenium, galloping over the "swinish" advocates of peace with France, because it's so wild. I once drew Mrs Thatcher as the top bitch at Cruft's, with Heath as a tiny turd on the ground beside her."

"[A]t the outrageous height of his career, he had been rightly regarded as the greatest exponent of lacerating caricature anywhere in Europe. Gillray revolutionised the art of satire, pushing himself to such extremes of savage, unfettered inventiveness that his admirers, and even his enemies, became addicted... [H]e is now increasingly seen as one of the finest British artists of his time. Cartoonists across the world are indebted to his brilliantly visual spleen. They include British practitioners Steve Bell, Peter Brookes, Martin Rowson, Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman... They recognise that Gillray's work, far from succumbing to the ephemerality of most topical cartoons, contains some of the most enduring and astonishing images from a turbulent period in European history."

"It was, indeed, Gillray who excelled all others, at this period, in the production of this sort of thing. Savage in temperament, and at times extremely coarse, he had extraordinary vigour."

"To the task of political caricature, Gillray brought excellent working qualities. He had a plain straight-forward practical understanding, which never rose above the comprehension of the crowd—he never desired to veil his satire in subtleties, nor hide it in thoughts far-fetched and profound. The venom of his shafts was visible—nor did he seek to conceal his poisonous draughts in a gilded cup. All was plain and clear—and all was bitter and biting. The measures of the tories, and the plans of the whigs, were to him a daily source of subsistence and satire. He lived like a caterpillar on the green-leaf of reputation; and loved to crawl over those whom Fame had marked out as her own. He never desisted from either shame or remorse—public distress was his gain—private misery brought him bread, and out of the bickerings of men for place and power he had his per-centage. Our ridiculous expeditions, our modes of raising money, our fears, our courage, our love of liberty, and our hatred of France, were to him so many sources of emolument. He lifted a tax off all public—and even made Napoleon contribute."

"A powerful draughtsman, a master of the art of engraving, and possessing a vigorous imagination, he had but little to fear from Sayer. He was really an excellent engraver in line, dot, and aquatint, but these talents are all merged in his fame as a caricaturist, in which walk of art he still remains unrivalled."

"There have been artists before you who dabbled in caricature. There have also been caricaturists who dabbled in art. But you, sir, are the first considerable artist who made caricature his full-time occupation... You were the first to realise that the principles of art, selection and emphasis, could be adjusted to a new balance in a new type of draughtsmanship, neither the representation of reality nor mere grotesque invention, but the discriminating exaggeration of what is true... If Hogarth was the grandfather of the modern cartoon, YOU were its father."

"You appear not to know that he was a reluctant ally of the tory faction, and that his heart was always on the side of whiggism and liberty. He did not "desert to the tories," but was pressed into their service, by an unfortunate concurrence of circumstances. He had unluckily got himself into the Ecclesiastical Court for producing a politico-scriptural caricature, which he had entitled "The Wise Men's Offspring:" and while threatened on the one hand with pains and penalties, he was bribed by the Pitt party on the other with the offer of a pension, to be accompanied by absolution and remission of sins both political and religious, and by the cessation of the pending prosecution. Thus situated, he found, or fancied himself obliged to capitulate."

"Hogarth's honesty of purpose was as conspicuous in an earlier time, and we fancy that Gillray would have been far more successful and more powerful but for that unhappy bribe, which tuned the whole course of his humour into an unnatural channel."

"Gillray was morose and angry, a sort of savagely perverted moralist, to whom mankind was hateful."

"Gillray was ballsier than Hogarth. He was so successful that he affected the Government's standing and kept the Jacobins at bay. Nobody could do that now. The nearest we get to it is Spitting Image or Rory Bremner. But it's essential to keep on trying, and in Gillray the savagery of the attack is what counts. I love his obsession with vulgar bodily functions. Everyone thought he was strange – he never justified himself. I find that interesting. My choice is the Toadstall upon a Dung-hill, where Pitt grows out of royalty. It's a good double swipe, at a politician and a monarch."

"I cannot think of anyone with whom I should have had more rows—crusted old reactionary that he was... Gillray was a supreme caricaturist of personalities, with a clear sense of the cartoonist's function, which was, of course, to disturb complacency."

"He never appeared to me to be that lover of low society and gross mirth which you describe; but silent and reserved he was, till he discovered that his companions upon any given occasion were frank and liberal. His own patriotism and free principles then began to peer forth, and occasionally rose to enthusiastic fervour. I remember being assembled with him and a few other artists, most of whom are since dead, at the Prince of Wales coffee-house (then newly opened): the purpose of the meeting was to form a fund and institute a Society for the relief of decayed artists, &c., where Gillray discovered no deficiency either of good sense, benevolent feeling, or gentlemanly propriety of conduct; yet there was an eccentricity about him, which being no unusual concomitant of genius, was felt to be agreeable. After business and supper were concluded, we drank toasts; and when it came to his turn to name a public character, the Juvenal of caricature surprised those who knew him but superficially, by proposing that we should drink David! (the French painter). He was by this time a little elated, having become pleased with his associates, and having drowned his reserve in the flow of soul, and, kneeling reverentially upon his chair as he pronounced the name of the (supposed) first painter and patriot in Europe, he expressed a wish that the rest of the company would do the same. This was after our artist had transferred his nominal allegiance to the Pitt party;—before David had been guilty of the worst of those revolutionary atrocities which stain his character, and while his artistical reputation in this country stood much higher than since we have had ocular opportunity of appreciation his professional merit."

"In London, the red route is road marking used to indicate bus priority area. I found myself In East London at the turn of the 2000s. The East End was lively and diverse back then, and I enjoyed wandering there. I was particularly impressed by the railway bridges over the streets - a piece of iron crossed residential quarters whimsically. Car repair shops, pubs, warehouses and shops were built into space under a flyover. Another artery cutting off the East End from the rest of the city was the Regent Canal. I photographed two- and three-story residential blocks, bridges, parked red cars and roaring double-deckers. There was much red: buses, hydrants, telephone booths, bridge trusses and road markings."

"The plasticity idea «form draws form», expressed by Vladimir Sterligov in the late 60s of the last century, is being honed in lithographs. This is an attempt to find inseparable plastic penetrations of depicted forms. An attempt to ensure that one detail of a drawing becomes part of another. Flowing into each other, they should make a strong visual composition. The main task is to create a single graphic organism, when a drawn object gives life to another one. In this case, there is an interpenetration of silhouettes, where the foreground, middle ground, and background become a single whole. Light, transparent drawing, on the one hand, and a found plastic construction, on the other hand, the way I see it, complement each other, making a graphic sheet both airy and convincing."

"Order and randomness arise under the influence of the creative act in the context of a certain approach to forming and are the fundamental principles of creation that have an ontological basis in art. The metaphor of letter — Littera, architectural integration and synergy of metaphors — columns of a chaotic set of a ghost city, a carrier of randomness information code. Typographic metropolis — Babylonian Chaos of letters spontaneous arrangement like a thesis and antithesis of harmony and order of newspaper columns in the form of eternal city. Randomness is divine, because it is not made by hands, it is not subject to man, unlike order. There is something mystical about the randomness code. The idea of the involvement of ontological “order” and “randomness” in forming is a universal approach to creative act. Thus, the "effect of randomness" is created in the process of creative experiment with printed form and printing. The categories of "order" and "randomness", being the basis of the beautiful, manifest themselves as aesthetic paradigms of the unique author's printing and visual art."

"Artist in big city / City is a huge anthill, in which the artist, overcoming obstacles and dangers, resists temptations and rushes towards his success against time. My subjective city is a punk quest in the format of a classic board game. Having thrown the dice, you can try your fate: reach the finish line or get stuck in the labyrinth of the octopus city forever."

"Сity is a fertile theme for any artist. And the city I live in is especially good. Here you can find plots to suit any taste: if you want you can paint and draw its grand views of beautiful architecture, rivers, canals, bridges ... Or well courtyards, firewalls, which I have not seen in other cities and towns. And a variety of subjects — on the streets, in cafes, bars. In the title of my graphic sheet I used a quote from an interview with a famous poet, friend of Joseph Brodsky, former Leningrader Yevgeny Rein: “What is a glass of vodka? It liberates the soul ...."

"I’m entering the hall staircase, going up the stairs. Graffiti on the walls, windows with remnants of Art Nouveau stained-glass. The elevator cab door slammed and a shadow of a man standing on the landing dashed upstairs. He is wearing a trench coat with his collar turned up and a hat drawn over his eyes to hide his facial features. Spying, obviously an agent. I’m going to the poet Viktor K., I’ve brought him a banned book published abroad. Viktor has long been under suspicion of the "authorities" for underground press. I see: the door of a communal apartment is swinging open half a flight above and two dwellers, who have grappled in a fight, are tumbling out of it screaming and swearing. The agent is not reacting to what is happening, he’s got a different task. He is standing motionless, one hand in his pocket, with a bright yellow glove on the other one. These impressions from fifty years ago gave an impetus to create a lithograph. For half a century, the interior of the hall staircase and the stairs have not changed, but now the surveillance over the house and its inhabitants is carried out by video cameras instead of agents. Warning, video surveillance, the signs on the house walls say obligingly."

"A white sheet of time, on which the sunlit city appears as a relief imprint. Thick golden air with poplar fluff. Time has stood still. House number 29a. Yellow square of the wall. Small square of the window, which is cramped. You are flying away beyond the fence of the Childhood House on the wings of a memory bird. Grass-blade days are woven into a tangle of years that rolls along the road of memory. A unique, vivid image of the home town from the distant childhood, the Home from which you flew away forever. The town of my childhood."

"The music I play is not really the music I would like to play”, my favorite saxophonist Art Pepper once said. The lithograph, which I began to do for the "City" project, was completely different in my idea, but for technical reasons beyond my control, I had to make a compromise, leaving the original scheme, having decorated it with a rainbow of night city advertisements giving hope that everything will be mighty fine in the future, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night will be Saturday night. In "Edichka" Limonov wrote literally the following (I am quoting from memory): The money that old dotards like Dali, Shagal, Miro have from selling their pictures is not enough, to make even more money they put their lithograph masterpieces on sale in thousands of copies. Bearing in mind the financial aspect, I would object to Kharkiv native. You might clench eggs between your legs failing to fry them on a hot stone. Lithography is not just a multiplying technique; the final product has a flavor that can not be achieved with a conventional frying pan. I demonstrated this together with the printer, although I deviated from the original conception."

"Sheet from the album “Forms of the Future”, based on the texts of Russian self-taught scientist and visionary Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who recreated a project of an ideal society and city of the future in his books. The left side of the sheet is devoted to selection of ideal city residents for dormitories, the right side is a description of a high-tech house equipped with an autonomous life support system. Rewriting the scientist’s texts by hand, the artist as if reincarnates into him, trying to grasp and hear the cosmic flows that controlled Tsiolkovsky."

"She belong[ed] to a category of artists who are fully and consistently producing work, incredibly rare for a female artist [of her generation]."

"Paula lived for her work."

"I see [her influence] in the work of most female painters – particularly in artists who engage with the body – and with women's position in the world, In fact, I would struggle to think of a significant painter, particularly in Britain, where I can't see a connection to Paula."

"Paula takes you to uncomfortable places – Jung called it the Shadow. They are taboo areas, where love and cruelty touch each other"

"English Quotations"

"Paula Rego is a great artist, and an underrated artist... whether she's tackling war, or 'honour' killing, nothing escapes her awareness of the challenges of life… she's shocking sometimes, and exciting – but that's one of the roles of art."

"'These women are not victims' – Paula Rego's extraordinary Abortion series (Thursday 9 June 2022 07.00 BST)"

"Each and every one is subtly disturbing without it being clear quite why."

"Her studio, in Kentish Town, north London, was a prop room, a wardrobe, a rehearsal stage, a theatre—her playroom. ... Rego also drew on family and friends to enact her scenarios: her daughters, her grand-daughters, and her partner, the writer and publisher Anthony Rudolf. Rudolf has said that he realised early on that if he wanted to have time with Paula, the only way was to sit for her. He appears in many roles, sometimes cross-dressed, at other times naked as Gregor Samsa in the painting Metamorphosis, or the dead Christ in the mysteries of the life of the Virgin, which Rego painted for the president of Portugal in 2002. When no model fitted her vision, she made “dollies”, stuffed, bulbous puppets that she did not disguise, and who like the sinister Pillowman, haunt her most troubling scenes."

"The vigour of her hand and brilliance of her technique meant she could realise singular, wondrous and disturbing scenes rising in her mind’s eye with unflinching honesty; these images are ambivalent, often perverse, mischievous, with undercurrents of danger. She generated hundreds of entirely original scenarios that are often baffling yet go straight through to the nervous system of the viewer, as Francis Bacon (whom she admired), wished to do. She called her style "beautiful grotesque", a phrase that catches the contradictions in her images, but does not convey the strength and strangeness of the bodies she painted, the turbulent force of her compositions and the sympathy she shows in her depiction of emotions and ordeals."

"The works create new poetry, which involuntarily rivals with habitual esthetic stereotypes. For instance, we accept as a common notion to worship joyously the classic beauty of St. Petersburg, its harmony and stately grandeur. This exposition does have variations of that sort. But observe “Night Nevsky” by Parygin. Rough to the touch texture, dark abyss. In the darkness urgent lights explode. They bring forth immediate spiritual angst. One does not regard the regal magnificence of the urban landscape-it is neither cast aside, nor left behind the curtains, as dramatism of modern perception takes over. One regards not a city museum for curious crowds, but one beholds the habitat of our days where we seek, love, fight, suffer. That art defines perception."

"His works show high culture, erudition and taste, it is hard to favor any particular piece. Moreover, the artist prefers options on a particular plastic theme, as he himself puts it. He uses various in techniques, and revisits it in different periods of creativity. He believes his plastic theme conveys the plastic state. The state arises and manifests in very different ways, yet retaining its basic sign. Perhaps this art form blends both the sign and its notion."

"A big city is always partially a Babylon, sometimes an eclectic mixture, juxtaposing contrasts, dialogue and conflict all at once. It is a Unity achieved thanks to our differences. It contains both old and new things. A city without development is dull. A city deprived of its historical context is uninteresting. Moreover, a city without clear urban planning ideas is a toneless backwater."

"Megalopolises. Plans. Building plans. Yellow. Street lineature. Labyrinths of yards. Pigeon flocks. Green. The geometry of squares. Dead zones. Subway burrows. Red. Meaning signs. Dim light. Noise. Voids. Black. The work transformed itself in the process of manifestation. The pictograms appeared almost by accident — naturally. Text: Parking / Diner / Bird / Airport / Disabled / Attention / Parking / Motel / Bar / Attention / Cat / Bird / Diner ... Recoded, literally: art, like all modern culture, lost its clear value criteria, meaning and purpose of movement long ago. City. One of the main problems of modern society is the almost complete loss of the ability to self-cognition and self-identification. City. Civilization is degrading. The agony still continues, maintaining the illusion of life, but it does not change the merits of the question. City."

"...from my point of view, a very serious, worthy and professional exhibition. It's nice that there is a solid culture of color, ...there is a persistent desire to express their feelings of life, their artistic vision."

"Another important direction in contemporary Russian artists’ books, with many precedents set by the Futurists, is the fusion of poetic and artistic talent of artist-authors blessed with Doppelbegabung. The intimate relationships between text and image is enhanced when author and artist are one and the same person and engage in an inter-art discourse that leads to creations that are truly unified works of art. An artist who achieved equal mastery in more than one medium and made different arts merge in his personality was no doubt Alexey Parygin. His poetic collections <...> represent an attempt to synthesize text and plastic figurative form in books where literary and visual languages are calculated to have a simultaneous effect on the reader/viewer. The work of Alexey Parygin have common features that are not accidental as the books were created at more or less the same time."

"Vasarely Go Home!"

"After being expelled from the Academy, Major worked one year unskilled labourer in the Orion Factory."

"János Major started to take photographs in cemeteries at the beginning of the sixties most probably around 1962-63."