Label Text:
Arthur B. Davies’s work stands at the intersection of modern abstraction and classical tradition. Davies often situated nude figures against a natural backdrop, treating the figure as Haskell did the landscape: as an arrangement of pictorial elements assembled as an idealized, rather than a narrative, whole.
Although Davies regarded himself primarily as a painter, he turned to printmaking for intellectual and technical experimentation. Throughout his career, Davies employed the most capable, nationally renowned printers of each era. By engaging Haskell from 1918 to 1920 to print a series of intaglio plates, Davies acknowledged the younger artist’s growing reputation as a distinguished printer and print theorist. In Haskell, Davies found a sympathetic printer who shared his aesthetic goals, and possessed the skill to assist in the development and production of his most successful plates.
The two prints displayed here document the earliest stages of developing a plate. Angled Beauty illustrates a typical first stage of a Davies print, in which the flowing lines of the preparatory drawing remain visible. Haskell’s printing accurately records the subtleties of Davies’s delicate shading. Snow Crystals introduces aquatint tones, which continue a cursory chalk drawing by simulating fine washes. In this first trial proof, Haskell sought to replicate the glittering contrasts of Davies’s composition by contrasting the deep black and soft gray tones of the aquatint with the pristine passages of white paper.
KG, How He Was to His Talents exhibition, March 24, 2011-August 7, 2011
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+1950.12 |
