Label Text:
Here, Gideon Bok depicts the interior of Wingate Studio, a traditional intaglio print workshop in Hinsdale, New Hampshire. The artist features the studio's celebrated French printing press in the foreground while rendering other printers, tools, and working figures in ethereal outlines. The effect is one of weightless transparency--and coherent movement. The center figure, wearing a royal blue shirt, is likely the artist himself; the guitar at the right indicates Bok's longstanding interest in incorporating musical elements into his visual art. Adopting both traditional and comparatively modern printmaking techniques, Bok's composition not only vividly demonstrates the creative process of this work, but also documents the time-honored collaboration between artists and printers throughout the history of printmaking.
Written by Dian Yu, Class of 2016
In this color etching, the painter, Gideon Bok depicted one of his favorite subjects: the artist’s studio. The composition reveals multiple views within the weathered, light-filled interior of Wingate Studio, a converted New England dairy barn in Hinsdale, New Hampshire. No Sleep evokes the artist’s experience over several days spent incising and printing multiple plates used to create the layered, ethereal effects seen here. Whereas Bok rendered the Wingate printers, tools, and even a guitar (to the right) with thin, delicate lines to achieve degrees of transparency, he depicted the studio’s prized, historic French press with deeper incisions. The center figure, working a copper plate, is likely the artist himself. Bok rendered his royal-blue shirt in aquatint, a comparatively modern printmaking technique, while the etching on the left wall recalls the work of old masters, such as Rembrandt. Bok’s composition, then, alludes not only to the time the artist took to create it, but also, more broadly, to the evolution in printing techniques over four centuries.
Written by Angela Pratt, Class of 2011
Tags:
furniture; interiors; machines; perspective; figures; tools Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+2009.23 |
