There’s no underestimating the power in a human face -- and the proof is in the current exhibition The Power off Portraiture: Selections from the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Met. Boasting over 1 million examples from around 1400 to the present, the possibilities are endless.
Word’s collective of talented printmakers was obviously inspired by Elizabeth Catlett’s Sharecropper (1952). Through a combination of aquatint, etching and relief, her subject confronts the viewer in all her straight-on simplicity, with no apology. To this reviewer’s eye, it is the strongest entry in a standout show.
Willie Cole’s monumental works further extend the boundaries of the genre, using steam irons and ironing boards to point to histories of unrecognized labor. Who would have thought that a simple ironing board could carry such significance? But Cole’s do —they manage to become a universal icon of servitude. Other works that surprise the eye can be found in a group of witchcraft scenes by such giants as Giovanni David, Francisco de Goya, Eugène Delacroix, and Odilon Redon, tracing the evolution of nightmare imagery. Delacroix’s lithograph of Macbeth Consulting the Witches (1825) is a prime example.
Finally, nature itself demands attention in a series of landscapes that demonstrate the appeal of the forest as a vehicle for the study of light and color. One can only surmise that such exhibits will encourage viewers to add the power of printmaking to their wish lists.
