The Skinny: Monotyping
Happy Monday! Did anyone do anything productive today? Work was busy, but since getting home I've gotten nothing accomplished. I've been bookmarking articles from Vox, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic about the Panama Papers all day. One article described it as the world's first glimpse into the shadowy dealings of the world's most wealthy and influential movers and shakers (and how they hide their billions and billions of dollars). Now I need someone to properly explain to me exactly how offshore companies and shell corporations operate.
Breaking news aside, I also stumbled across an article about Degas! Some of his work will be in the Museum of Modern Art this season with an emphasis on his monotyping technique with oil paints. A friend of mine is a huge art history buff and usually comes with me to big exhibits so I won't wander around completely lost and confused. She had explained monotyping to me briefly when we last saw each other in December.
Monotyping is a form of printmaking in which paint is applied to a smooth, non-absorbent surface. This surface is oftentimes glass or a copper etching plate. An image is created on this matrix and transferred onto a sheet of paper by pressing the two together. Monotypes can be created by inking the entire plate and then removing ink to create a negative image or oil-based paint can be applied to the plate (as in Degas' work).
Looking at some of his finest works, it's hard to believe that delicate and refined images that came from what I can only assume were incredibly impressionistic and spur-of-the-moment plates. The video above delves into the two different techniques that I mentioned. It also explores why monotype is such a unique (and oft forgotten) technique. The mere act of pressing the print onto paper changes it in some ways that the artist cannot predict or control. The nature of this medium seems to confer some ethereal and transient quality that perhaps describes how Degas captured the essence of a moment in time before it inevitably broke away.
So what's on the docket for this week? Drinks to catch up with an old coworker tomorrow night in Arlington, dinner and the new Batman/Superman movie on Wednesday, tickets to the Phillips After 5 event on Thursday, and up bright & early on Friday morning to drive to Cleveland :)
