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The Art of The Relief-Block Print
Stephen Alcorn
For over three decades I've continued to relish the challenges of the relief-block print. Indeed, my longstanding investigation of the linocut has become an odyssey, a journey in which each fresh discovery led to new frontiers, and the territory remaining to be explored is apparently boundless.
At the same time, the relief-black print is a medium fraught with imposing constraints. Paradoxically, these constraints have forced me to be more resourceful and inventive as an artist. As poet Richard Wilbur remarked, noting that the limitations imposed by poetic form can produce powerful imagery, "The strength of the genie comes of his being confined in a bottle." An often misunderstood yet fascinating medium—one that is at once age-old and modern—it is my printmaking "outlet" of choice. I have embraced its virtues, as well as its inconveniences, enthusiastically—one might even say obsessively.
People are often surprised to learn that most of the polychrome, multi-layered images that grace my studio floor and walls are rendered in linocut—a medium that has traditionally been considered rudimentary, confining, monochromatic, aesthetically primitive—ultimately incapable of the technical complexity that characterizes much of my printmaking.
The material/linoleum I use is composed of compressed wood fibers and cork with resinous and oily additives, and is made in Holland expressly for relief-block printmaking. Not to be confused with the relatively soft, easy-to-cut variety that is often used in grammar school art classes as a tool to demonstrate the technique of relief-block printing (a tradition often associated with the production of simple, straightforward drawings, which, having been incised into the base material, often appear in the negative as white lines on a dark ground), this particular material offers a greater range of aesthetic possibilities than the conventional, flooring linoleum of old—hence my inclination to use the broader, less confining term "relief-block print" when identifying the technique I employ. Alas, this product is no longer manufactured. Fortunately for me, I had the foresight to acquire 2 full rolls of the material, each one weighing close to a ton, back in 1987. A precious resource, if ever there was one!
People tend to assume that linoleum is soft and easy to cut, but the particular material I use is, in fact, extremely hard and brittle, especially in cold weather. Possessing a smoothness worthy of polished hardwood, the density and hardness of this material permits me to achieve a degree of refinement more often associated with nineteenth-century wood engraving than with the primitivism of children's art. Linoleum does not possess a grain of its own; as a result, a clean jet black may be readily achieved; lines may be cut equally smoothly (and uniformly) in any direction. The challenge, therefore, lies in trying to bring a barren, nondescript, uncut surface to life by the deliberate creation of texture. In this respect, linoleum is an unforgiving material. The prominent grain in a pine woodcut, for example, may serve to distract the viewer from shortcomings in one's draftsmanship. But there's an inevitable crystalline clarity to every mark you make in a linocut; there is no way of alleviating what is poorly drawn. Finally, what you cut away can't be put back. But it's precisely these qualities that give a good linocut its particular vigor and appeal.
ABSORPTION OF THE PAST AND EARLY APPRENTICESHIP (1971-1980)
I first became enamored of the relief-block print in the early seventies at the Istituto Statale d'Arte in Florence, Italy, where my father, the distinguished designer John Alcorn (1935-1992) moved our family when I was twelve.
There I embraced a multitude of printmaking techniques, including several forms of etching (soft ground, sugar lift, acquatint, and drypoint), lithography, relief-block printmaking in general, and the linocut in particular. After my return to the U.S. in 1977, I continued my studies first at Cooper Union and later at SUNY Purchase, which I found more sympathetic to my interest in learning such basic traditional skills as draftsmanship and figure drawing. I did a lot in the way of independent study, too, spending literally sleepless nights faithfully copying paintings by such old masters as Velasquez, Tiepolo, Goya, and Rembrandt in a kind of informal apprenticeship.
Fig. 1 Copy of Velazquez's Crowning of Bacchus; oil on canvas |
Fig. 2 Copy of painting by Tiepolo; oil on canvas |
Fig. 3 Copy of portrait by Velasquez; oil on panel |
Fig. 4 Copy of portrait by De la Tour; oil on panel |
BLACK IS NOBLE
Early portraiture (1978-1980)
At SUNY Purchase I continued my exploration of the relief-block print, and inspired both by a book of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian folk art, and by SUNY's new, streamlined printing facilities, I began a series of forty-five 10 in. x 13 in. black-and-white linocut portraits of famous artist titled "Ritratti degli Artisti più Celebri." Published by Herb Lubalin in 1980 in U&LC, these prints caught the attention of Random House art director Bob Scudellari, who asked me to do the covers and frontispieces for a new Modern Library series of literary classics.
Fig. 5 Tiziano |
Fig. 6 Botticelli |
Fig. 7 Giotto |
Fig. 8 Michelangelo |
• Ritratti degli Artisti Più Celebri
This project gave me the opportunity to solve with linocuts a whole new range of problems relating to
storytelling, symbolism, and the creation of imagery that can be appreciated on a multitude of levels. I found that the imagery for each new group of six or eight titles were imbued with a different sensibility
from those in the group of titles I had done six months earlier. In a portrait of Herman Hesse that dates from this period, for example, the linear textures, in comparison with those of earlier portraits, have been
expanded, refined, and broken into cubist planes that give what might have been a static head pose a sense of vigor and emotional tension. Although deliberately formal in composition, and often framed with
decorative borders, I always seek to imbue my images with vitality and thoroughly contemporary sensibility even when they draw on the folk art or cubist sources that are fundamental to my inspiration.
Fig. 9 Hermann Hesse |
Fig. 10 William Faulkner |
Fig. 11 Lady Chatterley's Lover |
Fig. 12 Man's Hope |
• Literary portraits
SPONTANEITY
Experimenting with Engraving Tools
In early 1984, to avoid lapsing into formulaic mannerisms and being confined by the strictly literary
nature of the black-and-white subject matter I had been treating at that point in time, I began to strive for a more spontaneous, flexible approach in my work. Rather than starting with a precise, predetermined
drawing, which would be subsequently transferred to the block, I began to use the tools as if they were brushes, resolving the drawing as I was cutting directly into the block, and without the aid of tight preliminary sketches.
Fig 13 Engraving tools |
Fig. 14 The Awakening |
Fig. 15 Lord Byron |
Fig. 16 Moll Flanders |
• Interpretations of literary classics
COLOR
The substance of my initial experiments with color was a series of animal prints begun in 1987, which I
originally conceived as a bestiary alphabet or collection of verse. The first images were rendered in just two-color—a pale background and a darker tone for the principal subject. Gradually, the color concepts
became more complex, and borders were added. I suspect that the borders, as well as the intricate, stylized textures of feathers, fur, and foliage that lend the prints vibrancy, derive in part from the crafts
tradition—the frame carving and inlaid furniture making—that I was exposed to in the Florentine neighborhood where I lived as a boy.
Fig. 17 La Città Ideale;
4-color, relief-block print; a.p.
The illustrations that adorn the book entitled Hoofbeats, Claws & Rippled Fins: Creature Poems were
selected from the aforementioned series of animal prints that I had for my own satisfaction. The stimulus came from new surroundings. In 1986 I moved from Florence, Italy—an ancient, bustling city—to
Cambridge, New York, a nineteenth-century village in the country north of Albany. Amid gentle, rolling hills and noble farmhouses, I was drawn to Nature, and to her greatest wonder, the Animal Kingdom. To
my delight, I discovered that modern life does not diminish Nature's charm. The timeless beauty of the Animal Kingdom, and our folklore and mythology about it, spoke vividly to my imagination. It was this
return to Nature that inspired me to introduce color into my work as a printmaker.
Working from memory—and tapping into the recesses of my mind—I sought to give concrete form to the
most fanciful notions of a rooster, a cow, a frog. What resulted is a series of animal icons.
Looking back, I see that the series embodies a history of experimentation in relief-block printmaking
technique. It seems appropriate that the infinite variety of the Animal Kingdom is matched by my ceaseless experimentation in ways to depict it.
The greatest challenge was to match prints and poems. Milton Glaser showed me the way. Contrary to conventional wisdom, he explained, images need not follow a text. Just as words may inspire images,
so, too, may images inspire words. He spoke from experience. Cats & Bats & Things with Wings (Atheneum, 1965)—a book of Glaser's images "illustrated" by Conrad Aiken's poems—is an exquisite
example of how art may be a catalyst for original poetry. In this spirit, Lee Bennett Hopkins brought my work to twelve poets who have turned a dream into reality. I thank them all.
Fig. 18 The Sacred Cow;
2-color relief block print |
Fig. 19 The Proud Porcupine; |
Fig. 20 Kiss Me, I'm Really A Prince!;
2-color relief-block print |
Fig. 21 The Great Yak;
2-color relief-block print |
• Il Bestiario Straordinario
FULL COLOR
In the late eighties I found myself striving to achieve within the realm of printmaking the kind of sensuous
gratification that, as a painter, I had always derived from the manipulation of color, the glorious gradations of tone, the use of different brushes and palette knives. In time, I found I could achieve
analogous effects in my relief-block prints by manipulating the use of the inks and rollers, and by using the cutting tools in such a way as to create the illusion of tonal gradation.
Fig. 22 The Happy Reaper;
polychrome relief-block print |
Fig. 23 The Wishing Well;
polychrome relief-block print |
LIGHT OVER DARK
My satisfaction with the gentle luminosity of his bestiary drove me in 1989 to experiment with light over
dark relief-block printing. The delicate quality of the dark lines and the translucent quality of the overall surface of these prints is achieved by reversing the traditional cutting and printing technique and by
printing the principal block in a semi-opaque white over a previously printed dark background. By cutting away areas of the dark background, the white of the paper is permitted to function as highlight.
Fig. 24 Portrait of Jack Kerouac;
light over dark, relief-block print |
Fig. 25 Portrait of Frederick Douglass;
light over dark, relief-block print |
Fig. 26 Portrait of Gioacchino Rossini;
light over dark, relief-block print |
Fig. 27 Portrait of Sabina Reading;
light over dark relief-block print |
Fig. 28 The Finish Line;
light over dark, relief-block print |
REDUCTION PRINTS
Deciding to push the "Light Over Dark" procedure even further, in the fall of 1990, I began producing my
first "Reduction Prints." Initially, I was guided by the example of my only mentor in this particular endeavor, Picasso, who in his eighties, because he was impatient with cutting separate blocks for each
color of polychrome print and with the difficulties of registration, invented the technique of creating a multi-colored print from a single block. What this involves is cutting the block, printing it, cleaning it,
then cutting away a little more, then printing it again, then cutting away a little more. Each time the image is printed, the newly cut surface reveals portions of the previously printed block, and the image
takes more complete shape. Paradoxically, you end up with a block that is completely carved away, and that, therefore, can never be reprinted.
Picasso's linocuts were generally limited to three or four colors and inked to render a uniform opacity so that the resulting images produce flat, graphic, and dramatic visual effects that are closer to poster art
than oil paintings. I, on the other hand, still nourishing my appetite for lush color, have sought to push Picasso's invention in new directions. Producing small editions of twelve to twenty-four, and striving for a
delicacy, translucency, and gentle gradation of tone that would seem to be antithetical to the capacities of relief-block printing, I alternate transparent, glossy, and opaque surfaces, sometimes using as many
as twelve colors. I am apt to exploit painterly effects even further by printing the white highlights with a density of pigment that produces a rich impasto effect. Unlike Picasso, whose linocut images were
produced by journeyman printers under his instruction, I am thoroughly involved in every aspect of my printmaking. Craft as much as art, it is labor intensive work that offers a certain amount of physical
resistance giving me time, as I draw, cut, ink, and print the bright layers of my images, to ponder what has gone into their makeup. Of course, I have no way of knowing, but I have a sense that Picasso
regretted terribly not having discovered this particular medium fifty years earlier. In any event, I feel as if I were picking up where he left off.
Fig. 29 Feeding Time
reduction print; finite edition of 10 |
Fig. 30 Ludovica at age 3;
reduction print; finite edition of 10 |
Fig. 31 Portrait of Sabina (seated in wing chair);
reduction print; finite edition of 12 |
Fig. 32 Portrait of Lucrezia at age 5;
reduction print; finite edition of 18 |
Fig. 33 Portrait of Walt Whitman;
reduction print; finite edition of 12 |
RAINBOW INKINGS
My early experimentation led, in 1990, to my experimentation with "rainbow inkings," a technique more
often a component of my simple, one-block prints, one in which different colors are blended with a palette knife on a marble slab, picked up on a roller, and printed in one pass through the press, creating
an unexpected, sensuous spectrum.
Fig. 34 14 Birds;
2-block relief-block print, with rainbow inking
STYLE
Despite my fascination with exploring the outer limits of the linocut, I avoid allowing my own motives to
prejudice my commissioned work, preferring to let subject matter determine style. For the dust jacket of a book titled Black Heroes of the American Revolution, for example, I was able to indulge a fondness for
idiosyncratic liberties of scale in a six-color reduction print that appropriately recalls the naiveté of eighteenth-century American folk art.
Fig. 35 Black Hero of The American Revolution;
reduction print; finite edition of 18
But in another assignment, the handsome, heavily illustrated anthologies Abraham Lincoln: In His Own Words, and Frederick Douglass: In His Own Words, I cheerfully returned to the simplicity of black and
white, calling into play its capacity not only for detail and faithful representation but also for stylization and dramatic abstraction.
Fig. 36 The Martyrdom of Abraham Lincoln;
b&w relief-block print |
Fig. 37 Frederick Douglass;
b&w relief-block print |
• Frederick Douglass & His Times
• Abraham Lincoln & His Times
CULMINATION
A combination of virtually all of the techniques I've referred to may be viewed within the context of the portraits entitled Modern Music Masters. This series constitutes a culmination of over a quarter-century of experimentation with relief-block printmaking.
A selection of these portraits will be published by Hyperion in the Fall 2003.
• Modern Music Masters series
Creating a black-and-white relief-block print:
First I make sketch upon which to base my image. I then transfer the sketch using a larger sheet of gray carbon paper. After the sketch has been carefully transcribed, I sometimes flesh out the drawing with diluted ink.
Fig. 38 |
Fig. 39 |
At this point I can begin to cut and engrave the surface in accordance with the requirements of the particular image at hand, and always thinking in reverse.
Fig. 40 |
Fig. 41 |
As I near the completion of the engraving process, I ink the block, using an oil-based, black ink. I pass the inked block through my printing press.
Fig. 42 |
Fig. 43 |
Finally, I place the proof to dry on my drying rack. The print dries by oxidation, over time (this takes c. 2 days).
Fig. 44
The final image (below) is one of twenty-four images recently created specially for the book tentatively titled The Food Gardener's Guide to Growing Organic by Tanya Denckla and soon-to-be published by Storey Publishing, LLC 210 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA. •
Fig. 45 Sunburst;
b& w relief-block print
• Graphic series for The Food Gardener's Guide to Growing Organic
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About the Artist:
Though born in the U.S., Stephen Alcorn spent his formative years in Florence, Italy. It was there that he attended the Istituto Statale d'Arte, an experience that left an indelible impression upon him and infused his work with a passion for bold technical experimentation in a wide range of mediums; it was there that he also met his future wife, botanical artist Sabina Fascione.
Stephen Alcorn has interpreted a great variety of themes, ranging from the historical and the allegorical, to the literary and the intimate, often bridging the gap between the applied arts and the fine arts. His award winning portraiture and illustration have been the subject of numerous feature magazine articles appearing in Print, Graphis, U&LC, Linea Grafica, Grafica & Disegno, Prometeo, and Abitare, and his work hangs in numerous private and permanent collections, both in the United States and in Europe. Twice the recipient of The Carter G. Woodson Book Award, Stephen is the illustrator of several notable books, including Let it Shine!, a Coretta Scott King Award Honor Book.
Since 1986 Stephen Alcorn has lived and worked in the village of Cambridge, New York, with his wife, their two daughters, and adopted greyhound, Prince. In 1993, The Alcorn Studio & Gallery, a multifaceted workshop featuring rotating exhibits of the artists' painting, printmaking, and art of the book activities, opened to the general public. When Stephen is not drawing, making prints and/or painting, he may be found composing and performing ballads on his beloved Gibson guitar.
Children's books illustrated by Stephen Alcorn include:
• The Owl by David Mamet and Lindsey Crouse (The Kipling Press)
• Rembrandt's Beret, or The Painter's Crown by John H. Alcorn (Tambourine Books/William Morrow)
• Abraham Lincoln: In His Own Words edited by Milton Meltzer (Harcourt)
• Frederick Douglass: In His Own Words edited by Milton Meltzer (Harcourt)
• Langston Hughes: An Illustrated Edition by Milton Meltzer (The Millbrook Press)
• I, Too, Sing America: Three Centuries of African American Poetry by Catherine Clinton (Houghton Mifflin)
• My America by Lee Bennett Hopkins, anthologist (Simon & Schuster)
• Let It Shine! by Andrea Davis Pinkney (Harcourt)
• The Geography of Hope by Jim Haskins (The Millbrook Press)
• Martyrs To Madness by Ted Gottfried (The Millbrook Press)
• Nazi Germany: The Face of Tyranny by Ted Gottfried (The Millbrook Press)
• Heroes of the Holocaust by Ted Gottfried (The Millbrook Press)
• The Children of the Holocaust by Ted Gottfried (The Millbrook Press)
• Displaced Persons by Ted Gottfried (The Millbrook Press)
• Deniers of The Holocaust by Ted Gottfried (The Millbrook Press)
• Broken Feather by Verla Kay (G.P. Putnam's Sons)
• Hoofbeats, Claws, and Rippled Fins: Creature Poems edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins (HarperCollins)
A Poem of Her Own, by Catherine Clinton, Anthologist (Harry N. Abrams)
• Home To Me by Lee Bennett Hopkins, Anthologist (Orchard)
• The Book of Rock Stars: 24 Icons Who Shine Through History edited by Kathleen Krull (to be published by Hyperion, fall 2003)
• Volumes forming La Collana d'Oro, a collection of children's classics; designed and illustrated by Stephen Alcorn; Arnoldo Mondadori Editore; Verona, Italy.
Foreign editions:
• I Viaggi di Gulliver di Jonathan Swift
• Il Piccolo Lord Fauntleroy di Frances Hodgson Burnett
• Il Giro del Mondo in 80 Giorni di Jules Verne
• Le Avventure di Tom Sawyer di Mark Twain
• Cuore di Edmondo de Amicis
• Pinocchio di Carlo Collodi
• Il Richiamo della Foresta di Jack London
• Oliver Twist di Charles Dickens
• Piccole Donne di Luisa May Alcott
• Alice di Lewis Carroll
• Peter Pan di J. M. Barrie
• L'Isola del Tesoro di Robert Lewis Stevenson.
A complete biography of Stephen Alcorn as well as a virtual gallery featuring the work of Stephen and Sabine Fascione Alcorn can be seen on the Alcorn Studio & Gallery website at www.alcorngallery.com.
In the Artist's Studio:
Jeff Smith, May 2006
Ann Grifalconi, December 2005
Iza Trapani, August 2005
Robert Sabuda, October 2003
Mark Teague, August 2003
Stephen Alcorn, April 2003
David Wisniewski, November 2002
Paul Zelinsky, August 2002
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