SINGULAR IMPRESSIONS

Book excerpt: The first comprehensive survey of the monotype in America, Singular Impressions discusses the work of more than one hundred artists who, attracted by the medium's intimacy and freedom, made prints ranging from the romantic, pastoral landscapes of Bostonian Charles Alvah Walker to the Savarin-can "self-portraits" of Jasper Johns. Whether created as a brief fling with the technique by John Singer Sargent or as a sustained exploration of its subtleties by Maurice Prendergast, monotypes have attracted countless artists who usually work in other media. Describing how artists invented new methods and variations on the basic process, Joann Moser analyzes the role of the monotype in the "Black and White" exhibitions of New York's Salmagundi Club, at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, and in 1920s artists' communities from Provincetown to Taos. It was not until the 1970s that the monotype emerged as an alternative to the technical, structured enterprise that printmaking had become. Recognizing no rules or boundaries, artist pushed the previous limits of the medium to create a richer, more complex, more versatile means of expression.