Exhibition: Leaning on the Line

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Leaning on the line

The graphic arts – drawing and printmaking – are inherently associated with the use of the line. Paul Klee famously compared drawing to taking a line for a walk, while Henri Matisse described his linear drawings as ‘the purest and most direct expressions of my feelings’. In 1929, perhaps searching for this purity in his art having become dissatisfied with his paintings, Matisse dedicated himself almost exclusively to printmaking for a year, producing around 100 figurative etchings that rely almost exclusively on pure line. Etching, even more so than drawing, is fundamentally a linear art form. At its most basic, without the addition of plate tone, aquatint and other techniques that can provide shading and texture, etching requires an artist to create an image entirely from lines drawn with a needle. As such, artists working in etching, and its printmaking predecessor, engraving, have necessarily leaned on the line not only to define a form, but to create shade, tone and modelling through areas of parallel lines and crossed lines known as hatching. Virtuoso printmakers of the 16th and 17th centuries such as Albrecht Dürer, Hendrik Goltzius and Rembrandt van Rijn perfected the art of creating complex, profound and nuanced images through line alone using these techniques, and woodcut printmaking that similarly relies on linear mark-making. Their achievements demonstrated the power of the line in image-making, and many artists since have been drawn to these techniques for their linear qualities. In the early 20th century, for example, many of the German Expressionist artists, including Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Käthe Kollwitz, turned to woodcut printing to create psychologically charged images composed from deep, gouged lines that reflected the heightened anxieties of their times. Several decades later, Minimalist artists such as Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden and Donald Judd found that the linear qualities of printmaking suited their pared-back approach and the grid-based compositions that they were also creating in other media.

As this exhibition demonstrates, the line as a major compositional element is endlessly versatile and not confined to a particular style or approach. In the 20th century, artists as diverse as Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Agnes Martin, Bridget Riley, Keith Haring and David Hockney have made art that in some way leans on the line. Many of Kandinsky’s abstract works, for example, depend on the delicate balance of lines and geometric shapes, which interact and dance around one another in perfectly choreographed arrangements. With equal balance but less movement, the grid-based images of Piet Mondrian and Agnes Martin depend on straight lines and the spaces inbetween, which may be filled with colour. From the early 1960s, as a leading proponent of Op art, Bridget Riley has made abstract paintings, drawings and prints comprising curved, diagonal, zig-zagged and parallel lines, that challenge traditional ways of seeing and representing the world. In the 1980s, Keith Haring innovated a highly distinctive visual language to create his figurative works that depended on bold, cartoonish outlines, beginning with street drawings and then expanding across paintings, prints, murals and other artforms. David Hockney, meanwhile, has often included prominent areas of hatching and cross-hatching in his work. Through neat networks of crisscrossed lines, which are often used as background, he consciously references printmaking traditions, while providing texture and visual interest, and emphasising other elements of the composition by contrast. Artists use prominent lines for different reasons, some are intended to define a subject or idea, others are expressive, communicating feelings, moods, a sense of movement, rhythm or music, and some are there to provide texture, pattern, shading or to balance a composition.

This diverse use of the line is reflected across this selection, which comprises work by around 30 artists drawn from the four studios of Print Network Ireland: Graphic Studio Dublin, Black Church Print Studios, Cork Printmakers and Limerick Printmakers. Using a range of techniques including etching, aquatint, screenprint and lithography, the artists have all made prints that in some way lean on the line in a creative and innovative way, while at times echoing different linear traditions in printmaking. The radiating lines around Nick Boon’s vibrating heart, for example, call to mind the radiating halos around religious figures in Renaissance prints. Helen O’Sullivan, Carroll Derval and Shane O’Driscoll have created bold, abstract prints that owe a debt to Op art and Minimalism and exploit the formal, precise line that can be achieved through both screenprinting and intaglio printmaking. The lines in Kate MacDonagh’s muted mokuhanga prints, by contrast, appear more organic, resembling the effects of light or natural occurring forms, while areas of John Graham’s meticulously layered etchings resemble woven fabric, at once delicate and strong. Niall Naessens has used parallel and crossed diagonal lines to create backgrounds that add both depth and an element of abstraction to his figurative compositions. Meanwhile, Niamh Flanagan and Yoko Akino have both used repetitive parallel lines to define their meditative landscapes and seascapes. Although perhaps choosing to work with a technique that lends itself to linear compositions, each artist represented in this exhibition leans on the line as an artistic choice. As such the exhibition is full of lines of all descriptions, from contours, waves and branches, fibres, systems and nets to marks of pure expression or thought. Colour, texture and form add meaning, but in each case, the line both underpins and defines the work.

Catherine Daunt, Curator of modern and contemporary prints, British Museum