Digital Printmaking: Avant-Garde Tradition and the Future of Digital

Digital Printmaking: Avant-Garde Tradition and the Future of Digital

Source: China Culture Daily

Crowd (Digital Prints) 2021 Tan Tan

Printmaking was born with printing, and with the updating and iteration of printing technology, the history of world printmaking with the change of media as the clue was directly derived. Today, digital technology has profoundly affected human life and provided new ideas, methods and tools for the creation of printmaking art. The first International Digital Printmaking Art Exhibition, sponsored by the Central Academy of Fine Arts and other units, exhibited more than 150 works from more than 80 artists at home and abroad, vividly presenting the frontier picture of contemporary digital printmaking.

The exhibition also sparked some realistic reflections on the development of printmaking art, such as how to accept this new member after viewing digital printmaking as a member of the printmaking interior. How can digital prints be included in exhibitions, collections, trades, and education? At the same time, the exhibition also responds to how printmaking as a small genre of painting survives and develops in contemporary times.

Commitment to experimentation and pioneering

As Feng Mengbo, curator and deputy director of the Printmaking Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, said: "In the final analysis, art is the creation of the human spirit, and the road should be wider and wider." The first international digital printmaking art exhibition showed its attitude: 'the first' means that it requires becoming an event in history and a new trend of artistic evolution; 'international' means that it requires opening up in space to fight against the isolation and closure caused by a social field (the background of the epidemic provides more connotations for it); 'digital printmaking' is a kind of re-justification, adhering to the experimental and pioneering slogan of printmaking since Lu Xun in the era of digital reproduction that we ushered in. ”

At the beginning of the 20th century, the technology of screen printing, led by pop artists represented by Andy Warhol, became a popular painting language and visual style in the world. Today, digital technology has expanded media from Warhol-era television and billboards to mobile phone screens, delivering unlimited images to us at every moment. Similarly, the exhibition no longer tries to distinguish between art and life in form, and the works in this digital print exhibition all use printouts and traditional mounting methods, and use the traditional authorization method of numbering and signature to erase the difference in materials to the greatest extent and let the audience's attention focus on the image itself.

In Andy and Me, Warhol appears as a traditional figure, while the artist himself appears in a brightly colored oval with his name (not a traditional artist's signature, but a personalityless digital font). Floating along with other geometric patches of color on a realistic background, just as people look at it today— in a sea of digital images, the subject and their words slide arbitrarily.

In Peter Bostils's "Neighborhood Chatter", dozens of opposing noses grow out of the wall on the vertical and cascading walls, and the scene of neighborhood chatter is so vivid.

Feng Mengbo's "Apartment" and "Library" were made using game engines, such digital programs were originally tools for video game designers to quickly complete the development, and Feng Mengbo applied them to printmaking. The game engine constructs a digital space in the computer that simulates reality, with physical depth, optics, and mechanics. Feng Mengbo transforms this virtual three-dimensional space into a real two-dimensional space, in which things can in principle move, collide, and deform, and this variability constitutes a new "version".

Clarify the concept and expand the extension

If we say that the characteristics of woodblock prints lie in knife engraving technology and wood, mainly in the skill of using knives and carving according to the texture of wood; lithographs pay attention to the principle and technique of separation of oil and water, pay attention to the changes and charm of pen and ink; flat panel paintings pay attention to the interest of silk leakage transfer printing technology; copperplate prints pay more attention to the change of lines. Then, digital printmaking obviously inherits and expands the traditional printmaking mentioned above, and even challenges it.

Exactly how to look at digital prints, industry experts have different views.

Wang Huaxiang, director of the Printmaking Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and chairman of the International College Printmaking Alliance, believes that digital printmaking is an application of digital printing technology in the current Internet era, and in the past 30 years, it has profoundly affected the face of printmaking art from multiple levels such as production methods, language structure, and way of thinking. At the International Academy Printmaking Alliance Invitation Exhibition Seminar held in 2018, digital printmaking, single-panel printmaking and photography were officially included in the category of printmaking, redefining the connotation and extension of the concept of printmaking.

Feng Mengbo believes that the original version of digital prints is a digital file, and its reproduction does not have the disadvantages of traditional prints because of the wear and tear of the layout, and the printing quality declines one by one; the original production of digital prints can be completed in the computer, canceling the restrictions of chromatic chromatics and the cumbersome version of the plates, without the use of complex mechanical equipment and chemical processes; the image creation of digital prints can be combined with photography, scanning, software generation and even artificial intelligence, which further liberates the artist's creativity Digital printmaking does not have to consider specific processes and related restrictions, diluting the traces of artists' craftsmanship in plate making and printing; digital files are lossless and unlimited reproducibility, and works can be conveniently and even uncontrollably disseminated through the network, and so on.

Luo Xiangke, director of the Printmaking Art Committee of hunan Artists Association and dean of the School of Fine Arts and Design of Changsha Normal University, believes that digital printmaking has to a certain extent dissolved the barrier between contemporary printmaking and public life, broken the relative isolation of printmaking in the overall pattern of contemporary art, and broadened the media and communication channels of Chinese printmaking.

Although the rise and development of digital printmaking is an unavoidable trend, Luo Xiangke also said: "When everyone is extremely natural to brush vibrato, send WeChat, and write blogs, when digital media art almost naturally becomes a new direction for the development of contemporary art, printmaking with digital media is still regarded as a problem, an art form that is still entangled in legitimacy and identity." ”

Why is digital printmaking controversial as a genre? In addition to the fact that people can't see the traces of craftsmanship, these are the more obvious characteristics of the past prints. When these traits are weakened or concealed, they inevitably become suspicious. In Wang Huaxiang's view, the relationship between printmaking and printing technology is also an important issue, which means re-examining the problem of plurality. In fact, "plurality" is not a unique feature of printmaking, and the use of some inherent concepts such as "indirectness", "imprint" and "limited printing" to describe the dynamic characteristics of printmaking is also "carving a boat and seeking a sword".

"Digital" is different from "analog"

The word "digital" is used to facilitate the distinction from "analog", and such an understanding is obviously not comprehensive. "When digital technology is determined to be a printmaking language, digital becomes an appreciation, it becomes an art form, and in this sense, digital art also needs printmaking intervention, because in some cases, viewing also needs to output the material form of the work. It's just that numbers, while imitating art, are also masking the habits we form. In society, such a concept has gradually become pervasive. What we use printmaking to carry is such a concept and intention of digital integration, carrying a kind of interest caused by digital integration, rather than using digital technology to imitate the original printmaking. Yang Feng, vice president of the International Printmaking Research Institute and director of the Image Research Institute of xi'an Academy of Fine Arts, said that the expansion of typography by digital technology is also a reality. The history of printmaking has proven that whatever open attitude there is, what kind of art form will emerge.

As a creative method and teaching curriculum, digital printmaking has long appeared in the Academy of Fine Arts, but it rarely appears in various domestic exhibitions and art markets at all levels, because the price of digital prints is affected by many factors, and the authorization and limit determine the price of digital prints, of course, the most important point is whether the painter himself is involved in the production process. In addition, there is a special number and the painter's signature, which are all necessary conditions for a digital print to become a good product.

In the past two years, NFT crypto art has gradually become a hot spot in the global art market, which is confirming the value and advantages of digital printmaking in another form. For the relationship between NFT art and digital printmaking, Feng Mengbo said: "NFT art is hyped, more is an extension of a financial instrument, and art has no inevitable relationship, several extremely successful examples, with obvious hype characteristics, not universal." Generally smaller digital prints, which use NFT technology for packaging and circulation, may be feasible, but it remains to be observed and experimented with. Large-scale digital media works, especially those with specific hardware and space requirements, cannot be satisfied by NFTs. The output and display of digital prints is closer to traditional printmaking and photography, and can be integrated into the living of collectors. Therefore, the collection of digital prints has a promising future. ”

The article failed to find an authorized channel, if there is infringement, please contact this public account to delete, thank you.