Josef Albers

November 22, 2012 by

Earlier this month Vogue Australia contacted us for permission to use two of our fabulous Josef Albers prints for their January 2013 issue. This got us thinking about the unique relationship that Kenneth Tyler shared with Albers, and below we have compiled some candid shots to accompany a brief history of the artist and master printer’s working relationship. 

 

Tyler and Albers first worked together at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop. When Tyler moved to Los Angeles in 1965 to set up his own print workshop and publishing house – Gemini GEL – Albers’ White line squares was the first print project. This series develops Albers’ colour theories and his unique application of the colour spectrum to images of geometric abstraction. The addition of a precise, white line creates the appearance of four-colours, although only three inks are used. The perfectly registered, luminous lithographs became Tyler’s ‘calling card’ to attract other major artists to the studio, and Albers generously donated a large percentage of the proceeds to fund further projects.

 

 

When, in 1973, Tyler moved to the east coast to establish Tyler Graphics Ltd in BedfordVillage, the inaugural project was again devoted to Albers. Gray instrumentation I, a portfolio of colour screenprints interspersed with text pages written by Albers, was produced in 1974. The series was a remarkable feat, achieving a level of precision that had not been seen in screen-printing before. The crisp, clear colours were inspired by leaves, twigs, scraps of paper and other found materials that Albers requested Tyler match in ink, exactly. The subtle tonal differences in each print required hours of laboured colour-proofing: each of the inks was printed directly onto white paper with no overlap or overprinting. The exercise required a perfect system of colour-matching and a perfect system of registration, which Tyler turned to photographic techniques to achieve.

In the two years that followed, Tyler and Albers collaborated on three further screenprint portfolios: Gray instrumentation II; Mitered squares; and Never before. Never before, which develops ideas that Albers had started exploring twenty-seven years earlier in the 1949 painting Indicating solids, was completed in 1976, just weeks before his death.

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Word pictures

October 15, 2012 by Leave a comment

To celebrate the National Year of Reading the children’s gallery here at the NGA is showing Word Pictures, an exhibition that focuses on the use of text in works of art. Four artists from the Tyler Collection – Jasper Johns, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg and Robert Rauschenberg – are represented. Below we have compiled a selection of  images showing these important artists at work on projects featured – or related to those featured – in the exhibition. Hover your cursor over the images to read descriptions.

Jasper Johns

Alphabet  1969

Johns created a series of works involving the letters of the alphabet at Gemini GEL in 1969. Letters and numbers are a recurring theme in Johns’ art – check out his Color numeral series here: http://tylerblogs.com/2011/03/09/jasper-johns-the-color-numeral-series/

        

Bruce Nauman

Clear vision  1973

In Clear vision Nauman juxtaposes the words ‘clear’ and ‘vision’ with vigorous marks that, ironically, blur the text and render it unclear. We looked at another or Nauman’s text-based works recently: http://tylerblogs.com/?s=bruce+nauman. Below you can see an image of the artist working on a similar project at Gemini GEL.

Claes Oldenburg

The letter Q as beach house, with sailboat  1972

Oldenburg’s  quirky work is one of several created during the same period in which letters take on the characteristics of objects: here the letter Q becomes a beach house, situated idylically on the shores of a tranquil stretch of water. Like Johns, Oldenburg’s work often features letters and numbers. The image below shows him at work on a later print Chicago stuffed with numbers, that demonstrates this preoccupation.

      

Robert Rauschenberg

Cardbird III  1971

Rauschenberg’s Cardbird series plays with language in different ways. Aside from the obvious inclusion of the text printed on the works themselves, the title ‘cardbird’ is a play on ‘cardboard’, the material used to create the works. You can read more about the work here: http://nga.gov.au/Rauschenberg/

The Word pictures exhibition runs until February 10, 2013 – don’t miss it!

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In memory of Robert Hughes, 1938 – 2012

August 8, 2012 by 3 Comments

The International Print collection at the National Gallery of Australia has a special, historic connection to Robert Hughes. In 1973 – almost a decade before the Gallery opened its doors to the public – Hughes alerted then director James Mollison to the fact that master-printer Kenneth Tyler was looking to sell his collection of printers’ proofs. Tyler, who set up the Gemini GEL workshop in Los Angeles, had decided to move to the east coast and was looking for a buyer to help fund a new workshop there. Hughes was aware that the National Gallery in Canberra was committed to building a world class collection of international works, and that Tyler wanted to see his works kept together – preferably in a public museum. The National Gallery was a perfect fit.

Details of this important acquisition, which laid the foundations for the Kenneth Tyler printmaking collection, are recounted on our website by Senior Curator Jane Kinsman, who interviewed Hughes about the acquisition in 2002: http://nga.gov.au/InternationalPrints/Tyler/Default.cfm?MnuID=5

Hughes’ death will be felt throughout the international art world, and particularly here in his native Australia.

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Hardy Hanson, 1934-2012

January 30, 2012 by 6 Comments

We are saddened to report the death of another artist from the Tyler collection.  Hardy Hanson passed away in Santa Cruz, California, on January 26.

Hanson worked with Ken Tyler at Gemini GEL in 1965 to produce four print editions: Vault for the deposit of justice, The prophet of justice, Peculiar evolution, Crusadist and Holy One. Throughout his life Hanson maintained his art practice in print and in painting. He taught visual art to many generations of students at several universities in the United States and was Professor Emeritus in art at the University of California’s Santa Cruz campus.

We extend our sympathies to Hanson’s family and friends.

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Richard Serra at Gemini GEL

October 28, 2011 by 1 Comment

An artist renowned for monumental sculpture in industrial materials seems an unlikely inclusion in a print collection; however Richard Serra is just that. Serra rose to fame with his Splashing works of the late 60s, which he created by flinging molten lead against the seam between a wall and the ground.  His 1968 work Prop – a version of which the NGA’s International Painting and Sculpture holds in its collection – consists of a large lead sheet literally propped up by a lead pipe.

 Serra came to work with Ken Tyler at the Gemini GEL workshop in 1972 and created a group of lithographs in stark black and white. The freedom of the Gemini GEL workshop suited Serra and the prints he created there on that first visit are characteristic of his early sculpture. The lithographs capture a sense of movement and vitality similar to the spontaneity of the Splashing works. Their geometric subject matter prefigures Serra’s later sculpture in which huge cylinders, cones, cubes and other shapes explore balance and volume on a massive scale.

Due to their size, Serra’s lithographs from this period have proved a challenge for NGA curators to show: they are difficult to move around and as such hard to inspect; they do not fit into standard size frames; and while they are most effectively exhibited as a group, finding a wall big enough to display them is not easy.

Over the last few months, the NGA’s International Prints and Drawings department has worked closely with the Paper Conservation and Mount-cutting and Framing teams to find a way and a place to show these important works. Custom designed frames have been created specifically for each print and four of these works will be exhibited in a rehang of the international galleries next month.

  

             

The above four works will be exhibited in the NGA’s international galleries this November. See what else is changing in ‘What’s up?’ in the current issue of artonline: http://nga.gov.au/artonline/152/

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Jasper Johns: the ‘Color Numeral’ series

March 9, 2011 by 2 Comments

 

Currently on display at the National Gallery of Australia is Jasper Johns’ luminous Color Numeral series. Johns was at the forefront of the Pop Art movement and challenged the art establishment with works that feature ubiquitous symbols of the everyday. In his paintings and prints the American flag, letters, numbers, targets, arms and legs are reframed as the subject matter of fine art. The Color Numeral series shows each figure from zero through to nine rendered in brilliant hues. The dramatic, shifting colour spectrum in combination with drawn and found elements – scrawls, squiggles, Mona Lisa’s face, and the artist’s own handprint – give the prints a palpable, tactile quality.

In the late 1960s, under the direction of Ken Tyler, the print workshop Gemini GEL pushed the limits of printmaking, embracing all available technologies. This experimental ethos allowed artists to print on a larger scale and with more freedom than ever before. Created between 1968 and 1969, the ten works in the Color Numeral series were printed from the same stones Johns had used for his earlier Black Numeral series. Maintaining the delicate image for a second print series provided a challenge for the Gemini printers: using  the ‘rub-up’ technique learned from the French master Marcel Durassier, Tyler managed to create a low-relief image from the flat drawings on the stones, thus preserving the surface and allowing for a longer print-run.

A subsequent problem faced by the Gemini workshop was the inking of the large plates in order to capture the rich, multicoloured finish Johns required. In the artist’s smaller numeral prints, the plate was inked with a regular-sized roller which had been run throught the desired colours on a flat palette – a process impossible to replicate on a much larger scale. To achieve the smooth colour gradation the Gemini GEL workshop spent six months researching and adapting inking techniques and using rollers that would cover the large stones smoothly and adequately with a single rotation. The end result was a roller so large it could not be inked by one person. Instead, a hand-fed ‘inking fountain’ had to be devised. This rather complex machine consisted of four rollers which agitated the inks to achieve a slight blending, after which the large roller would be lowered and coated, ready to ink the stone.

Johns said of his printmaking practice: “…it’s the techniques that interest me. My impulse to make prints has nothing to do with my thinking it’s a good way to express myself. It’s more a means to experiment in the technique. What interests me is the technical innovation possible for me in printmaking.” His fascination with the possibilities of printmaking and Gemini GEL’s commitment to innovation made for a successful working relationship, to which the lustrous Color Numerals are testament.

In February this year, Johns was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama: http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/02/15/artist-jasper-johns-receives-presidental-medal-of-freedom/. To read more about Johns and the Colour Numeral series, and to see photographs of Johns at work in the Gemini GEL workshop, go to the Kenneth Tyler Printmaking Collection website: www.nga.gov.au/tyler/

Emilie Owens, March 2011

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Up the skirt of Oldenburg’s ‘Ice bag – scale B’

November 3, 2010 by Leave a comment

Claes Oldenburg is known for his experimentation with prints and multiples in order to produce witty, large scale transformations of everyday objects. 

Like the other, larger Ice bags that Oldenburg created, Ice bag – scale B (1971) was given life as a kinetic sculpture, mechanically powered from within so that it rises and tilts continually, in a gentle circular motion – almost as if it is breathing. 

Caring for kinetic sculptures presents unique challenges, especially when they are frequently on display (Ice bag – scale B can be seen in action regularly in the NGA’s Pop Art gallery). Some of these challenges were brought to light recently in a conservation project undertaken by NGA Objects Technician Roy Marchant, a complex procedure lasting four months, and photographed and documented by Roy at every step in a 100-page instruction manual.

The work was first brought to the attention of Conservation staff due to reports of an abrasive sound emanating from inside the skirt. After a period of observation and assessment in September 2008, what ensued was a bit like detective work as Roy and colleagues painstakingly dissembled the sculpture and examined its components, looking for the cause of the sound.

Under the yellow synthetic skirt of the Ice bag, two motors sit attached to relays, which control the rise and fall of the work from a central mechanism. This mechanism also controls the twisting, tilting action, and is protected by an acrylic dome, which also prevents the skirt from fouling. When all was carefully taken apart (right down to each tiny nut and bolt being bagged, labelled and photographed), the cause of the problem was discovered: a misalignment of some of the motor’s moving parts (the cam arm and the drum) which, although only slight, was producing friction. Hence the grating noise and a  growing pile of tiny metal shavings within the drum.

Roy is quick to point out that this is no design fault, but rather the kind of issue one might expect with any mechanical object that is in constant motion (especially one that was made forty years ago). “Just like a car,” he says, “the Ice bag needs regular maintenance, including having an oil change from time to time.” The re-alignment procedure included, among other things, inserting a number of ’sacrificial’ elements (such as washers) at points of friction. These allow movement but absorb all the abrasion, and they can easily be replaced by conservators when they eventually wear out. This protects the original components from further wear and tear. All components were also cleaned and lubricated where necessary, and after electrical testing and an observational period in the Conservation lab, Ice bag – scale B was back in action.

This is a great example of a conservation treatment that solves a mechanical problem, while preserving the integrity of the original object. You can read more about this work on the NGA’s Soft sculpture website. Also, see the NGA’s Kenneth Tyler Printmaking website for a fascinating photographic essay about the conception and realisation of Claes Oldenburg’s ‘Ice bag’ theme from the year 1969.

NGA Objects Technician Roy Marchant would love to hear from any other conservators or enthusiasts who have worked on an Oldenburg ‘Ice bag’. So please leave a comment or get in touch.

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