Glossary of technical terms relating to prints and posters

COLOR: Whereas a "colored print" is printed monochromatically then hand-colored, a "color print" is actually printed in color. The techniques of color printing are variations on those used for one-color printing. In color lithography, for instance, a series of stones or plates is created, each of which prints a different color to make up the final image.

IMPRESSIONS pulled from the first, which is called the "key," are used as templates for making the others. A special difficulty of the color print is "registration," the laying down of the colors so that they fit together precisely as intended. Color LITHOGRAPHY continues to be a popular technique in our own time, as it was in late nineteenth-century France.

EDITION: A certain number of IMPRESSIONS of a print issued at a certain time, like a book, or perhaps ina book, is called an edition. The "limited edition" was invented by print publishers of the later nineteenth century, who realized that the value of a print could be enhanced if its rarity were guaranteed. This is achieved by the deliberate defacement or "cancellation" of the plate or other printing surface after the prescribed number of impressions have been pulled. Almost all of today's prints are published in limited editions.

When the artist signs an impression, he or she also gives it a number that looks like a fraction. The inscription "17/50," for instance, would mean number seventeen in an edition of fifty, though not necessarily the seventeenth one printed. Outside the regular edition there are normally some impressions called "artist's proofs," which are sometimes marked "A.P." See PROOF.

IMPRESSION: Where one would speak of a "copy" of a book or magazine, one would also speak of an "impression" of a print.

LITHOGRAPHY: A printmaking technique that exploits the repulsion of grease and water. The image is drawn with some greasy material, which may be a special lithographic crayon or a liquid "tusche" applied with a pen or brush, on a hard flat surface. This was originally a finely grained slab of limestone ("lithography" means "stone drawing"), but sheets of zinc and aluminum have also been widely used. The next stage is the so-called "etch," a chemical treatment by which the image is fixed on the printing surface. The surface is then dampened with water, which is repelled by the greasy marks that make up the image and settles only in the untouched areas. When a greasy, oil-based ink is rolled over the whole, the opposite happens—it is held by the greasy marks and repelled by the wet areas between. A piece of paper is laid on the surface and both are run through a scraper press, which transfers the ink in an even rub across the paper's back.

The great attraction for artists is that drawing on the stone or metal is as free and easy as drawing on paper, and allows for rich tonal effects. Since the printing surface is created directly in the act of drawing, most artists have left the rest of the processs in the hands of professional printers. Lithography was invented in 1798. Being so directly responsive to the artist's individual hand, it has assumed a great variety of different appearances. It is sometimes classified as a "planographic" or "surface" technique. See also COLOR.

ORIGINAL: An "original print" is basically the kind described here under PRINT. The adjective is used to emphasize the status of the given object as a work of art in itself. For connoisseurs of the past, it meant "non-reproductive," i.e., designed independently rather than as a record of some extant work such as a painting; nowadays it has come to mean "non-photomechanically-reproductive" (see REPRODUCTION). Under this wider definition, the old reproductive prints are regarded as original since they involve an act of translation (from brushwork to engraved lines, for instance) that requires artistic decision-making. Photomechanical reproductions are not original because once the work of art to be reproduced has been chosen, the rest is a matter of mere technology.

POSTER: An adverstisement for a product, service or event, consisting of text and/or an image on a flat surface, usually paper. In artistic terminology, a poster with an image is generally classified as a type of PRINT.

PRINT: The word "print" has a meaning that extends far beyond the objects we are concerned with in this glossary and the exhibition it accompanies. In everyday usage it applies to a mark, pattern, or picture that is exactly repeatable: a footprint, a fingerprint, a print-out, newsprint, the print on a fabric or wallpaper, and so on.

Here we are using it in the narrower sense that has become a convention of art terminology. Most art museums have a Department of Prints and Drawings; there is a scholarly art-historical journal called Print Quarterly; the major auction houses of the world have sales of "Old Master Prints" and "Contemporary Prints." The word is understood in this context to mean a particular kind of print - the exactly repeatable picture created as a work of art. The only way of repeating a painting is to go through the whole process again, and even then the result will probably not be exactly the same. With a print, the surface of a piece of wood, metal, stone, or fabric (sometimes called the "matrix") is fashioned in such a way as to transmit the same image again and again, usually in ink on paper, with relatively little extra effort each time.

The most important printmaking techniques are woodcut, engraving, etching, and LITHOGRAPHY. The posters by Toulouse-Lautrec in this exhibition were all created by lithography.

PROOF: Originally an IMPRESSION taken as a check on progress before work on the block, plate, or other printing surface was complete. A "touched" proof is one drawn upon by the artist. Since the eighteenth century the earlier impressions of a print have been sold as "artist's proofs" even if identical to those making up the regular EDITION. For this reason a proof in the original sense in now generally referred to as a "working" or "trial" proof.

REPRODUCTION: Many prints are "reproductive" in that they were made to record the appearance of another work of art, usually a painting, drawing, or sculpture. Indeed this has been one of the main functions of printmaking throughout its history. The recording instruments used to be the human eye and hand, but since the 1890s a number of photomechanical processes have been developed in which the printing surface is created by photomechanical means. Nowadays the photomechanical reproduction found in museum stores and inexpensive galleries is the object people often associate with the word "print," although it is generally disdained by curators and collectors as not ORIGINAL. See also PRINT.

STATE: When a print varies between IMPRESSIONS because of changes made in the printing surface, it is said to exist in different "states." The differences may be minor or major. Some of Rembrandt's etchings, for instance, underwent a series of radical reworkings between the first state and the last. States are usually designated by Roman numerals. The annotation "Smith 101, II/VI" would mean that the standard catalogue of the artist's work by Smith lists the given print as no. 101, and that the given impression is from the second of the six states Smith describes. The earliest state of a print is often a PROOF.

PREVIOUS ARTICLE | NEXT ARTICLE

If you have any comments or suggestions, please use this form.
Copyright © 1996-2003 SAN DIEGO MUSEUM OF ART