The Ponte Vecchio (Florence) Mirrored in the Rippling Arno

The Ponte Vecchio Mirrored in the Rippling Arno

The colors in this photo are a little off, so when or if I get a better shot (Photoshopping didn't seem to help) I will replace it.  This is a 24 color reduction woodcut, a process invented by Pablo Picasso.  The wood is a 24" length of  of 18" wide clear pine which came from a plank purchased many years ago when I was a sophomore at college.  The professor of my relief print class, J. Terry Downs, and 2 other students and I chipped in to buy the 8' board and split it between us.  It was relatively expensive even then because as Terry Downs pointed out such lumber was no longer available.  I have carried it around for all these years a bit afraid to use it.  But this summer I figured it should get used and had an image in mind, so here tis. I was emboldened by the thought that I can use the other side for another image later, and maybe even plane it down and reuse the surface several times.  Might as well, since in making a reduction print you destroy the image as you go.  

I aimed to create a balance between three things: the material (wood and ink), the facture (marks of the tool kept visible), and the image.  The close up below reveals some of this better than the full view.  Of course, it is much more visible in person.

For me the balance works, probably because I think of all three things when working on a print or painting.  Some viewers will notice the wood grain carrying through all the layers of ink and the slightly motley texture of the ink (which nonetheless manages to stay flat and matt through all those colors).  Others will note how the image is constructed of marks of the tool which look like gouge cuts rather than trying to follow a more precise rendering of contours and textures, rather like the brushstrokes of a Chinese ink painting.  I often think about Xie He's 6 Principles which recommend first and foremost to render not the outward appearance but the spirit of the thing, and secondly how the brushstroke is the 'bone' of an image.  But others will see most clearly the represented image.  Whatever you find interesting (or not), isn't it amazing that something that doesn't resemble the thing portrayed (the colors are all quite off, the cuts and shapes abstracted and quite different from the 'real' image, whatever that means, the texture, light, all far different from even a photo of the place) nonetheless is readily understood as a representation of a place.  See how the water of the Arno breaks up the image in two ways - the relatively clear striated image where the ripples are large and smooth, created by the downhill movement of the water over the subtle terrain beneath the river, and the choppy blurred image nearly dissolved where wind makes the surface flutter.  Both are just horizontal cuts of the gouge rolled up with many layers of colors, yet something of the reflected buildings are visible like the dream of a memory.