The Pure Expression of Max Pechstein's Prints

The prints of Max Pechstein are a symphony in tactile seduction. They have a primitive linear quality indicative of the media. He enticed the medium to make spectacular portraits and figurative works which exude emotion, passion and action. He intertwines Afro-centric mask-like faces with actual primitive statues from the South Pacific and crowds up the composition, further heightening the angst taking place. These figures seemingly move comfortably with their angled features and confined spaces, packed with action and drama.

Pecstein is capably expressive with his color, when he chooses to use it, but he often does not, and we miss nothing for the choice. His black and white images sing with clarity and directness. They slap us in the face and say’ Hey, try doing better than this!” , and I would say that that may not always be possible. How does one improve upon a perfect expression?

As we look at the world’s current events, the work of the Expressionists ring truer and are more honest about how humanity is not always attractive or appealing. These works show us that there are still hard, not so noble sides to ourselves and our emotions can be powerful. Pechstein’s portraits often show hardened, weary faces vs. the mask-like veneer of others, while still others convey compassion and curiosity.

Pechstein’s work is a great model of the German Expressionist movement and his use of emotion to convey how we are all human.

Bio
Hermann Max Pechstein (1881 –1955) was a German artist, and a member of the expressionist Die Brücke art group. He is best known for creating images of portraits and landscapes.
Pechstein was born in Zwickau. He studied art at the Dresden’s School of Applied Arts and the Royal Art Academy. In 1906, he met fellow artist Erich Heckel and joined an art group called Die Brücke. Later in 1910, he helped to found an art group called Neue Sezession, which earned him attention for his work, but the Die Brucke group expelled him for breaking away from their group. He was a prolific printmaker, producing nearly nine hundred prints during his career.

After Pechstein travelled to France and Italy between 1907 and 1908, then he returned to Berlin. Pechstein developed an interest in a so-called “primitive” art like many of his Expressionist comrades. He travelled to the western Pacific island of Palau in 1914 where he created images based upon “exotic” subjects.

Pechstein never broke entirely with the Expressionist style. In 1916, the first monograph on Pechstein’s work was published. He collaborated with several publishers, including Fritz Gurlitt, who commissioned numerous portfolios and illustrated books.

He also received commissions to decorate houses and make designs for stained glass windows. At the outbreak of World War I He returned to Germany, and suffered a breakdown. At the end of the war, he joined the Novembergruppe and Arbeitsrat für kunst groups.

Pechstein was professor of art at the Berlin Academy from 1923-1933. He did commissions for the German government for the International Labor Office in Geneva, in 1926. The Nazis turned him out from teaching for being a degenerate artist, but he was reinstated in 1945. In 1933, a large portion of Pechstein’s work was confiscated by the Nazis. Several of his works were displayed in the Degenerate Art exhibition of 1937.

He is buried on the Evangelischer Friedhof Alt-Schmargendorf, in Berlin.

John Pitman Weber's Printed Perspectives on NOW

Look at her. Look at those those eyes that hold a world of anxiety, sadness, uncertainty and caution. Her fate is unknown and unclear, but her current situation we understand is in a holding pattern. A cell or room of confinement. She is waiting, waiting to be let out, to be able to pursue her life.

John Pitman Weber is a well-known commodity in the Chicago art scene. His works have been exhibited internationally, and his public murals are woven into the artistic and cultural fabric of this, and several other cities across the country.

Benedictine University is hosting a Terrific exhibition, "Perspectives on NOW" (opens August 24th) of his recent works dealing with war, migration, environmental sabotage, drones and spying. The exhibition is truly a reflection of current events and Weber's crusade to speak about things that concern him - and things that should concern us all. Weber presents a tour de force in these paintings, drawings and prints that the viewer will not soon forget.

I came across Weber's work while visiting a neighboring institution, and was dumbstruck by his prints. Marvelous work. A marriage of technical virtuosity and the strength of his convictions. The work in this exhibition include a series of prints "Infernal Machines" about oil refineries and their destruction of the environment, via air pollution, and refineries that look no different than mother's milk pumping machines, draining our planet of its precious, life-sustaining resources.

Weber's 'prisoner' prints are life sized, and make us feel we are a part of the procedure of their detention. The helplessness of their upraised arms makes our own arms feel weak and defenseless. The resignation to being captive is palpable on the prisoners' faces. There is no specific culture or country associated with these prisoner images. Weber reminds us that this is a global issue, and the detention of any human being, is wrong.

Weber also includes in this exhibition a grouping of earlier prints; mother Marys of different cultures, and regal, young indigenous women from Latin America, and silhouettes of men fleeing into a void of uncertainty. The range of cultural awareness in Weber's work is solid. He knows the plight of migrants. He knows the elegance and sensuousness of a young woman's gaze, the formal elegance of a cactus vs. a woman's arm. These and many other images show an artist working solidly in his element.

Weber ably and effectively uses all the bells and whistles of line, composition, media, scale, surface, and color to get across his message. The exciting component of this artist's work, is that he looks like he's just getting started. The man is working full speed ahead and that, my fellow inked up friends, is exciting for all of us.

There is more to come from this artist and lessons we can learn from his work can help inform and inspire us to make work and get our own messages out there. Printmaking is bound to its communication roots. Weber understands that, and excels.

The exhibition runs through October 10. Location: 5700 College Rd., Kindlon Hall, fifth floor. Lisle, IL. Artist's reception and lecture: Saturday, September 12, at 2:00 p.m.
Free and open to the public. www.ben.edu/ArtGallery

Alex Binnie and his Hallowed Iconic Portraits

Hmmm. Just take a look at these portraits! Something pretty cool is happening here, my inked up friends. Electric, energized, and f'ing hip. They sparkle with life and coolness. Alex Binnie's large scale prints show us some of his savvy tattoo clientele in all their glory, and their personalities are as fantastic as their body decoration.

Alex Binnie may have come to printmaking via an indirect route, but make no mistake, his portraiture work is current and vibrant; making his subjects modern day cultural icons.

The cultural tattoo revolution has been around for some time; its roots deeply found within ancient tribal superstitions as a means to ward off evil spirits(as found in the South Pacific). The patterns and designs have migrated and intermingled over time, and the present day evolution is rooted in making the body beautiful, even if the accuracy of its symbolism has been lost a little along the way. Yet, it remains a form of identification and affiliation with ideals of one's personal choosing.

Binnie's work is among those artists who helped popularize tribal imagery, and his evolution to making these prints is also a form of documenting cultural identity. I find his portraits appealing and dazzling. They don't need color. The ink of the tattoo artist is replaced by the ink of the printmaker. Nice and black.

Binnie's work reminds me of some of the large scale portrait prints of Irving Herrera from Mexico, but Herrera's work is based primarily upon the lovely, seductively dead women of Mexico. Likewise, Binnie's work reminds me of the freshness of Neil Shigley's large scale prints of California's homeless. Binnie's seduction is the mesmerizing detail of the tattoo designs that cover his subjects' bodily terrain. These works don't disappoint.

One could say we need a portrait or a selfie like a hole in the head, but really, the very first printed portrait images in Europe in the 1390s revealed our ever-obsessed interest in ourselves as much as we still like to look at ourselves. That a portrait or self-portrait has the power to still engage and hold our attention may never die. We all like to look at people and ourselves, do we not? Alright, then.

Is Binnie merely staying in that vein of voyeuristic pleasure? Not really. I do think he presents these portraits of 'his tribe' as modern day icons. The rays of light behind some of their heads alludes to that, or at least he presents his feelings about his chosen subjects in that light. Where Binnie's portraits differ from the traditional icons is that these faces project a warmth and sincerity. What they are not is cold and austere. They are not stiff and removed from our personal connection. They are approachable and engaging.

I hope this artist will continue his investigations into printmaking. In this day and age, we could all use a few new instances of an iconic portrait. Kudos, Alex.

Alexander Michael Steven Binnie was born in 1959, in Oxford, England. Binnie is known as a tattooist, musician and performance artist and is also fast making a name for himself as a printmaker.
In 1982, Binnie graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Art from South Glamorgan Faculty of Art and Design. As a musician, in the early 1980s, Binnie was a founding member of the power electronics trio Pure. Later on he joined the group Zos Kia. He worked as a medical illustrator at United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals. He began to tattoo in 1989, which lead to printmaking in 2000.

As a tattoo artist Binnie is known for helping to popularize the use of tribal design (non-western, often Polynesian) in the West. His work received much attention when he was included in Henk Schiffmacher’s publication called 1000 Tattoos. His first tattoo studio in London was called Mother Art. He moved to Los Angeles, from 1991–1993, tattooing at West Hollywood’s Gauntlet studio, and at the Body Electric. Binnie returned to London in 1993 and established Into You Tattoo. In 2005, he expanded to Into You Brighton.

While in Los Angeles, Binnie also collaborated with performance artist Ron Athey, including in London's Torture Garden. He also appeared in Catherine Gund Saalfield's film, Hallelujah! Ron Athey: A Story of Deliverance.

Binnie has also created murals in New York, and his recent book “The Woodcut Portraits” was published in 2012 by Kintaro Publishing.

Alex Binnie self-portrait....

Margaret Rose Preston: Australia's Flora Printmaker

Margaret Rose McPherson Preston (1875 - 1963) was an Australian Modernist painter and printmaker. She was highly influential during the 1920s to 1940s and was known for appropriating Cubism principles and Aboriginal motifs in her work.

Born in Port Adelaide to David and Prudence McPherson, Preston was their first-born child. As a child she was called by her middle name Rose. Preston's interest in art began at the age of twelve, first through china painting, and then through private lessons with the artist William Lister.

Preston's formal art training continued at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School from 1889-1894, with Frederick McCubbin. After Preston’s father’s death, she resumed her studies in 1895 at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School with Bernard Hall, preferring to work on her still life images. She won several awards including the prestigious Still life Scholarship in 1897. In 1898 she continued her studies at Adelaide's School of Design, under H. P. Gill and Hans Heysen.

Preston was an influential teacher. She began teaching private lessons while at the Adelaide School of Design, establishing her own teaching studio in the city's AMP building in 1899. She later taught at St Peter's College, Adelaide and Presbyterian Ladies' College, Adelaide. Among her many students were Bessie Davidson, Gladys Reynell and later, Stella Bowen, who referred to her as "a red-headed little firebrand of a woman, who was not only an excellent painter, but a most inspiring teacher".

Preston became one of the most powerful artists of Australia’s Modernism movement in the 1920s, largely because of her European travels (1903-1907); studying in Munich and Paris, and travelling to Africa. These experiences would deeply influence her work for the rest of her career. Preston briefly studied at the Government Art School for Women in Germany, but did not relate well to their teaching style, nor did she relate to the body of current German art, "half of German art is mad and vicious, and a good deal is dull. I am glad to say that my work stands with the best of them".

In contrast, Preston reveled in the works of French Post Impressionists, and she took advantage to exhibit her work in the Paris Salon of 1905 and 1906. She was introduced to Japanese art and design at the Musée Guimet, and the experience awakened her to new compositional ideas of asymmetry, pattern, a love of flora; and experiments with more primitive subject matter. She went to Paris for a second time in 1912 and relocated to the UK, where she studied pottery and also the principles of Modernist design at Roger Fry's Omega Workshops. Later, she taught pottery and basket-weaving to recovering soldiers at the Seale Hayne Military Hospital in Devonshire.

Margaret Preston’s strong involvement with the Society of Artists. Preston contributed fourteen articles to Art in Australia, thirteen articles to The Home, nine to the Australia National Journal and four articles to the Society of Artists yearbooks.

Preston experimented with etching in London, but it was woodblock printing that she continued to work in, creating dynamic, decorative images which brought her wide acclaim. She made over 400 prints, however it is known that she produced many more. The majority of Preston’s prints feature Australian native flora, because of their irregularity and asymmetry, offering her the perfect subjects for her modernist compositions. Preston preferred to work with hand-coloring and to experiment with new techniques, resulting in daring works of radical design, composition and color.

She turned to Australian Indigenous art as a source for creating a new, national art. Her early interest in indigenous art was more anthropological, than one empathetic with its spiritual sensibilities, but her work matured, revealing a strong spiritual connection with the land, and also reflected her deep interest in Chinese art. Her last series of prints were based upon a religious theme, and are generally thought to have been motivated by the Blake Prize, instituted in 1951.

Honors:
1911 - Commission from Adelaide citizens' committee, now at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
1930 - Commission for the trustees of the Art Gallery of New South.
1953 - Last major exhibition at Macquarie Gallery, in Sydney
Member of the Anthropological Society of New South Wales

The Linear Madness of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Portraits

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner b. Aschaffenburg, Bavaria,1880. d. Frauenkirch, Switzerland, 1938.
As a major player in the German Expressionist group Die Brucke, Kirchner ‘s work, particularly his prints, set new standards to express emotion and use of material. His fractured portraits were as equally jarring psychologically as much as how they were created. Kirchner sought everywhere for psychological understanding of his figures. His achievements are substantial.

These were the product of a man who had experienced pain and suffering, after having a nervous breakdown during his military service in WWI. It was a lifelong scar which he see-sawed between rising from and sinking into despair. Not surprisingly, the last straw was the condemnation of his life’s work from the Nazi party in 1933 when over 600 of his pieces were removed from museums and collections. They were mostly destroyed or sold, and 25 pieces were ‘selected’ for the infamous Degenerate art Exhibition of 1937. The ‘degenerate’ brand mortally wounded his numerous accomplishments and he never really recovered from the social stigma it produced. He couldn’t find work, and his former friends and colleagues abandoned him.

”… the reason why we founded the Brücke was to encourage truly German art, made in Germany. And now it is supposed to be un-German. Dear God. It does upset me".

Biography
Kirchner’s family were of Prussian origins and his mother was claimed to have descended from the Huguenots. Kirchner's family moved frequently so he attended schools in Frankfurt and Perlen until his father became Professor of Paper Sciences at the college of technology in Chemnitz. Kirchner's parents encouraged his artistic career but they also encouraged a pragmatic education so he moved to Dresden in 1901 to study architecture at the Königliche Technische Hochschule. Kirchner continued his studies in Munich 1903–1904, then he returned to Dresden in 1905 to complete his degree.

In 1905, Kirchner, along two other architecture students, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich Heckel, formed an artists’ group called Die Brücke ("The Bridge"). This group wanted to find a new method of artistic expression, bridging the past and the present. They looked to previous artists like Albrecht Dürer, Matthias Grünewald and Lucas Cranach the Elder, and they revived the medium of relief printmaking. From this point on, Kirchner committed himself to making art. The Die Brucke group had a major impact on the evolution of modern art in the 20th century and created what is called Expressionism. Kirchner composed a manifesto stating that "Anyone who directly and honestly reproduces that force which impels him to create belongs to us." Between 1907 and 1911, Kirchner spent summers with fellow Brucke arists at the Moritzburg lakes and on the island of Fehmarn. In 1911, he moved to Berlin, where he founded a private art school, MIUM-Institut, with Max Pechstein. It closed the following year, (but he also began a relationship with Erna Schilling which lasted the rest of his life.) In 1913, his writing of Chronik der Brücke led to the group’s demise.

At the beginning of WWI, Kirchner volunteered for military service. He was sent to Halle an der Saale to train as a driver. Kirchner's supervisor soon arranged for Kirchner to be discharged after he had a mental breakdown. (He struggled for the next few years to make art and bounced from one sanatorium to another.) Kirchner then returned to Berlin and continued to make art until 1915 when he was admitted to a sanatorium in Königstein in Taunus. During 1916, he returned to Berlin but he suffered another nervous breakdown and was admitted to a sanatorium in Berlin, Charlottenburg. Then, Kirchner was admitted to The Bellevue Sanatorium, in Kreuzlingen where he continued to produce paintings and woodcuts. In 1918, he was given a residence permit and he moved to "In den Lärchen" in Frauenkirch. Kirchner’s health eventually improved, and he made art and exhibited a lot in 1920 although he was still dependent on morphine.

He also began creating designs for carpets in 1921 which were then woven by Lise Gujer.

In 1925, Kirchner became close friends with fellow artist, Albert Müller and his family. He joined Rot-Blau, a new art group based in Basel, formed by Hermann Scherer, Albert Müller, Paul Camenisch and Hans Schiess, (but he left the group in 1929). At the end of 1925, Kirchner returned to Germany, visiting Frankfurt, Chemnitz, and Berlin. In 1926, Kirchner's close friend, Albert Müller, died and the next year, Kirchner organized a memorial exhibition for him at the Kunsthalle Basel.

In 1930, Kirchner began to experience health problems from smoking and during 1936 and 1937, his health further declined, suffering from a semi-paralysis in his hands. Towards the end of his life Kirchner became increasingly afraid after Austria was annexed by Germany, and he feared Germany might also invade Switzerland. In the summer of 1938, Kirchner took his own life. He was later buried in the Waldfriedhof cemetery.

The tragedy this artist suffered was one among many whose lives were torn apart during the world wars. German society as a whole was the most educated, one of the most elite societies in Europe of the time. Germany’s decimation; the loss of its teachers, writers, philosophers, musicians, artists, dancers, etc., etc. was nearly complete. The artists who fled Germany survived, but the ones who remained, those who believed and supported the Nazi party were cruelly and completely humiliated by the masses. They became isolated and many, like Kirchner, couldn’t endure it.

In closing, this artist’s pure, raw emotions are present on every one of his portraits; in every deeply gouged line, on every single block. Their faces will eternally cry out about incomprehensible injustices and hang precariously on the edge of madness. We can internalize their suffering. These works remind us what it is to be human, what it is to want to be compassionate.

One would hope the world’s current politicos would look a little more often at the powerful and important work produced by this artist and the group he is associated with. They have seen and shown us the ‘other side’, the ‘evil side’ of humanity. Do we ever need experience again situations like those that influenced this work?

Some of Kirchner’s Exhibitions and Accomplishments:
1906 first Die Brucke exhibition, K.F.M. Seifert and Co., Dresden, Germany
1913 Armory Show, NY
1913 first major solo show, Essen Folkwang Museum
1920 several exhibitions in Germany and Switzerland
1921 major display of Kirchner's work in Berlin
1931 made a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin, but resigned in 1933
1933 his work was branded as "degenerate" by the Nazis and 639 works were taken out of museums, destroyed or sold.
1934, Kirchner visited Berne and Zurich, and met Paul Klee.
1935 Kirchner created a sculpture for a new school in Frauenkirch, Switzerland.
1937 25 pieces exhibited in the Degenerate Art Exhibition, sponsored by Hitler’s Nazi party
1937 first solo museum show in the US, Detroit Institute of Arts, MI
1937 organizes Muller memorial exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland
1969 a major retrospective at the Seattle Art Museum, the Pasadena Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
1992 the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
2006 Christie's auction of Kirchner's Street Scene, Berlin (1913) = a record $38 million.
2008 Museum of Modern Art, NY