art

What is a Print?

The MOMA has a nice flash application to illustrate four traditional types of print.  The online animation was made ass addon for a small exhibition in 2001 entitled “what is print?”.  The four main processes were present on the exhibition.  Woodcut, etching, lithography and screenprint were explained with tools and materials that are used to produce them.

They start with this explanation:

“Print is a wrok of art made up of ink on paper and existing in multiple examples.  It is created not by drawing directly on paper but through an indirect transfer process.  The artist begins by creating a composition on another surface and then transfer occurs when a sheet of paper, placed in contact with this surface, is run through a printing press.  Amongthe advantages of making an artwork in this way is that numerous “impressions” can be made, because new pieces of paper can be sent through the press in the same way.  The artist decides how many to make and the total number of impressions is called an edition.”

Visit the flash application here.