Lithography  

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''[[Calavera]] de la [[Catrina]]'' (before [[1913]]) by [[José Guadalupe Posada]]]] ''[[Calavera]] de la [[Catrina]]'' (before [[1913]]) by [[José Guadalupe Posada]]]]
[[Image:Ernst Haeckel's Artforms of Nature of 1904.jpg|thumb|right|200px|''[[Artforms of Nature]]'' ([[1904]]) by [[Ernst Haeckel]]]] [[Image:Ernst Haeckel's Artforms of Nature of 1904.jpg|thumb|right|200px|''[[Artforms of Nature]]'' ([[1904]]) by [[Ernst Haeckel]]]]
 +[[Image:Awful conflagration of the steam boat Lexington.jpg|thumb|200px|''Awful conflagration of the steam boat Lexington in Long Island Sound on Monday eveg., [[January 13]]th [[1840]], by which melancholy occurence; over 100 persons perished''. Courier [[lithograph]] [[documenting]] a [[news event]], published three days after the [[disaster]].]]
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:"Just as [[lithography]] virtually implied the [[illustrated newspaper]], so did [[photography]] foreshadow the [[sound film]]. For the first time in the process of [[pictorial reproduction]], photography freed the hand of the most important artistic functions which henceforth devolved only upon the eye looking into a lens." --[[Walter Benjamin]], ''[[The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction]]'' (1935) :"Just as [[lithography]] virtually implied the [[illustrated newspaper]], so did [[photography]] foreshadow the [[sound film]]. For the first time in the process of [[pictorial reproduction]], photography freed the hand of the most important artistic functions which henceforth devolved only upon the eye looking into a lens." --[[Walter Benjamin]], ''[[The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction]]'' (1935)

Revision as of 20:08, 10 November 2008

Awful conflagration of the steam boat Lexington in Long Island Sound on Monday eveg., January 13th 1840, by which melancholy occurence; over 100 persons perished.  Courier lithograph documenting a news event, published three days after the disaster.
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Awful conflagration of the steam boat Lexington in Long Island Sound on Monday eveg., January 13th 1840, by which melancholy occurence; over 100 persons perished. Courier lithograph documenting a news event, published three days after the disaster.

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"Just as lithography virtually implied the illustrated newspaper, so did photography foreshadow the sound film. For the first time in the process of pictorial reproduction, photography freed the hand of the most important artistic functions which henceforth devolved only upon the eye looking into a lens." --Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935)

The process of printing a lithograph on a hard, flat surface. Invented by Bavarian author Alois Senefelder in 1796. Originally the printing surface was a flat piece of stone that was etched with acid to form a surface that would selectively transfer ink to the paper; the stone has now been replaced, in general, with a metal plate.

Lithography as an artistic medium

During the first years of the nineteenth century, lithography made only a limited impact on printmaking, mainly because technical difficulties remained to be overcome. Germany was the main centre of production during this period. Godefroy Engelmann, who moved his press from Mulhouse to Paris in 1816, largely succeeded in resolving the technical problems, and in the 1820's lithography was taken up by artists such as Delacroix and Géricault. London also became a centre, and some of Géricault's prints were in fact produced there. Goya in Bordeaux produced his last series of prints in lithography - The Bulls of Bordeaux of 1828. By the mid-century the initial enthusiasm had somewhat died down in both countries, although lithography continued to gain ground in commercial applications, which included the great prints of Daumier, published in newspapers. Rodolphe Bresdin and Jean-Francois Millet also continued to practice the medium in France, and Adolf Menzel in Germany.

In 1862 the publisher Cadart tried to launch a portfolio of lithographs by various artists which flopped, but included several superb prints by Manet. The revival began in the 1870's, especially in France with artists such as Odilon Redon, Henri Fantin-Latour and Degas producing much of their work in this way. The need for strictly limited editions to maintain the price had now been realized, and the medium become more accepted.

In the 1890's colour lithography became enormously popular with French artists, Toulouse-Lautrec most notably of all, and by 1900 the medium in both colour and monotone was an accepted part of printmaking, although France and the US have used it more than other countries. George Bellows, Alphonse Mucha, Pablo Picasso, Jasper Johns, David Hockney and Robert Rauschenberg are a few of the artists who have produced most of their prints in the medium. More than other printmaking techniques, printmakers in lithography still largely depend on access to a good printer, and the development of the medium has been greatly influenced by when and where these have been established. See the List of Printmakers for more practitioners.

As a special form of lithography, the Serilith process is sometimes used. Serilith are mixed media original prints created in a process where an artist uses the lithograph and serigraph process. The separations for both processes are hand drawn by the artist. The serilith technique is used primarily to create fine art limited print editions.<ref>What is a Serilith?</ref>




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Lithography" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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