Paul Coldwell in conversation with Mike Sims,
deputy editor of Printmaking Today,
Chelsea College of Art & Design, 20/1/09
Paul Coldwell Mike, from your position at Printmaking Today, especially considering how the magazine has grown and developed since your involvement, could you give an overview about how you feel the change in attitude towards the digital prints.
Mike Sims Well 10 years ago we published what may well have been one of our first articles on digital print certainly while I’ve been at the Magazine, by Debbie Glynn, which came out of your project at Camberwell.
PC That was about the conservation issues and light fast qualities of those early prints.
MS That’s right. It’s quite telling that this was the first topic around digital printmaking that we treated at length in Printmaking Today: a technical scrutiny of the process. Digital printmaking was looked as a technology more than as a bona fide printmaking process. In the early days people were very concerned about if the inks were fugitive, if they would last, more than the aesthetic possibilities. Over time in the magazine we have focused more on how artists are using this technology rather than qualatitively if this technology is on a par with tradition printmaking processes
PC Just quickly to return to the earlier point. Did you feel that in the public’s mind, the association with those early dye base prints being fugitive took a long time to change? Somehow the question mark lingered way after the problem had been resolved.
MS That’s interesting. Maybe that’s an inevitable consequence of any new technology and also one that was being so widely adopted and so quickly. Digital printing also appeared to threaten other processes and as a result was regarded with some suspicion, even hostility.
PC Do you mean that the speed of this technology coming in, particularly In art colleges, was challenging to people whose livelihoods might be wedded to an older technology and perhaps lines were drawn between the advocates of the new technology and traditional print processes? How did you view this from what you perceived through your readership?
MS I think a few years ago they were very entrenched positions. We still get letters from teachers and lecturers who feel that traditional processes have been displaced by new technology. They find it difficult to see the new technology as offering something for them.
PC What you are describing is a kind of schism, a break.
MS Yes but we have increasingly seen through the magazine a shift towards how this technology can be used to make exciting imagery and I think positions are definitely softening.
PC An artist like Hamilton has been very important in giving this technology legitimacy within the higher echelons of fine art.
MS Yes and of course we are seeing wonderful work coming out of the art colleges. At Camberwell, in the digital suite at the Royal Academy Schools and UWE, wonderful work is being made. This is partnered by the work you can see at Alan Cristea Gallery for example: digital prints by Langlands and Bell, Julian Opie, Craig-Martin as well as Hamilton. There’s so much going on which is impossible to ignore if you enjoy printmaking.
PC This brings me onto another thing I would like your view on. We have the idea of describing a digital print as something untouched by human hand but increasingly we are seeing the digital as part of the creative process, which may or may not result in an inkjet print, but the digital has been embedded within the thinking.
MS Are you thinking of specific artists?
PC Well for example many of Craig-Martin’s prints are screen prints and yet have been fully developed through vector drawings on the computer so while it may be described as a screen-print, it does little to indicate the actual process of development.
MS That’s interesting, but from your viewpoint, how do you feel stuck in front of a computer with a mouse as a tool? I mean it’s a curious kind of drawing tool…
Pc Well for me it’s actually because it’s not like anything else you might draw with. You don’t hold it like a pen (in fact I’ve so far resisted using a stylus) so it does pretend to be anything else. It’s a tool on two levels; one a tool that one moves with the hand, but also as a facilitating tool to unlock a programme. Some artists have used the burin to push a line, engrave it, while others have used a needle and pulled a line through a hard ground, both very different sensibilities.
MS You rarely hear people talk about these mark-marking qualities. Maybe this is because it’s such a fast moving technology.
PC I wonder if you have noticed through the magazine, a development of more hybrid practice, bringing together old and new technologies
MS, Its definitely happening. An artist like Marcus Rees Roberts is combining digital ink jet with etching. An artist like Marilène Oliver is very creative in her use of digital imagery as raw material for prints and sculptures. So yes, I’m sure its happening more though in Printmaking Today we have tended to feature artists who using digital technology in a very pure way.
PC I think there’s a lot happening in colleges, a lot more experimentation than is evidenced in the galleries or in bigger exhibitions. We have a very interesting PhD student Jo Love who is working onto large format inkjets with dry points. But leading on from this, do you feel that in digital prints, inkjets, artists are imposing their own character on it? Let’s put it another way, do you feel the image takes precedent over the physicality
MS Well digital prints have been accused of being flat. The surface isn’t very lively and this obviously means they lack those distinctive qualities that maybe other print processes have. But personally I don’t worry about that, there are many wonderfully lustrous digital prints – the recent prints of Langlands and Bell for example. The surface feels very rich and of course this technology has enabled artists to be very ambitious both in imagery and scale. A recent graduate of the RA Schools, Suzanne Moxhay, is making huge, dense cityscapes which I love.
PC I agree, digital technology has enabled printmakers to work on a scale that would earlier have been almost impossible or certainly prohibitive in terms of cost. Perhaps the digital has enabled printmaking to become involved in installation, wider artistic practice and often not even referred to as printmaking.
MS From my perspective a problem has been the extent to which printmaking has been pushed outside of the mainstream of contemporary art, too often seen on the margins. Digital printmaking has enabled it to come much more within the mainstream – and it’s a part of so many ways of making art.
PC So would you say that this technology begins to question the very notion of printmaking and those artists are not defining themselves by technique as apposed to responding to opportunities
MS From the perspective of Printmaking Today the articles we carry are primarily from and about artists who are making prints or about the collaborative process of an artist working with a studio or specific printer. Perhaps what’s missing at the moment is discussion around artists working with digital studios. There are not enough collaborative studio printers like Ian Cartwright or Andrew Turnbull who can take a digital image onto a more refined level.
PC Now that interesting because in many ways anyone can make a digital print but perhaps not so many are aware of the latitude between what’s acceptable and really good. Its not until you can make a comparative judgement that you can see the difference.
MS The manufactures emphasise the ease of this technology. It’s also a young technology: it was only ten years ago we published that article by Debbie Glynn and in that decade graphic art has been transformed.
I remember when I first came to see you at Camberwell to talk about digital prints and you were using that Tektronix printer which printed with pigment in wax but the prints weren’t that durable.
PC But also then the computers were so slow, it took time to draw a line and if you didn’t save all the time, you were in jeopardy of losing everything.
Do you feel that now digital prints have achieved equal status with more traditionally made prints?
MS In terms of the readership of the Printmaking Today, it would probably be that it has a way to go yet and you would probably get that answer from most specialist print organisations.
Personally, I think the answer is possibly. But recently we looked at work made by artists with Ken Tyler and I probably feel that that level of ambition hasn’t been reached yet in digital prints.
Mike Sims is Deputy Editor of Printmaking Today, the leading quarterly magazine on contemporary prints, artists’ books and multiples. To subscribe, visit: www.printmakingtoday.co.uk
