Drawing in Early Renaissance Italy by Francis Ames-Lewis (review)

· Book Reviews 53 leads Goldman to slight the Realists. She states, "Sloan, Hopper, and Marsh had all been workaday illustrators and as artist printmakers they sometimes lapsed into a commercial graphic syntax or-in attempts to escape it-they tried too hard to make art." In reference to Hopper she writes, "he often overworked his plates, particularly when he didn't have a story to tell." Nathan Oliveira, Michael Mazur, and Jim Dine are appropriate contributors to the peintre-graveur tradition. They are consummate printers and fine draftsmen, sensitive to their materials and processes. Because of their hands-on procedure, they have pioneered a new concept in printmaking in which the term 'proof is no longer valid. At any point in the plate's development an edition or a series of unique impressions can be pulled. Monotype elements and hand painting abound. These artists transform images, adding lines and changing colors, never working toward the goal ofa 'finished' print, but creating a number of equally interesting options. Two innovative stylists meriting Goldman's praise are Frankenthaler and Stella. The mating of contemporary imagery with the woodcut medium is a special contribution of Frankenthaler. Respecting the organic wood grain, she brings the same concern for scale and color overlays seen in her paintings to her prints on stained hand-made paper. Stella, combining silkscreen with lithography and collage, challenges figures-versus-ground relations, introducing evenly executed repetitions that destroy illusionistic space. Hand painting and glitter regenerate luminosity and randomness. It is difficult to understand why Goldman included Pearlstein and Francis in this collection. They both stand aside from the print process, and their prints tend to distribute their painting ideas, untranslated, into multiples. Pearlstein's aquatints resemble his watercolor washes. Although the author claims that Francis never reproduces his paintings in prints, it is difficult to tell his seemingly effortless paintings apart; the prints seem mechanically drawn from the same well. Does modern practice as originated by Tamarind and Tyler really produce peintre-graveurs as Goldman claims? On the other hand, Tamarind printers, far from being mere craftsmen, were in many cases true artists who only now are gaining recognition (for example, K. Nanao and J. Zirker). Should Hopper, who printed each prooflovingly on his studio press, take second place to Francis, who lets his printer make color, sequence, and placement decisions for him? These are questions for tomorrow's print scholars. Drawing in Early Renaissance Italy. Francis Ames-Lewis. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1981. 196pp., ilIus. ISBN: 0300 -02641-2. Reviewed by Nancy Hubbe" Francis Ames-Lewis states his aim in the preface to Drawing in Early Renaissance Italy: to cast fresh light on the role of drawing in the development of Renaissance art. To do this within a scholarly system, he confines his study to drawings of the fifteenth century. He has assembled 190drawings, 8 printed as color plates. They range from animal studies to complex crowd compositions in architectural settings, but figure drawings predominate. The first chapter discusses available written sources, and these are used extensively throughout the volume to explain types and uses of materials and the probable function of the drawings. Next, the drawings are considered as sources. Why did some survive from the two regions of Italy (central and northern) producing art at that time while others did not? With this groundwork laid, the author develops his theme: the emergence of drawing as an art and not merely a tool in the early Renaissance. The development of drawing is traced through succeeding chapters as different aspects are thoughtfully explored. For example, paper was rare at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and expensive parchment was used almost exclusively to copy model drawings or for manuscript illumination or for 'contract drawings' showing in detail how a contracted wall painting would look. By the end of the century, paper was in good supply. Another encouraging trend was the movement from silverpoint to pen and ink, and then to chalk. Change is also seen in the transition from stylized model books to books containing exploratory figure sketches and compositional arrangements or sketches from a journey. The chapters on figure drawings and compositional drawings feature·288...