The following are
explanations of typical methods and materials. The ingenuity
of artists has led them to explore many variations and
develop sophisticated exceptions. An underlined word links
the reader to the essay
"Information
on Important Subjects."
Stages in Woodblock Printing
Woodblock,or
woodcut,
printing requires several steps.
First, a design is executed on paper, and then the paper is
pasted, with the design face downward, on a section of wood.
The back of the paper is sanded (or made translucent with
water) until the image can again be seen through the thin
remaining layer and serve as a guide for carving. The image
in the wood is thus a negative, or mirror-image, of both the
original design and the picture to be printed. The wood
surfaces that remain elevated aftercarving are inked, and
paper is applied to them with pressure. Transfer of ink from
block to paper produces the woodblock
print.
Carving the Woodblock
The effects of woodblock printing depend on
what areas of the woodblock are left in relief.The area
carved away will appear white when the block is printed
therefore, when lines are to be printed either in black or
color, they are left in relief and the block is said to have
positive
carving. This has been the
traditional
technique in China. If the design
will be realized by white lines and/or areas against a black
ground, however, they are carved intaglio into the block,
and the process is called negative
carving. Negative carving and
positive carving can be combined in the same woodblock.
During the first decades of the twentieth century, extensive
negative carving was popular among some American and Russian
printmakers whose work later influenced Chinese printmakers,
especially from the 1930s through the 1950s. Positive
carving, however, has generally been the choice of modern as
well as traditional Chinese woodblock printmakers.
In wood engraving, a variety of woodblock
printing, the block is carved with numerous fine lines left
in relief; tonal effects in the print are achieved through
hatching and by varying the density of the lines. The
Chinese call such detailed work the "wood engraving style,"
and it carries with it connotations of foreign origin
because traditional Chinese woodblock prints did not have
tonal effects.
The artist's choice of wood is largely
determined by his or her artistic style. An artist like
Xu
Kuang, who works in the
engraving style, chooses a cross section of wood because it
has a finer grain than a vertical section, and therefore
lends itself to detail.
Zhao
Yannian, who seeks great freedom
when carving, prefers a vertical section of timber,
particularly ginko wood, because it has a softer and more
open grain. A vertical section of wood is also the choice of
nianhua workshops for printing the strong black outlines of
the traditional nianhua style (see below). Most Chinese
woodblock artists, in fact, prefer the vertical section of a
log because it suits the positive carving of strong lines
and large printed area they favor and because the vertical
section is generally larger than its cross section, enabling
the artist to produce a large print with a single block. On
the other hand, several blocks of cross section must be
assembled to produce a large print in the engraving style
practiced by artists like
Xu
Kuang or
Lin
Jun.
An artist's choice of wood is also affected
by the type of ink he intends to use; for example, because
they stand up well to moisture, fruit woods are preferred
when the inks used for printing are to be
water-based.
It may be noted that because plywood is
cheap and available in large sizes, it has become a choice
for some artists.
The artist's interest in the block of wood
is primarily as a medium for transferring his design, not as
an art object in itself. This said, blocks carved for
printing are often themselves works of art.
Several kinds of carving tools are made and
used in China, including types that originated in other
countries. The European types of carving knives have a
short, angled blade that lends itself to carving on the
cross section of a log and, therefore, to engraving.
Traditional Chinese knives, straighter and considerably
larger than these, are used in nianhua workshops; they are
designed for use on the longitudinal section of wood and are
good for making outlines. When using such knives, the
carver's dominant motion is from top to bottom, similiar to
the movement of the brush in calligraphy and painting. The
Japanese types of carving knives, held like a pen and easy
to control, are used to carve in all directions&emdash;from
the bottom up, from the outside inwards, or from the top
down. Since the 1930s the Japanese types of knives have been
much used by Chinese printmakers. The repertoire of Japanese
blades includes open- mouthed (i.e., round-tipped),
three-sided (i.e., "v"-shaped), flat and serrated
types.
Inks and Printing
Even before starting to carve, an artist
knows what effects he wishes to create and which printing
inks will achieve them. Oil-based inks were introduced into
China as part of the Creative Print Movement's adoption of
the European expressionist approach to woodblock creation.
Oil-based inks are applied with a roller, which transfers
the ink from a glass ink-slab (where it has been worked into
a smooth paste with a palette knife) to the elevated
surfaces of the carved block. After the block is inked, the
paper is applied to it and rubbed with a hard burnishing
tool of glass, wood, or metal. For intense black, the
process may be repeated, but this requires great care to
maintain an exact register. Oil-based inks are usually more
opaque and intense than water-based colors and are more
easily layered one on top of the other. Thus artists choose
oil-based inks when they are seeking dense color.
During the
Cultural
Revolution, artists often created
their ink by thinning oil-based industrial inks, and even
enamel paints, with additional oil. All of the very large
prints in the exhibition from that decade were printed with
such inks, which were available everywhere, were easy to
apply and had the glossy charactertistics approved of at the
time.
Chinese woodblock printing, however,
traditionally used water-based inks in a method called
shuiyin-literally,
"water print. " In
shuiyin
printing, inks are applied to the block with a brush, paper
is pressed against the inked block, and then the back of the
paper is rubbed with a soft barren of bamboo or a cloth
pad.
Shuiyin is the
universal method of printing in popular printing workshops
(see below), where it has a centuries-old history of
uninterrupted use. It was brought into fashion for use by
academically trained artists in the late-1950s as an
artistic assertion of national identity and in response to
Mao
Zedong's admonition to "make the
past serve the present."
Polychromatic printing, whether using
shulyin or oil-based inks, typically is done with douban. In
this method, first used with shuiyin in China in the Ming
Dynasty (1368- 1644), a separate block is carved for each
color and shade.
Shading and nuance in
shuiyin also
can be achieved with
xuanran. In
this process the block is dampened with clean water before
being inked, and the brush laying down the ink moves from
what, on the block, is to be a dark area in the print to
what is to be light. Most modern woodblock artists printing
with water-based inks use xuanran.
When rubbing the paper during ink transfer,
the movement of the hand and degree of pressure is quite
individual and varies somewhat even when the same artist
reprints the same block. Some Chinese artists use a press
(as is more usually the case in Europe) because it
distributes the pressure evenly over the design.
Lu
Xun, however, advocated
hand-printing, and most Chinese woodblock printmakers pride
themselves on executing the ink transfer manually.
Paper
Paper was invented in China about 2,000
years ago. Its nature is determined by the type of plant
fibers used in its manufacture and the way the fibers are
processed. There are a number of kinds of Chinese papers.
Xuan paper
(often called "rice paper" in English), named after the
place in Anhui Province where it was first made during the
Tang Dynasty (630-930), is a classic Chinese support for
both painting and printing.
Xuan paper is
made with bast fibers from the
jingdan tree
(a member of the mulberry family), usually with the addition
of rice straw, but bamboo and other fibers may also be
added. After maceration, the fibers are treated with lime,
exposed to sunlight, bleached, and washed with starch.
Prized xuan papers are cast by hand. They are fine, soft,
resistant to insect damage, and their pure white color lasts
forever; to retard absorption of the ink, they may be
treated with alum. Where not otherwise indicated, the
Chinese papers used for prints in the exhibition are on a
variety of
xuan
paper.
Gaoli, or Korean,
paper, is heavy and therefore lends itself to thick color
printing or painting. Its added strength tolerates more
rubbing than other papers do and, in addition, oil inks
appear matt rather than glossy.
Pi, or leather,
paper is made primarily from bast fiber (mulberry and
bamboo). The fibers are finely macerated and the filaments
evenly interlocked to produce a paper that is thin and soft.
It absorbs water quickly, but oil-inks slowly. Color sinks
below the surface, so that its brightness is diminished;
thus, pi
paper is especially suitable when a matt black or colored
ink is desired. It is not used when extensive rubbing is
required.
Daolin, commonly
used as newsprint, is manufactured from chemically treated
wood fibers that are not finely processed. The least
expensive of Chinese papers, it is chosen for this reason by
some nianhua
workshops in order to keep their products affordable by the
mass market. The name
daolin is
actually the rendering of the name in Chinese writing for
the British company Dowling, Ltd., Hong Kong, which supplied
imported paper for offset printing before 1950.
Yang paper has
the qualities of foreign rag papers, which are thicker and
tougher than xuanpaper. Because they are less likely than
xuan to tear when being rubbed, they are ideal for thick,
repeated printing. They are also stiffer, thus obviating the
necessity for backing or mounting after printing.The word
yang
means"foreign,"but today such papers are made in China,
retaining the name as a reminder of origin. It is a favorite
of artists printing with oil-based inks, who seek rich, full
ink values.
As the name indicates, cotton is one of the
basic fiber ingredients of Japanese
cotton paper. This gives it
qualities similiar to Western rag papers, which are stronger
(i.e., less likely to tear when wet) than Chinese papers,
but at the same time it absorbs water or oil quickly, as
Chinese papers do.
Printing Workshops
The Chinese emphasize the distinction
between the creation process introduced with the Creative
Print Movement, in which the artist designs, carves and
prints the work himself, and the traditional Chinese method
used in woodblock printing
workshops, in which designing,
carving and printing are each the specialty of a different
person. Prints produced by the latter method were
traditionally considered the work of artisans, not artists;
the name of the workshop was sometimes carved into the block
but rarely that of the designer, carver or printer. Since
1950, however, those involved in the collaboration are more
likely to be recognized for their artistry, and their names
more often found along with that of the workshop, although
they rarely appear in Chinese dictionaries of
artists.
Nianhua
Traditional workshops produce
nianhua (see
below). Some, like
Yangliuqing,
use a combination of outline printed by a woodblock (called
a keyblock) and coloring that is added by hand; the
resulting style has some of the nuances of painting and
appeals to urban dwellers. Others, such as
Yangjiabu
and
Taohuawu,
are masters of the "black outline and flat color" style
especially loved by rural people; in these studios, the
design outline is printed by the keyblock, and unmodulated
color usually is put in through a stencil or laid on by
hand.
Nianhua, or New
Year's pictures, are so called because these traditional,
popular prints were taken down annually and replaced with
new pictures during the festive lunar New Year's period,
which fell just before spring. (After 1949, it was called
Spring Festival, and New Year's day was celebrated on
January 1.) The traditional subjects were gods, symbols of
good luck (with emphasis on long life, prosperity, and many
sons), and well-loved and entertalmng storles with a
(usually Confucian) moral. Believed to attract into the home
the virtues of the things they portrayed, the pictures were
also decorative. After 1949, gods and mythical heroes were
replaced by soldiers, workers and peasants, and the emphasis
was on hard work rather than luck; girls as well as boys
appeared as subjects, and ordinary field crops replaced the
traditional talismanic fruits and flowers. Socialist slogans
appeared in place of the traditional invocations to the
gods.
Collective Creation
The cooperation practiced in traditional
woodblock printing workshops differs from
collective
creation, which produces
collaborative
and group
works. In
collaborative
works, several artists produce a single creation, but the
division of work is not according to specialization. Several
artists may work on all the procedures together with artists
assigned particular areas of the work, or one person may
sketch the outline, while another fills in the design (a
process often used when professional artists aid
non-professionals). The names of the participants may or may
not be written in the margins. During the Cultural
Revolution, individualism was criticized as
counterrevolutionary, and collaborative works thus received
special praise.
In
group works,
each artist creates his own picture, which forms part of a
larger series on a theme or is one of a series of
illustrations for a story or event.
Illustration
Prints are often used for
story
illustration. The artlst may make up
his own story and create illustrations for it which require
little or no supplementary text; when text is added, the
artist may write it himself or ask someone to write it for
him. The artist may also illustrate select incidents from a
well-known story or novel.
Lu
Xun's stories, for example, have
always inspired printmakers to illustrate them.
Lianhuanhua,
literally, "linked serial pictures," are special to China.
They are story books that combine pictures with text much as
comic books do; however, the pages are much smaller than
those in comic books, and the text is usually placed above,
below or beside the picture ratherthan issuing from the
speakers' mouths in balloons. Unlike book illustration,
where only selected incidents are chosen for visual
expression and meaning depends primarily on the text, the
plot of
lianhuanhua
can be understood fairly well just from the numerous
pictures. The illustrations may be created in various media,
including pen-and- ink, gouache, oils and woodblock prints;
they are then reproduced by mechanical means, reduced in
size and printed in the mass- produced
lianhuanhua
format.
Contrary to the literati judgments of his
time, which dismissed the format as "primitve," "infantile,"
and unworthy of serious attention, Lu Xun had advocated that
artists create
lianhuanhua
and work to improve their aesthetic level; he saw the origin
ofthe format in ancient Buddhist wall murals and thus
considered it to have a distinctly Chinese character. Lu
recommended
lianhuanhua
be used as propaganda tools because of their appeal to a
semi-literate audience and the cheapness with which they
could be mass-produced. Even before his death, in 1936, his
followers in the Creative Print Movement had executed prints
for
lianhuanhua,
illustrating their own stories as well as Lu's writings.
After the Yan'an Talks in 1942
(discussed in the essay "Themes,
Style and Historical Background"), artists were told that,
along with
nianhua, the
lianhuanhua
format was to be given precedence over other kinds of art as
both were easily appreciated by peasants and thus good
vehicles for the delivery of propaganda.
Propaganda and History
Propaganda and
history are
official designations for categories of art in exhibitions
and publications; both are popular among printmakers and, in
practice, sometimes overlap.
Propaganda
pictures depict models meant for emulation-representations
of people going about study and work in the approved way-as
well as visions of agricultural and industrial
accomplishments.
History
pictures include portraits of individuals and depictions of
historical events. Pictures of historical personalities had
long been painted in China, including pictures of persons
long dead; however, such pictures were not expected to
resemble the actual appearance of the subjects but to depict
the individual in such a way that the "essence" of his
character, as history had recorded it, was conveyed. The
idea that a portrait should bear a close likeness to the
subject was imported from Europe and did not have wide
currency in China until the nineteenth century. With the
advent of photography, the appearance of individuals could
be copied easily in art, but the goal of imparting the
essence of the individual remained. Prints in our exhibition
with portraits of leaders and heroes were modelled on
published photographs that had been vetted for conveying
correct essence; in this way artists could be sure to depict
the individual's recognizable features in an approved
fashion.