When Andy Warhol first branched into silkscreen painting, the technology was mostly in use for signage. He’d already hand-painted Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962) and had been thinking about the signs outside supermarkets that might advertise these were on sale. His first silkscreens, however, were of currency. In his epic biography Warhol, Blake Gopnik points out that this might have been inspired by an old professor at the Carnegie Institute of Technology who “talked about the American dollar bill, with its Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington, as a work of art we all carry in our pockets.”
“Deep Cuts: Block Printing Across Cultures,” a new exhibition at LACMA’s Resnick Pavilion, attempts to make a similar argument about one of the oldest and most democratic ways of making a picture. Curator Erin Maynes has pulled more than 200 objects, most from the museum’s own collection, and arranged them not by the usual geography or century but by four things a block can do: transmit, pattern, process and express. These four goals let the medium range wide, from a Japanese prayer scroll printed around 764 to wall-sized contemporary woodcuts. Throw in some Albrecht Dürer, Indian chintz and a German Expressionist Brücke Manifesto (1906) so rare that only five survive, and you’ll see that this exhibition demonstrates the breadth that emerges from a medium that’s so cheap to produce.
“Deep Cuts: Block Printing Across Cultures“
Artists: Various
Venue: LACMA
Address: 5905 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA
Through: September 13, 2026
The resulting work tends to please in an instinctual way. Take Carl Otto Czeschka’s Textile Fragment, “Waldidyll” (Forest Idyll) (1910-11), a block-printed piece of linen that shows two crouching deer in an overgrown forest scene. The Jugendstil style treats the forest as pure ornament, cutting through a savagery of black. One feels the medium in the mirrored nature of the design, and the fact that the curling leaves take up every inch of the design—blank space is a waste of the block! A 1916 photograph shows Gustav Klimt wearing a robe made of this fabric at an artists’ festival and one does see how he’d vibe with this Dan Flashes-level of intricacy.
That work was about “pattern,” and in “process” we have The Press (1934) by Paul Landacre. Process indeed runs through and through in this work, for the press depicted was found rusted in the ghost town of Bodie in 1929 and restored by Landacre, who insisted the hand press beat power presses because of the pressure he felt in the pull of the lever. It’s hard to argue with the results. His wood engraving features profound textures, almost as if he needs to feel this great machine because it is otherwise so mysterious to him.
Alison Saar’s High Cotton II (2018) demonstrates that after so many years the medium still rewards innovation. The title refers to the best of times, the lucky era, but takes on a different meaning for the woman depicted. How better to demonstrate this disconnection than the wild variations between the fluffy, antique texture of the cotton and the strained tension within her skin?
