Kiki Smith: Prints, Books and Things

Book Description
Well-known as a sculptor, Kiki Smith has also worked extensively as a printmaker--in fact her printed works and other editioned art, including books and multiples, are arguably as important as her sculpture. Smith emerged in the early 1980s as one of a generation of artists who returned to figurative imagery after a period in which American art had leaned to the abstract and conceptual. In Smith's case the interest in the figure was literal: She is fascinated by the anatomy of the human body, which is an immediate and emotionally powerful presence in much of her work. She is equally concerned with the natural world, and animals have become increasingly important in her recent imagery. The heart of printmaking is the ability to create more than one example of an artwork, and this appeals to Smith's interest in the public dissemination of imagery and information. Her work is politically sensitized but she is also fascinated by craft and is constantly exploring and experimenting with her materials. Her prolific body of printed art incorporates techniques extending from elaborate etchings to crude rubber stamps and images ranging from wall-sized lithographs and deluxe artist's books to screen-printed giveaway posters and removable tattoos. Kiki Smith: Prints, Books and Other Things accompanies an exhibition devoted to this underacknowledged but crucial dimension of her art. Essay by Wendy Weitman. Clothbound, 9.25 x 11 in./150 pgs / 140 color 0 BW30 duotone 0 ~ Item D20149


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Kiki Smith: Prints, Books, and Things is the most complete survey yet of Smith's printed art. Published to accompany an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in the winter of 2003-4, it contains 137 color plates documenting her work in the medium, beginning with her first screenprint, made in 1980, and including works that were in progress as this book was being written. Also featured is an eight-page printed work that Smith created especially for the book. An innovative experimenter, Smith has investigated many kinds of printmaking, from traditional techniques such as etching and lithography to newer, simpler processes such as rubber stamp and photocopy, not to mention artist's books and multiples including blankets and fabric dolls. The reader aware of her sculpture will find much to recognize in these works, with their imagery of the body, of animals and birds, and of the iconography of women, but her printed art develops these themes in ways unique to itself - as Wendy Weitman, Curator in the Museum's Department of Prints and Illustrated Books and the organizer of the exhibition, explains in a comprehensive essay. Kiki Smith: Prints, Books, and Things offers a crucial record of an underacknowledged side of Smith's work. In doing so, it argues powerfully for the importance of printmaking in contemporary art.


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