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Holly EJ Black, "The Story of Printmaking: A Global History of Art" (Yale UPs, 2026)
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Holly E.J. Black
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Holly E.J. black about her book titled the Story of Printmaking A Global History of Art, published by Yale University Press in 2026. Now this book is doing a whole bunch of things as the subtitle Global History might suggest, because we're going to be looking at printmaking in a number of ways, right? In terms of kind of the finished product, of what the art can look like at the end, but also the different processes, the many different processes through which prints can be made. Thinking about kind of what even is art like, what is commercial art, what is quote unquote, high art? You know, how do all of these things sort of not actually fall into neat definitions and thus in many ways are more interesting to examine by looking at all of these different aspects of printmaking. So obviously, sadly, we don't have 12 hours available to cover every detail in the book, but I think we're going to have quite a fun conversation. So, Holly, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
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Holly E.J. Black
Hi, Morella, thanks so much for having me.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Could you start us off please, by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book?
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Holly E.J. Black
Yes, of course. So I am a journalist. I specialize in the visual arts. I'm contributing arts editor at the World of Interiors and I have been in the industry for between 10 and 15 years. And I also studied at London College of Printing, which means that I actually have a very practical background. I actually have an artist making background as opposed to an academic one. So that was a really important component of the book. Actually, I was actually invited by Yale to produce a proposal for this book, which was incredibly fortuitous, especially because I didn't know about my background as a printmaker. So they actually came to me and asked me if I could have a stab at producing a proposal that would be something of an overarching history of printmaking. When I said, yeah, sure, where in the world and when? And they just sort of said, well, from the beginning to the end and as many places as you can get in there. So it was a huge undertaking, but something I was very, very excited about. And you know, that was about four years ago. So here we are.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
That does sound very exciting, but as you said, also kind of daunting. Right. That's a massive brief. So how did you approach this? I mean, how did you decide, quite simply what to include and what not?
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Holly E.J. Black
Well, it was a huge task and I think a lot of people will understand that when it comes to a huge research project, you end up having those sort of post its on the wall with all of the bits of string attaching them, all of the different spider diagrams. So I think that what felt really important for me was to go and do due diligence that would really show print My printmaking in a more international context. I think a lot of the time when you, when I was doing research about other books that exist, they tend to look at a slice, but they do tend to concentrate on the Northern Renaissance as sort of the advent of printmaking. And I already knew to an extent that that wasn't true just from my own background understanding the passage of art history. So I was really, really determined to build out the information about print's origins in East Asia. I'd seen a couple of exhibitions on the subject. British Library was fantastic in that respect. And really I decided to build the stories around that. And because, you know, this is a. It's a 60,000 word book, which is not nearly enough. And I decided that the best way to really approach the book was look at processes, look at techniques. We're following a chronological narrative, but really the book is based around the idea. It's 10 chapters, it's 10 stories. They drop you into different places, but different moments in history and different moments when a particular technique or a particular art historical moment, a particular political moment really all came together to push the story forward. So, yeah, it was. There's so much I had to leave out, obviously, and there's lots that you had to, you know, lots of heartbreaking moments. But really, you know, I am a journalist as well and so what's really important for me is the story. And it's about giving readers information in a way that feels digestible and enjoyable and exciting. And there are ample ways that readers can then go off and, and find out even more every page, I would argue. So this is a jumping off point, like to think for many other lines of inquiry for people in the future.
- [07:14]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
That's a really nice way of thinking about it and certainly gives us a good foundation, I think, to conceptualize this discussion too. So great way to start. And especially then with that background on the amount of thinking that went into what you decided to include, I'm even more curious for you to tell us about not just something you decided to include, but to start to start with that's always key, is the beginning. So why do we start the book in Dunhuang?
- [07:41]
Holly E.J. Black
Well, the reason we start in Dunhuang is because it's where the oldest printed and dated book in the world that as far as we know exists, was found. The Diamond Sutra, which is now in the British Library, features an. It's a scroll. So, you know, we're dealing with the definition of a book taking in East Asian processes. So there's a scroll, but it has absolutely beautiful printed calligraphic letter forms and also an exceptional woodblock frontispiece. So this is an image I think it's important to also explain in terms of the remit of the book. I'm dealing with the printed image on paper. There are obviously different parts where different references are made and there's innovation and process and other things that are mentioned. But that is the real through line in the book. And so what's absolutely incredible is we have this image, this printed image that is fully dated. It actually has a dedication written by the person who actually commissioned it. And it was found in the Magao grottoes in Dunhuang, which is on the edge of the Gobi Desert and was a really important, I guess you call it an outpost for the Silk Roads. And this, this was a site that was lost to time for a time and was rediscovered in the early 1900s. And there was a so called Library Cave that was discovered because this is a. Was a site of Buddhist veneration. It was a site of pilgrimage. And different benefactors, Chinese benefactors and other rulers and other dignitaries would commission these incredible sites of worship. And one of these sites of worship is this cave that is known as the Library Cave that commemorates a monk called Hong Biang, who was a very important translator. And it was among all of that that we. That the diamond suture was discovered. And as this was the way that things went back then, the explorers and the Indologists and the archaeologists that were involved in those sites were mostly foreign. And so that's how the Dunhuang project ended up involving many different people. Definitely very important British explorers. But the Dunfung project is now in a massive international project that's very important cultural initiative that exists to this day. It was very important to start with a work that shows how much earlier print was. Not only that it existed, but this is not a primitive work of art. This is an incredibly sophisticated piece of work that shows that despite us not having any concrete knowledge of when print actually began, there are references that I'll speak about more in a minute about people writing about prints as opposed to the prints actually existing. But we know that this culture must have existed. You know, I don't think it's unreasonable to say hundreds of years before it was the diamond suture was created and the date ON that is 868.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
I mean, that's a very compelling reason to start the book. So thank you for giving us a sense of. There's so many cool things from Dunhuang, obviously more detail in the book. But that definitely gives us a sense of why it is the start skipping then ahead in time. Obviously, I'm going to be doing some skipping around because, as I said, we do not have 12 hours here. So skipping to then the Renaissance and the processes of printmaking. I think perhaps, maybe often we look at the kind of end product. But how they're made is really interesting. You talk, for example, in the book about kind of the, like, laws and organization around it, you know, the stuff that doesn't seem to be about art at all in terms of guilds or professional rules. So how does looking at that angle that maybe isn't at all about aesthetics, helps us understand nevertheless, kind of why some places rather than others became centers of printmaking?
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Holly E.J. Black
Well, I think it's a really interesting discussion because the question around printmaking and prints in general is still a very complex one with regards to what can be defined as art, what can be defined as craft, what can be defined as something else entirely. It's a very permeable barrier, and that's something that I grapple with continuously in the book. But what was so interesting in this period of the early Renaissance is that the earliest processes that we're looking at are you have the relief print that is woodblock. So that means that you're carving into a piece of wood and creating a relief image that is printed. And engraving, which is an intaglio process. And intaglio is all about pressing into, as opposed to sort of excavating the negative space. And so even the way that I speak about it, right. It can sound. It's material, it's craft. And a lot of the printing processes that I discuss in the book actually came from other places. They came from practices of goldsmithing, practices of armor engraving. It was armorers that actually developed processes of etching, because etching actually involves using acid to bite away at pieces of metal. So then you have negative space that then when it's printed, that's where you get white. And so you had class people who, you know, they're innovators. I think we look at places like Nuremberg and Antwerp and Venice and Haarlem and Amsterdam. These were sites of incredible commercial trade. You had cities who had their own processes to do with. You know, Nuremberg was a city without guilds at all. There were other places that had incredibly strict guilds. But the permeability of printmaking, with regards to whether it was considered a metalworking craft or it was considered aligned with painting, there were all of these questions going on all the time. But it meant that a lot of people who were involved in printmaking could sort of slip through the net or could work in very different ways that wouldn't have been allowed in strict guild systems. And it's also a sign of the commerce at the times there were. This is a rise of a merchant class as well. So it meant that there was actually a hunger for forms of art that could be. That were more accessible. I think oftentimes when we talk about prints and printmaking, we talk about the dissemination of information and a more egalitarian way of engaging with information and art. And that is very, very true. But I think it's also very important to understand that this still wasn't something that, you know, an everyday working class person could probably afford, or they might see more of that imagery, but wouldn't necessarily be able to buy it. And so that's why, when I'm talking in my second chapter about the Northern Renaissance, Jura is such a huge figure because he was so important in with regards to not only disseminating images of his work, but cultivating the idea of artist celebrity and then starting to mount some of the first ever artist copyright cases. Because suddenly you have had a way that craftspeople and other artists could be copying your images and not just sending them out into the world, but pretending that they were works by you and by your workshop. And that incensed juror.
- [15:16]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
I mean, that is beginning to sound pretty familiar in a lot of senses, and definitely key to kind of understand the development of this very much as an industry. I admit, though, in this part of the book, there were aspects of wit that, as I said, sounded familiar. And I was kind of like, ah, this is where that comes from. Okay, cool. There were also bits where I read where I was like, oh, I wasn't expecting that group necessarily to be involved. And one that caught my attention were the armorers, right? People making, like, suits of armor. Why were they such a part of this story of European printmaking?
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Holly E.J. Black
Well, really, it comes to the fact that armour as, you know, as business, it was a ripe business. So I think it's kind of, if you haven't actually seen armor from this period, you know, we all have an idea of what this might look like. But these were exceptionally highly decorative costumes, whatever you want to call them, some of them would have been costumes as well as, you know, actually actually having a process of being used for actual battle, as it were. You know, there was an enormous industry for creating pieces that would be worn by incredibly wealthy people. And the level of Artistry that is involved in that is absolutely incredible. You know, you have these beautifully detailed biblical scenes, mythological scenes, pattern work that could be on everything from sort of gauntlets and greaves and helmets and everything. So these armorers were incredibly skilled when it came to decoration and figuration. And so that was sort of a natural translation into the world of printmaking. Because when you see some of these pieces of armor that have been etched, which meant that the armorers were actually applying acid onto whatever metal surface it would be in order to eat away, it's not too much of a leap to understand if woodblock was already something that people would come to terms with and understand how it could be used. And engraving, which already existed, the etching of it all made perfect sense. And there are cases where there are important printmakers where they came from families of armourers or again, families of goldsmiths. Durra was the son of a goldsmith and there's really that idea of having it, having a very specific artisan trade and then sort of, you know, it's that classic case of your. Your children going off into the world and taking a slightly different route. But it would have been embedded in the culture.
- [17:52]
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, I mean, if no one. If someone listening hasn't seen one of these suits of armor, like, I would second that recommendation. Go look them up, because you will very quickly see why this kind of level of skill develops in this area. And it's definitely a really key part of this particular period of printmaking that you discuss in the book. Skipping, however, to another place as much as I probably could ask you questions about Suits Farmer for a lot longer. Another piece of printmaking, I think that is really iconic, both in terms of itself, but also the kind of skills it develops in the industry more broadly. If we look at sort of satirical prints, right, thinking about Hogarth, perhaps most famously, that's kind of the question, like, why do we think of Hogarth's prints when we think about satire in this period? Why was that sort of thing so successful, both commercially and artistically? What are the factors that go in to make that kind of printmaking at that moment such a big deal?
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Holly E.J. Black
Well, Hogarth was both an exceptional artist and an exceptional businessman. So that is the short answer to the question. The fact of the matter is that Hogarth really managed to capture something of the zeitgeist of Georgian London. He was in a broad street they refer to as his modern moral subjects. So he was skewering society. He was skewing society in terms of absolute excess, in terms of ideas of being both genteel, but also the rugged and ragged side of London life. Also, you had lots of different conflicts going on in Europe at the time. You had Napoleonic wars, you had all these different things going on. And Hogarth really grabbed onto that with both hands. And some of his most famous series, so Harlot's Progress and A Rate's Progress, what began as paintings. But he really understood, sort of in the same way as Durer, that by producing prints, his work could reach a much bigger audience. But what he really understood was that he could create a print market that he could control, which I think is also something very interesting, which also relates to the Renaissance is that quite a few artists realized that if they could control their own print market, they were actually, they weren't having to rely on patronage. And they could also make work in a way that meant, you know, it was a larger amount of work, as in volume, and would be sold at a lower cost. But that could actually make a real difference and could even fund future painting practice. So what Hogarth did was he. He sort of cultivated a group of collectors and he really introduced the idea of the print edition. And that means that you only print a certain number of impressions and then that is done. It could be 20, it could be 100, but it is something called a closed edition. And so really what you're doing by that is you're creating scarcity value. So it means. And even with some of his series, what he realized he could do was he could introduce the closed edition, but also say to his buyers, I need the money up front. I haven't created the work yet, but if you pay me now, it's going to cost you less than if the edition is done. You know, this idea of a VIP premium, and it's sort of similar to the way that we work with subscription models now, but he really spearheaded that and that's why the series that I've just mentioned, and also Beer street and Gin Lane, have become such important images and have stayed in our consciousness so much because they were collected and they were preserved and they've entered many different collections and can be exhibited far and wide in a way that a single painting couldn't be. And that's something important that I talk about throughout, is that you do have this idea that art can come to the people, the people don't have to go to the art. So that is very important. And obviously we have Hogarth and then we move into this sort of golden age of the caricature in London specifically. So you're looking at people like Gilray and Cruikshank who were doing these incredible works that really, really poked fun at the aristocracy and poked fun at political readers. And it was entertainment. At the end of the day, it's art, but it's also entertainment. And a lot of these works would even be. Would be put in shop window fronts in the West End in London so that people could walk by and they could see the works. These were spectacles in and of themselves, but they weren't. They weren't necessarily buying them, but they could still enjoy them. I mean, this is a long time before tv, so this was, this was entertainment for the people.
- [24:45]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, I think that's definitely something worth remembering. This is very much a time when, as you said, like, window. Not even window shopping, I suppose. It's like you go up and look at the prints and it's like, oh, look, there's new prints in the window today. Like, this was very much a big deal culturally as well as sort of artistically and commercially. So thank you for helping us understand kind of how that could happen. Clearly, I think by now, listeners are realizing that the sorts of things I'm picking out from the book are less in terms of, you know, tell me why this image is so gorgeous. I mean, yes, there's lots of great images in the book that's definitely worth emphasising, but more in terms of what is happening in society, politically, legally, economically, that kind of makes these sorts of aesthetic developments kind of possible. So we've talked about that in terms of links with armour, we've talked about that in terms now of Hogarth and sort of creating scarcity. What if we go somewhere very different, for example, to Japan? Can you tell us about the legal changes in the early 18th century that impact what could and could not be printed?
- [25:50]
Holly E.J. Black
Yes. I mean, really around that time, we're talking about the tail end of the Tokugawa Shogunate. So this was a country that had a strict isolationist policy, hardly any trade with the outside world at all. And there were very. This was a military dictatorship at the end of the day. And there were very, very, very strict sumptuary laws relating to caste and relating to your position in society, what you could wear as man and woman, how you presented yourself to the outside world. And really what was happening during this time in Japan was there were struggles going on, there was prosperity and there was peace. There were also sort of ongoing political struggles about what could be allowed and what couldn't be allowed. So I think probably quite a few of your listeners will be at least vaguely aware of the phenomenon that was Edo period Japan and Ukiyoi prints. So these beautiful technicolored woodcuts that deal with exceptional precision. We're talking about people like Hiroshige and Hokusai, Utakawa School, all of these incredible works that, again, could be bought for. I think there's always an analogy that's used that you could pick up a print for the same price as a bowl of noodles. But again, they're also very beautiful luxury prints and all these things as well. But printmakers, artists had to constantly innovate with what they were allowed to produce in order to escape various forms of Censorship. You also have this really strange dichotomy in society where you have a very prosperous red light district, it's called Yoshiwara, that was basically a walled city, which was considered the hotbed of artistic production and poetry. But it was very much. It was a place for sex workers. You know, we're talking about Keisha culture here. So you always had this sort of strange Prussian pull in society. So it meant that officially you might not be able to produce. Something that became very popular was the idea of bijingar, which is pictures of beautiful women and very celebrated courtesans would be depicted. But then suddenly there would be a new rule that said that you weren't allowed to. You weren't allowed to write their name, or you weren't allowed to show certain signifiers, their hair in a certain way or a certain piece of clothing that would be emblematic of who they were as a person. That also happened with depictions of various Noh theater and other things like that. Or then there might be something to do with certain samurai warriors. So there were all these things that were constantly moving and shift. And at the end of the day, it was really to do with power struggles. It was to do with the Shogunate's slow grip on power. It was also this idea of, as we move later into the end of the Edo era, when we're talking about the fourth opening of Japan to broader forms of trade, which happened in around 1854, and suddenly you have this explosion of trade, but this explosion of information coming from the outside world and vice versa. All of them an obsession with Japanese culture that really exploded in Europe. But so it was really the Shogun that was trying to keep control of things, but not quite being able to do it, and also wanting to engage with this new era of prosperity that again came with the merchant class. So I think one of the most fascinating things when it comes to printmaking, but also when you look on a broader scale to do with art, is that it always comes to ideas. It backs to ideas of politics and power. And this was definitely the case. So even at the. When some edicts were relaxed, it meant that people were allowed to travel a little bit more. Again, we're looking at sort of the mid-1800s here, which meant that artists such as Hokusai and Hiroshige started producing these incredible compendiums, you know, the views of Mount Fuji and things like this. But people will be familiar with views of the Tokaido Road, which were really like postcards for, you know, beautiful postcards and bigger that Everyday people could experience and could start to understand their own country in a way that they wouldn't have been able to before and could be transported into. Look at this beautiful suite of images that just show all the incredible waterfalls that we have in our country. So that was very important as well. So you constantly see these moves and these shifts as culture moves with the times, with different struggles in power. Yeah.
- [30:13]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
And of course, there's all sorts of people, as you said, much further afield than Japan kind of looking at all this and going, whoa. And those are very much still images that we have now. Right. It's not just today that we're fascinated by looking back at these prints. People between now and then have also been fascinated by looking at and comparing all these different things you've been telling us about. So, for instance, the Expressionists were certainly amongst the people intrigued by some of the things we've been discussing. Can you tell us a bit about what they found so compelling and how this influenced their and other artistic movements going forward?
- [30:48]
Holly E.J. Black
Yeah. Well, the interesting thing about the Expressionists, I focus quite a lot on the German Expressionists in the book is the fact that printmaking, actually, we've just been talking about Japanese printmaking in Ukiyo, which was an incredible trade and a very specific, sophisticated art that involved lots of different people and is very rigid in the way that everything was produced. Exceptionally beautiful, but very, very intensive. But actually, what the German Expressionists really, really loved about turning to printmaking was, lo and behold, the expressive quality, the actual, Almost the naivety that you could get through something by using woodblock, by gouging into wood and creating something that was much more about an emotive force. And there are very much, you know, works and other parts of histories that we discussed. You know, you only need to look at juror's prints to see these. These incredible works. And, you know, Rembrandt's dry points are absolutely incredible, emotionally potent images. And the German Expressionists really grabbed hold of that. And I also spent some time talking about Munch, Everard Munch. He was a fantastic printmaker and was also very influential, even though he was only slightly older when it came to German Expressionism. And, you know, really this was a time that was obviously dealing with exceptional, you know, the horrors of war, all of the terrible psychological anxieties. Also, many of these artists actually fought in the First World War, so printmaking was actually a way that. It was another form of expression, of dealing with imagery and finding an affinity between the way that they were making the Work and what it actually represented. But once again, it became really important with regards to, oh, this is an art form that we can use to disseminate our work and get the message out there. That was something that German Expressionists did. It was something that Tapi Kolowitz did. He was an. Absolutely. Is a hugely influential printmaker. She was. Her images of her war series, her series of the Mothers were just. And the Peasants Revolt were, you know, they were about this suffering in society. And especially for her, it was about the suffering of women as well. And she felt a compulsion to share this work with the world. And it ended up being hugely influential. It places as far away as Mexico, which is another chapter that I focus on. But it was seen as really important to produce these anti war portfolios, these anti fascist portfolios. They could be either portfolios of books. So again, you have a real understanding of. You have the psychological side of things and how that relates to the physicality of making, but also the idea of dissemination and how that was so important for getting the message out there. And again, also the idea of having to be quick and having to be reflexive. You know, there are artists during the Renaissance who were running away with their. With their metal plates and their woodcuts, you know, fleeing from the sack of Rome. There are people stealing each other's plates or there would be work that would be destroyed by various oppressive governments. So there's this idea of you have to sort of constantly be in the. On the move sometimes, which again, the German Expressionist grabbed hold of a lot of the time because they might just be carving a piece of wood that they found whilst they were actually an active soldier, as well as using the print facilities that were available and embedded in the cities. So there's a lot at play.
- [34:25]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, there is definitely a lot going on. And I'd love to pick up the mention you just made of the examination you have in the book of Mexican printmakers, because I thought that was interesting, especially on this point of sort of popularizing printmaking and the kind of community organizing aspect like this is not just sort of one person off by themselves and you only find what they've done decades later. Can you tell us what was going on in Mexico?
- [34:48]
Holly E.J. Black
Yes, of course. Well, I actually focus on the Taia di Grafica Popular, which was a collect. It was an artist collective, but it was a political collective. We're talking about the time of. They're known as the Trosgrandes. These were the Mexican muralists who were some of the most famous Artists in the world at the time. I think it's always very funny now that Frida Kahlo was always considered the wife of Diego Rivera, but now I think Diego Rivera would be considered the husband of Frida Kahlo. But he was one of the biggest artists in the world at the time. And from out of his shadow and knew era, a new generation of artists emerged who really saw the Print workshop as a way of being a political collective and producing works of art that really could be painted up in the street, could form political publications, could really be used as a way to continually mobilize the people and also produce a form of Mexicandad, which is sort of a vernacular Mexican identity. And a figure that was really important within that was Jose Guadalupe Posada, who. He was a printmaker who was kind of considered more of like a jobbing illustrator. And he was an illustrator and printmaker. He worked on a number of different newspapers and publications. I kind of refer to the book as, like, penny dreadfuls. You know, the idea of sort of. They are. They're new stories, but they're. They're kind of salacious and they're. They're about political corruption and they're about murder and they're about disaster. And he was the artist that really popularized the Calaveras, which are the skeletons that we all know so, so well. These motifs of skeletons that relate to the idea of the Day of the Dead and really became an important symbol of Mexican identity. And he has one incredible figure known as La Catrina, who. She is a skeleton that's wearing a very European bonnet. And it was his way of really skewering the idea of the European heirs and graces that the ruling political classes in Mexico adopted. So actually, the Teidegrafka popular really grabbed hold of him as sort of a folk hero. And he appears in lots of other works by really important printmakers. I have people like Leopoldo Mendez and Pablo Higgins and people like this who really saw the Print shop as an important piece of Mexican identity, but also building connections with other people. So what was really significant I found during my research was the connections that it had to artists who engaged in the civil rights struggle in the United States. Elizabeth Catlett would be the sort of the biggest name that people would know. And Charles White people like this who were African American artists who saw what was going on in Mexico and saw that things were actually. I guess they were more critically well received, and they traveled to Mexico. I mean, Elizabeth Cutler actually became a Mexican citizen, and she produced incredible woodcuts but also lino cuts and lithographs. She produced this amazing series called the Black Woman, which really looks at incredible figures throughout black female history and who are important figures within the civil rights struggle. And was also, you know, looking to people like Kathy Kollowitz, who again, had a huge influence on the tydigraphical popular and sort of for specific printmakers and the way that they were approaching their work and approaching this really politically minded landscape. So it's lovely to see all these constellations that develop. The further I get into the book, you see names pop up again and again. So it might be a master printmaker, which is a term that is very well established in the industry, which really means someone who would probably run a print studio, who would be considered the. Well, really just a master of their art form. So they would be the person who not only was working with the hugest names you can imagine, you know, we've been talking about, like, you know, Picasso and Rauschenberg and Warhol, you know, all these big names. They would work with them to realize their vision and help them with that, the technical acumen, whether it would be helping them actually produce work themselves, which is the case of Stanley William Hayter, an incredibly influential printmaker who worked with all the Surrealists and then moved to New York and influenced the Abstract Expressionists, and Robert Blackburn, who was an African American printmaker, who's incredibly important. He was an artist that grew up in the milieu of the Harlem Renaissance and was very important in the same way as the Tyler Grafica popular, of developing something that was a really important space for people of color and people who felt that they didn't necessarily belong in other print spaces in New York at the time. And he was keeping the studio going, creating that ecosystem, but also creating a family, a family of amazing creative people who could learn from each other, who could hone their practice and also unlock other areas of their artistic practice through printing. And that's something that's really important for me to talk about in the book as well, is we often have this idea that a print is nothing more than a facsimile of a. Of an image that already exists. And sometimes that's true, but a lot of the time it is not. And they are complete inventions or they are exceptional transliterations that actually produce a work of art in a different way that is only possible through exceptional artistry and a real knowledge of the print process itself.
- [40:50]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
And of course, the knowledge of storytelling and the ways that that's being used. I mean, as you mentioned a whole bunch of political purposes there and you listed some examples. You also talk about in the book printmaking being an effective political tool, not just in Mexico or the US but, for example, against South African apartheid. So can we talk about that perhaps?
- [41:09]
Holly E.J. Black
Yes, of course. This felt like an important chapter to include because again, it's an area that maybe it will only really be dealt with in specialist publications. But I found it really interesting to understand how in South Africa, you know, we're talking sort of mid 20th century here. So like in the 1950s and 60s, there was a. As we all know, this was, you know, this was a period of apartheid where absolutely every element of society was racially segregated. And you had the Bantu education policy that separated all different forms of education, including art and what certain people were allowed to study and what they weren't. So it was very much considered, you know, the world of painting and sculpture and the classical European pantheon was for a white audience and then for an audience who was black. They not only were not able to engage with their own history in a way that was scholarly and effective, but they were also only allowed to work in ways that were considered to be craft based. And that's a really interesting thing with print, again, because it meant that a lot of print, sort of educational schools and things that started to develop, they were allowed to, because printmaking was seen as a craft. And one of the most significant ones is referred to as Rorke's Drift, because this is where it was. This was a location in Natal and it was a really important place that was actually set up as a. It was effectively a mission school and was set up by a Swedish couple, but they worked with a whole series of printmakers and really developed a. I wouldn't quite say a ruling esthetic, but they really helped own a nurture. Both it was predominantly relief printing because, again, there weren't many resources. So wood is something that's more readily available. And then you also really see the introduction of linocut. People might be familiar with the term. Linocut actually comes from linoleum tiles, so those rubbery tiles that you would get on a floor. And so that was a material that was more readily available. So that was something that people were using a lot. And really this became a really important position of resistance. Some of the early members of Rorke's Drift, one of the best known is Kaya, Charles and Cozy, who produced this incredible series that was called the Black Crucifixion that really deals with biblical narratives, but from the black Perspective the same with Azaria and Batha. And so this pathway sort of led to other. This was actually a very rural school. But then it really. You see this sort of web that develops, especially in Johannesburg with places like the Poly Street Arts center and other places like the Community Arts Project. And the Community Arts Project was somewhere that I found quite significant because they introduced the idea of a cultural worker. And really, that is sort of putting your line in the sand with the idea of as an artist, really having a conviction that your work is a political weapon that can be used to create change and free oppressed people. So this was. These were things that were going on before the deconstruction of apartheid law that then actually were able to blossom as once that happened once we get to the 90s. But in this period, these were incredibly fraught periods. There were periods where every institution or every school had to be headed by white personnel. You're dealing with things where people were only allowed to live in certain areas. There were curfews for black people. So if you wanted to do any kind of evening classes or school, they all had to finish at really specific times. And there was also. There were just many ways that people innovating to get around rules. And again, one of the things that was done with a lot of these print facilities and studios was labeling them as recreational, as opposed to educational, as opposed to an art school, because that meant that they didn't have to fall under the same jurisdiction. And as you move into this period in the 90s, other studios begin to set up. Artist Pref Studio is still a really important nonprofit in Johannesburg, who ended up working on the first Johannesburg Biennale to create a project called Volatile Alliances, where they worked with other print studios across the world to deal with questions and really complicated ideas to do with what this new era would mean. And also really important questions around the HIV AIDS crisis. So you have all these. And that's a studio that's still really, really important in Johannesburg and has the support of a lot of very well established artists in South Africa, notably William Kentridge. But you also have. There were so many other artists that you could mention, but printmaking has sort of become ingrained in the practice of so many artists. And Salmon Klingetwar, who's probably best known as a painter, he's also sort of comes from this lineage of printmaking and is still printmaking to this day. But he actually works in lithography, which is a process that nowadays can be really, really akin to look a lot more like a painting. But he created a whole series that are all to do with the influences of other artists, predominantly South African, but also people like Basquiat that he situates in living rooms that he thinks sort of reflect sort of a contemporary South African milieu. So this new world that we live in, and those are some of the latest works in the book, actually. So some of those are really, really new. So, yeah, it felt like a really important area to discuss because some people that I spoke to who have a far stronger grounding in the South African art scene and me just kept talking about the fact that printmaking was really important for this part of the story. So I'm really, really happy to include it.
- [47:20]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, no, it's very cool to be able to, I mean, have a global history that spans so many different places, but also so much different time. Right. As you said, going right up to where we are now, which might surprise some readers or listeners, given that we're in such an age of digital to kind of hear that printmaking is still such a thing. So how might readers or listeners sort of think about printmaking in that context? What do you sort of hope they take away from all of this? This.
- [47:46]
Holly E.J. Black
Well, I think one of the things that's really interesting, obviously it's always such a nightmare when you come to the final chapter and you're like, oh, no, now we're in the present day. What do I do? But I think what was so interesting is we're looking at this moment of, you know, the Internet, the digital age that we live in, and how there's so many things to consider and understand with regards to the print, because we, you know, we now live in an era where there isn't nearly as much printed matter as there used to be. You know, the idea that you would print anything out at all is quite strange. And it also has created a sort of strange collapsing of the idea of what print really means. And I think that that's something that I really wanted to grapple with in the final chapter, particularly because there is a. There's a real. You could probably call it a boom. I think there's a real interest in printmaking in the contemporary art market at the moment. And that has a lot to do with new generations of collectors, the sort of demystifying of auction houses and things like that, and artists working directly with print studios, again, to produce really high quality edition work, so producing work that might have really complicated finishes. Micklayne Thomas is a fantastic example. She's an African American painter who also uses a lot of adornment in her work. Lots of glitter and lots of rhinestones and things like this. And she's working with printers who can actually reproduce that on an addition to scale. And so really pushing that envelope. And that's something that has been going on for a long time. You know, the Pop artists were doing that as well. But there's. There's. There's sort of. I think we're going through a period when actually there's quite a lot of reflex to do with everything, looking. Looking at everything on screen. And I have to admit, as well, you know, I finished this book before we really got into this immense conversation about AI. And actually, in the book, although I talk about forms of mass dissemination for print, it's also. There's a tactility to it. There's a will. You know, if you look at an intagligo process, specifically something like an etching, you can see the impression of that, the force of the press pushing a metal plate into the piece of paper, so that there is sort of an embossedness to the image itself and that actually, you know, something that can't be replicated. And so actually, there's this idea of tactility. There's this idea of closeness, there's this idea of wanting to feel something of substance, which I think has. Is sort of coming through. And also, again, I think that the print market as well, it's a really accessible. It's often considered in the art world as sort of entry level, you know, this idea that more people, again, can afford it. And also it's possible to reach people on a really global scale because we have the Internet now. So you could buy a print from a museum across the other side of the world or from an artist, and then that could be delivered to your doorstep in a way that still would have been, you know, a little bit more tricky before we had the Internet age. But also, I thought it's also quite important. A lot of what I talk about in that final chapter as well is the political role that printmaking has played on a different scale. And talking about bodily autonomy, I think there are links to be made between artists and printmakers who were dealing with ideas of the body, and particularly the female body, the trans body, the idea of how bodies are sort of owned and oppressed and commodified. I talk about Paul Arago in the book, who, just like Elizabeth Catlett and then Katie Kollowitz, produced a series of etchings based on other works that she'd made about abortion. And that was A reflex to do with a ruling in Portugal, where it was a referendum that actually wasn't successful. And Paula Rego, who's Portuguese but spent. But spent most of her career living in London, was actually appalled by this. And she ended up producing these etchings that were much more about individualistic experience of illegal abortion. And they were picked up by newspapers in Portugal and actually were an important part of the discussion around the referendum. And actually a subsequent referendum did pass. And something that was quite interesting to really grapple with was the idea that they're showing sort of. They're very melancholy and quite disturbing images of things that, you know, of women in pain or sort of in a bath and things that you might do to have to sort of go through that process yourself, as opposed to getting proper medical attention. And you couldn't really show a photograph of something like that because it would be so horrific and it would. You also have ideas of people's privacy and things like that. So print was really important in that way. And Rodrigo talked about that a lot. So again, it relates to this wider question of the political landscape in print. And I even talk about Shepherd Fairey's print for Obama's election campaign, the Hope poster, which actually started off as something that was a lithograph but was just printed and sort of fly posted around, around, I think it was California, and then became a really important symbol of the Obama campaign ahead of him being elected as president. And that's been. Shepard Fairey has actually reproduced that in a screen printed painting. He's produced it as a more limited edition nistograph, but it was also readily available as a download as a jpeg, so people could print it out themselves. So again, that's another amazing example of an artist sort of taking ownership of the image but then releasing it into the world to have real political effect.
- [53:34]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, I mean, it's very clear that this is all. Printmaking is still very relevant today as much as also having such great history. So thank you for giving us a sense of the many things included in the book. And of course it's out in the world now, so people who want more can go find it and read it themselves. What might you be working on then next? Whether or not it's a book, whether or not it's about printmaking. Anything you want to give us a sneak preview of?
- [54:00]
Holly E.J. Black
Well, I think I'm still flying the flag at the moment. I'm actually, because I am a journalist, I'm currently at the opening week of the Venice Biennale, which is when it's the oldest Biennale in the world, and the entire world descends upon it, it seems. So I am doing lots of reporting this week from here, and I'm also telling as many people as I can about the book and about the stories. And so I think I am going to have a little bit of a rest and a break. But I think everyone always says that, and then you always have something in the back of your mind. So currently, my area, it's actually something that has some tangential links to the world of printmaking, but my sort of new area of focus is the Arts and Crafts movement and the Pre Raphaelites in Britain. I actually live in an area of London, Walthamstow, which has the William Morris Gallery, and it's been an area of interest for me for a long while because of affinities to do with locality, because I'm from places where a lot of these artists were from. But again, I'm specifically looking at the women involved in these movements. And again, that's something that's very important for me in the story of printmaking is telling a lot of unsung stories. There are a lot of women that don't get their dues, and even that first chapter that we talked about starts with two incredible bloodthirsty empresses who were related to print, and one of them was related to Dunhuang. So I'm just continuing to tell the stories at the moment and bending everyone's ear, every single person I've met here, every curator, every artist, every fellow journalist. So I think I'll be flying the flag for a bit longer before I settle into that other research subject.
- [55:45]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Well, fair enough. And listeners who want to follow that path, of course. The book we've been discussing is titled the Story of a Global History of Art, published by Yale University Press in 2026. Holly, thank you so much, so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [56:00]
Holly E.J. Black
Thank you so much. It's been really lovely to speak to you about it.