SIR HOWARD HODGKIN C.H., C.B.E. (BRITISH 1932-2017)
BOOKS FOR THE PARIS REVIEW, 1997-99 (HEENK 100)
initialled and dated 97 in pencil (lower right), numbered 29/80 (lower left), lift-ground etching and aquatint with carborundum and hand colouring on hand-made cotton paper, from the total edition of 100 (80 numbered in Arabic, 20 numbered in Roman numerals), plus 20 Artist's Proofs, 5 printer's proofs and 1 BAT.Published by the Paris Review, New York, 1998.Printed by Jack Shirreff, assisted by Andrew Smith and Claire Wait, at 107 Workshop, Wiltshire.
sheet: 38cm x 42cm (15in x 16 ½in)
The Watermill Gallery, Aberfeldy, from whom acquired by Steve Allison, December 2008.The Steve Allison Collection
Howard Hodgkin’s prints are singularly vibrant, evocative and expressive. It is difficult to draw parallels between the artist and his printmaking contemporaries; Hodgkin carved his own path. Yet he always considered himself an amateur printmaker and referred to himself as ‘a painter who makes prints.’ He preferred to bring his artistic sensibility to the medium and was only interested in the technical aspects of printmaking insofar as they could serve his distinct artistic vision. It is this very innovative approach to traditional printmaking techniques that makes his work in the medium so powerful and immediate. Hodgkin started making prints in 1957, only four years after he began painting. Although his paintings feel gestural and spontaneous, his process is in fact laborious: over long periods spent in insolation within a quiet and empty studio, he applies his paint in stages. This inclination towards a ‘layered’ approach translates well to printmaking, but beyond that it is a different way of working altogether. Unless an artist is trained as a printmaker they must rely upon collaboration, with the artist dependent on the skill, expertise and understanding of the printmaker or technician they are working with, and access to their equipment in an often-busy print studio. In her catalogue raisonné of Hodgkin prints (covering those produced up until 2002), Liesbeth Heenk identifies two significant moments of collaboration in the artist’s evolution in print, where master printmakers introduced Hodgkin to new techniques that were to become integral to his method: these were Maurice Payne in 1977 and Jack Shirreff in 1986.  Hodgkin commenced printmaking with lithography and the occasional screenprint but as his interest progressed, he explored other techniques for which he would eventually become known. His collaboration with Maurice Payne started in 1977, beginning a use of hand colouring which would become an increasingly important technique in later years. More importantly, this introduced Hodgkin to the technique of soft-ground etching. He reflected that ‘soft-ground etching is about the most immediate [medium] imaginable . . . because it is just the plate covered with grease which can be easily removed or worked into, with almost fatal facility.’ This meant he could engage with the plate in a more painterly fashion, free from some of the rigours of traditional printmaking, and allowed him to express himself with a direct spontaneity. This repudiation of the traditional appears in other aspects of Hodgkin’s approach to printmaking, such as his rejection of the plate-mark, a standard identifier of intaglio printing; he wished to eschew the fussiness of these lines and the mechanical framing they provided. Instead, Hodgkin printed either on plates larger than the paper, or tore the sheet down after printing so that he could frame the image in his own way. The resultant images retain a striking modernity and immediacy. In 1986 he began working with Jack Shirreff, who introduced Hodgkin to the combining of techniques such as lift-ground aquatint and the relatively new medium of carborundum. This added a richness to his prints, with the carborundum enabling a transference of both the inked image and surface texture to the sheet through a process of embossing, with varied depth and intensity across the plate. However the most significant evolution was the approach to hand colouring. Historically this would have been the application of watercolour or gouache at the end of the printing process, either because the technology for colour printing wasn’t available or to simulate the appearance of a unique work on paper. True to irreverent form, Hodgkin turned this on its head by utilising hand colouring at any stage of the printing process, either as a starting wash, between print layers or at the end. This makes the distinct layers difficult to distinguish in the finished work and brings a luminosity and lushness. Hodgkin subverts this technique even further, as the hand colouring is never by his hand: he delegates this part of the process to someone else, a technician or friend. He often doesn’t even demonstrate what he wishes but offers instructions instead; on the thickness of the brush, volume of pigment and the intensity of the application, using poetic instructions including ‘like a silk-stocking’, ‘like a whisper’ or ‘like a bold explosion’. This allows a distance to be maintained between the artist and the print, simultaneously drawing both closer to, and further away from, painting, even as Hodgkin retains control of the finished print when he approves and marks the final editions. In conversation with Heenk, Hodgkin mused that on seeing the finished version of his prints: ‘. . . I still cannot believe it and I find that magic. That is probably the reason I have gone on making prints.’ On consideration of Hodgkin’s print career, we can attribute this magic to his enduring artistic vision and continued appetite for evolution and innovation, and his ability to manipulate and expand the medium to serve his aims. It is this magic which draws us to Hodgkin’s prints and ensures their continued popularity and enduring power.