THINKING PRINT:
Books to Billboards, 1980-95
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
June 20 to September 10, 1996

The exhibition, organized by Deborah Wye, since May 
1996 Chief Curator of the Department of Prints and 
Illustrated Books, guides you through three sections:
New Printmakers, Techniques and Formats, Themes and 
Language.  And it guides you through galleries, each 
painted differently, from white to light grey, deep 
dark grey and back to white spaces. It's a show that
entices you to concentrate, to focus on a particular 
work. 

I am not sure if the prints themselves are demanding 
this attention or if the galleries, getting darker and 
darker, are tranquilizing to such an extend, that you 
actually start to look at the work.

If the title suggests somekind of evolution from books 
to billboards, than the exhibition proposes three 
artists, who have gone this way: Jean-Charles Blais, 
Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger.  

Thinking print transforms to thinking big?

Rainald Schumacher

Email: ThingReviews

Nice too see The Museum of Modern Art on the internet, I wounder if we can use a link to this site for ours costumers Have a nice day! /ola

Thinking print, thinking to write a thank you note from Koln... I am now visting with Felix. Otherwise, I missed the show.

Thinking Print succeeds to openly inform and attract us to the possibilities of print. More shows like this, which focus on the diverse reasons an artist chooses to utilize a particular medium, would be a worthy investment in the future of art.

As digital technology develops, I've fallen more and more in love with the properties of print, paper, and marks. This from the FIAT LUX proceedings: http://reality.sgi.com/grafica/fiatlux/book.html "Books are portable information appliances. They can be made both small and lightweight. They are easy to carry and resistant to water. Printed books have a fluid and transparent user interface. The tactile and responsive user interface of a bound book is hard to match with any modern digital technology. The only power source a book needs is ambient light. In addition, print is compatible with almost any light source. A book can be powered by sunlight, florescent light or simply a candle. The image quality available in print is hard to match with current digital displays. High quality photographs and text are presented with unmatched fidelity." long live print!

As seen at the Guggenheim, since Mindscape (aka: The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Wastescape), there's still a long way to go before media-arts become something more than kitsch, so here-here long live the printworld...