The Messiness is the Message

Abstract

Once, in a dinner conversation with another printmaker I had just met at a prominent craft school, he started joking about monotypes. He was a woodcut artist, and I had told him that while my art practice is multi-disciplinary, copper plate etching is the medium that I return to most faithfully. We compared notes about our print practices, and when the subject of monotypes arose, with playful contemptuousness, my new friend referred to these as “squished paintings.” This broke the ice, and we both laughed. For the rest of the meal, we continued to bond over the pleasing arduousness of our relative preferred printmaking processes, the potential messiness and apparently unsettling immediacy of monoprinting, and the general viewing public’s overall indifference to the differences between, say, a woodcut, an etching, and a monotype. 

Considering my apparent unease with the medium, ironically, the work of art that has most consumed my thoughts in recent years is a 1997 trace monotype by the ultra-famous Tracey Emin, a 59 x 73 cm print depicting a relaxed female figure sitting on a sofa. Her eyes are shut and her legs are open; she appears to be masturbating. Above and to the left of the figure floats an indiscernible object. Below the image are the words “I USED TO HAVE SUCH A GOOD IMAGINATION,” which is also the title of the piece. Both Ns in “Imagination” are backward, an indication that Emin drew this through the back of the paper, and perhaps quite quickly.