It cannot be said to
rank alongside Newton's observation of the falling apple for importance, but Frederick Walton noticing the elastic nature of dried linseed oil on a paint-can had unforeseen implications for kitchen
floors and art prints for over a century.
This discovery of linoleum in 1863 - a gummy blend of linseed oil, resins and cork dust on coarse canvas backing that dries to form a durable but flexible tile -determined the covering of many floors
for many decades as it was inexpensive, easy to use and impressively hardwearing. Its leap from the studio floor to the printmaker's desk was more surprising but it appealed enormously to artists as
a much more workable medium than the pear, sycamore or beechwood used for woodcuts. More surprising still was the way in which a trio of artists at a London Art School developed strikingly
distinctive themes in the medium that em-bodied the energy and inventiveness of the Machine Age. These prints have now become some of the most desirable images in all British
printmaking.
 Figure 10. Sybil Andrews (1898-1992), 'Bringing in the Boat', colour linocut, 1933, signed and titled, numbered 1/60, on tissue thin japan paper, 13in.
x 10¼in. There is an imaginative use of parallels here to describe the crablike movement of the rowers. An old-fashioned sport has been given a thoroughly modern interpretation. The thin paper
tears easily and was often gummed onto support sheets to reduce the risk of damage and creases. £22,325, July 2008.
The Technique and Tradition of
Linocutting
Linocutting is an intaglio process where cutting into a surface is required (unlike lithography or screen-printing which is planographic). The grain of wood affords remarkable effects in woodcuts but
it is more challenging to use and more expensive when mistakes are made. The linoleum tile is much softer to work and figures 3 and 4 show how a satisfying (if slightly stark) image can be created by
gouging out the rubbery resin, inking the resulting surface and pressing paper onto that surface to create the image. This particular linocut is by A.R. Bradbury who was competent but not noteworthy
in the medium. However, his skill in cutting away the unwanted part of the block to produce the horse's head near the cart wheel without it becoming a muddled mosaic confounds one widely-held belief:
children often experiment with linocutting at school and so it became to some print collectors what sausages are to a gourmet - too inalienably associated with the pleasures of youngsters to be
worthy of a connoisseur's attention. This taboo arose despite the extraordinary linocuts made by German Expressionists, Henri Matisse and Picasso amongst others. However, it is undoubtedly true that
a linocut is an unpretentious and uncomplicated print form. Claude Flight used ribs from umbrellas to gouge his blocks, table spoons or a rolling pin to rub the paper close to the inked block and
even his feet to ensure a firm contact right across the block.
Part of its appeal to the artists of the Grosvenor School was the medium's lack of ancestry. In The Art and Craft of Lino Cutting and Printing (London, 1934), Flight was pleased that the
technique had no tradition behind it, 'so that the student can go forward without thinking of what Bewick or Rembrandt did before'. Furthermore, the advantage was its remarkable versatility. No
presses were required and so half a dozen blocks of almost any size could be put together (just like flooring) to create large prints, no special tools were needed and it worked well with simple
water-based inks. The disadvantages were principally (but critically) aes-thetic: the lack of texture deprived lino of the intriguing grain and bias of pearwood, the softness of lino prevented the
cutting of fine details and the slippery surface yielded a mottled effect when using richly coloured inks. However, these shortcomings were an additional part of the allure as the technique required
a determinedly modern approach. The old traditions of printmaking had to be set aside and so linoleum demanded subject matter that was contemporary and shamelessly modern.
|
