Waxing Poetic: Encaustic Art in America during the Twentieth Century by Gail Stavitsky, Ph.D., Chief Curator

Montclair Art Museum

Montclair, NJ

973-746-5555

http://www.montclairartmuseum.org/

Waxing Poetic: Encaustic Art in America during the Twentieth Century

by Gail Stavitsky, Ph.D., Chief Curator

The Encaustic Art Revival of the 1980s and 1990s / Encaustic Art and the Act of Collaboration: Donald J. Saff, Garner Tullis

In recent years, the ground-breaking work of Donald J. Saff, in collaboration with a variety of adventurous artists, has greatly extended the versatility of the encaustic medium. As Director of Graphicstudio at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Donald J. Saff developed a unique process of printing in encaustic which he called waxtype. Saff's abiding interest in encaustic originated in regular visits as an art student to The Metropolitan Art Museum where he admired the richness, saturation, and luminosity of the Fayum portraits -- "beyond anything I have ever seen in basically any other medium."[231] His later invention of waxtype in the late eighties was prompted by a desire to work with Jasper Johns who was one of the few leading artist-printmakers that Saff had not yet collaborated with at his pre-eminent atelier. Aware only of a previous series of prints by Brice Marden in the 1970s involving a slow build-up of wax with solvent, Saff conducted research and developed samples for a more varied, complex approach. Although no project with Johns was realized, the new medium appealed to the open, fertile mind of Roy Lichtenstein who created the translucent yet saturated, colorful Brushstroke Figures in 1989. Publication of this suite introduced a new registered process "that provides the full range of qualities found in encaustic painting for use in the making of print art."[232] Employed in combination with lithography, collage, woodblock: and screenprinting techniques, waxtype was presented in two forms in Brushstroke Figures. Specially developed photo-sensitive stencil screens were created from posterized images of brushstrokes, according to the thickness of a prepared formula of beeswax, solvent, and dry or concentrated pigments. This mixture was squeegeed through the screen onto a substrate, resulting in a matte effect with hard edge qualities. The screened wax formula was also at times "melted with a torch and buffed in a number of successive overlays that create a kind of sheen enhancing the luminosity, translucency, and intensity of color saturation of the medium while building up the soft edge impasto effects of true encaustic brushstrokes."[233]

Finding this new process to be a most sympathetic vehicle for the realization of his artistic vision, Lichtenstein collaborated with Saff on other encaustic projects, including Reflections on Expressionist Painting. Published in 1991 for a portfolio celebrating the 100th anniversary of Carnegie Hall, this screenprint in fifteen encaustic colors was created at Saff Tech Arts in Oxford, Maryland (Saff's independent workshop which he opened in 1990). It is also based on the ironic image of the painterly brushstroke -- partly obscured by reflective streaks that allude to glass covering a painting -- which reappears repeatedly in Lichtenstein's late prints as a surprisingly "standardized thing -- a stamp or image" and commentary on Abstract Expressionism.{234]

Encaustic's unique lush translucent color and range of textural possibilities from thin to thick/low relief, hard-edged to painterly were of special interest to Lichtenstein who collaborated with Saff on another important project in this medium. A long series of tests based on Lichtenstein's earlier prints sparked his interest in the metamorphosis of one of his two-dimensional works into a sculpture. Through a complex process of digitalization, milling, and watercutting, a collage of his was transformed into the unique machined aluminum sculpture Woman Contemplating a Yellow Cup (1995) which is replete with references to Picasso, Johns, and Lichtenstein's own work. Poured into the free floating, linear aluminum framework, the scraped and buffed encaustic provided a depth, luminosity, richness, and saturation of color that could not be duplicated by any other medium. Donald Saff has also extended the properties of encaustic in fruitful collaborations with his longtime colleague and friend, Robert Rauschenberg. Saff served as the Artistic Director for Rauschenberg's vast international project known as R.O.C.I. (Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange), established in 1984, with exhibitions traveling to Mexico, China, the Soviet Union, and other countries in dedication to world peace. Renowned for his ability to unify diverse, nontraditional images and materials scavenged from his surroundings into an aesthetic whole, Rauschenberg created the Wax Fire Works in 1990 for R.O.C.I. Rauschenberg's fascination with mirrored surfaces, photographic images, and sculptural attachments was combined with his first use of encaustic wax in this series.

Completed for the presentation of R.O.C.I. at the National Gallery, these works were based on Rauschenberg's photographs of the United States, screened on highly reflective metal surfaces that capture the immediacy of their surroundings and the cultural diversity of America. The luminosity, richness of saturated color, and flexibility of encaustic facilitated its use for the bent aluminum stainless steel surfaces of these works at a time when Rauschenberg was interested in expanding his palette.[235]

Fascinated with the idea of combining ancient and contemporary technologies, Rauschenberg returned to the use of encaustic in a 1994 series entitled Shales. In collaboration with Saff Tech Arts, these paintings on canvas were made of brilliantly colored photo-transfers and expressive layers of wax at the artist's studio on Captiva island in Florida. Photographs taken by Rauschenberg were translated into digitized images that were transferred with encaustic into a primed base layer of wax on the canvas. In works such as Wonder, the organic process of embedding and at times peeling off imagery in layers of molten wax evoked the laminated structure of shale. Urban and natural images commingle with the tools of the artist's trade; their exceptional trompe l'oeil clarity and brightness is both heightened and subdued by the varied, unifying wax applications and encasements. Exhibited in 1994 at Knoedler & Company, the Shales series was praised as a return to the simplicity and directness of Rauschenberg's seminal collages of the 50s and the transfer paintings of the '60s, and a resplendent indication of his protean facility with new ideas, techniques, and materials.[236]

Another artist with whom Saff has collaborated in recent years is James Turrell, who is well known for his installations and earthworks that orchestrate encounters between viewers and their perception of light as a revelatory experience. Having seen Turrell's extraordinary exhibition in 1980 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Saff became interested in the concept of painting with light. He began a dialogue with Turrell to encourage him to explore the luminosity of wax as a vehicle for his interests. Turrell had already worked with wax to create a series of drawings based on aerial photographs and maps of his long-term earthworks project, the Roden Crater. In 1977, Turrell acquired this extinct volcanic cone in the Painted Desert outside Flagstaff, Arizona. Since 1979 he has been working towards the creation of a natural observatory within the restored and reshaped crater, creating a variety of viewing spaces "that will engage celestial events in light" in "this stage set of geologic time."[237] For his Roden Crater drawings of the 1980s and '90s, Turrell has transferred photoimages in wax emulsions to mylar sheets.[238] Thus he was receptive to Saff's proposal that they work together in the encaustic medium.

In 1993, Turrell, Saff, and Master Printer Patrick Foy collaborated on a series of eleven encaustic paintings on wood depicting aerial views of excavation plans for Roden Crater. Works such as Pre-Shaped Crater consist of over 30 layers of scraped and buffed wax. Turrell made mechanical drawings of the crater's various chambers and configurations which were photo-transferred into silkscreens that served as guidelines for successively incising the composition into the wax. The screens were then dusted with mica powder which was pressed through the screen and burned with torches into the incised lines of the pigmented wax to form the design (white areas had to be put in separately). The risk of losing the image through this exhaustive process of give and take was constant Yet the ends justified the means as Turrell prized encaustic's richness of color, luminosity, and build-up of wet transparent layers which he equated with the dripping of water onto rocks.[239] Regarding the translucency of encaustic as very appropriate for his work with light, Turrell would like to work with the medium again. Combining his interests in perceptual psychology. Eastern and Native American cultures, astronomy, and art, Turrell has created a compelling body of work in encaustic and other media that guides the viewer to experience first hand the sublime aspects of light, space, time, and illusion.

Garner Tullis has recently collaborated with a variety of artists who have created innovative encaustic works on paper utilizing his workshop's custom-made, computer-controlled hot table. Tullis's interest in wax dates back to 1961 when he began using beeswax to make his own etching grounds. He also began making monoprints by drawing images with wax and asphaltum on copper plates and printing while the mixture was still hot. Admiring the work of Medardo Rosso, Tullis continued his wax experiments at his sculpture foundry at Stanford University, as well as his International Institute of Experimental Printmaking. It was not, however, until after his return to New York in 1987 that Tullis began to experiment with encaustic.[240]

Wishing to enable artists to work directly on paper with encaustic, Tullis devised a hot metal table, that is regulated by a computer at temperatures between 150 and 330 degrees Fahrenheit. Among the first artists to work on this high-tech hot table was Robert Ryman with whom Tullis had already collaborated. During the winter of 1995 Ryman created the Core series of twenty-two small encaustic paintings on board or paper at Tulles's workshop. Well known for the infinite nuances of his reductive, non-objective white paintings, Ryman had previously worked with translucent wax paper mounts and borders in the series Surface Veils (1970) and Versions (1991). Interested in incorporating light as a
mutable element in the painting, Ryman was also interested in the softness and fragility of the waxed paper in relation to the solid surface of the wall.[241] Looking for a new way to work, Ryman, who has experimented with a number of painting mediums, accepted Tullis's imitation to collaborate on this series and additional encaustic paintings. Evidently the luminosity, malleability, and physicality of the encaustic medium suited Ryman, enabling him to work, in Tullis's words, "fast and slow against each other...out of his inner self," intuitively in tune with the sensuous reality of the materials.[242] In the Core series, Ryman employed encaustic and wax crayons for a range of effects, from subtle minimalist grids to lush vertical borders in rust and ochre which frame stark white expanses. Custom-made wood frames and Denglas are integral components of these works as well.

Tullis's collaboration with Melissa Meyer in 1997 reflected his desire to transform encaustic into a fluid, watercolor-like medium that could be manipulated in constant motion all over the heated sheet of paper. Rooted in his own studies of watercolor and collaborations with Sam Francis, Tullis contrasts this approach to the short discrete strokes and mark-making aspects of Johns's early encaustic work. Influenced by Johns and Marden, Meyer had previously employed cold wax during the 1970s for some of her work which is rooted in Abstract Expressionism.[243] Meyer has worked in a wide range of media on paper; including monoprints which attracted the attention of Tullis. At his invitation, she created approximately 40 encaustic paintings on paper during two weeks:in March 1997 at his workshop. According to Meyer, "this collaborative project expanded what is traditionally a thick, opaque medium to accommodate my gestural, watercolor-like oil paintings."[244] Understanding her desire for fluidity, luminosity, and rapid execution, Tullis thinned the encaustic paint with paint thinner and continuously adjusted the temperature of the heat table. Thus Meyer was able to spontaneously brush the variously colored looping skeins of paint to achieve a range of effects -- from a gouache-like opacity to "a luminous depth of field typical of watercolor, while retaining the highly saturated color and physical density of the encaustic medium."[245] The vibrant immediacy, clarity, and sensuous color of these works, "full of movement and light," was noted by critics when much of the series was exhibited at Deven Golden Fine Art at the end of 1997.[246]

That year Tullis also collaborated with Robert Mangold in the creation of a series of eight encaustic paintings on paper. These abstract works were an organic extension of their previous collaborations on Mangold's monotypes in which free-hand ellipses are drawn and redrawn on a curved picture plane imprinted with color.[247] Related in form to Mangold's renowned architectural-scale, lunette shaped, acrylic paintings, these smaller works embody constantly shifting dialogues between line and plane, flatness and the illusion of space, drawing and painting. As a student at the Cleveland Institute of Art in the late 1950s, Mangold was taught the basics of encaustic in a Painting Technique class. Although he did some experimenting with the medium, Mangold saw no way of employing it in relation to his work until Tullis's invitation. Making some tests on paper at Tullis's studio, Mangold became intrigued with the way the heated wax pigment was absorbed into the surface of the hot paper. After returning to his own studio and mulling the possibilities, Mangold decided to use a heavy, rough surfaced watercolor paper (Arches Aquarelle) upon which he drew black lines with a Prismacolor pencil to create the structural framework. Armed with these drawings, he returned to Tullis's workshop to do the hot wax procedure, employing R & F encaustics which he rolled onto the paper surface with small rollers. The relatively smooth, transparent, luminous color fields of orange and blue are enlivened by the drawn ellipses (which retained their clarity) and contrasted to areas of black encaustic which accentuate the texture of the paper and were created by dragging blocks of black wax across the hot textured paper. Synthesizing the traditionally distinct aesthetic elements of color and line, Mangold creates an indivisible unity between the whole and its individualized parts. Working on the initial drawings and encaustic paintings simultaneously as a series also provided the opportunity to suggest unifying relationships between the works. Thus A2 and A3 can be horizontally juxtaposed to evoke the curved shapes of his paintings.[248]

During the Summer of 1997 Joan Witek created 24 encaustic paintings in three days at Tullis's workshop at his behest. Visiting her studio earlier that year, Tullis saw Witek's black abstract watercolors on non-porous film. Their fluid sensuality, ample geometric format, as well as their dialogue of control and accident were elements that suggested an encaustic collaboration might work (they had made a series of monotypes together in 1988). Enjoying the sense of technical confidence that the collaboration with Tullis bestowed, Witek continued to explore the limitless possibilities of the color black by manipulating "the beautiful density of encaustic.... which holds the pigment, first as a sensual quivering liquid and then as a cooled thick suspension."[249] Dropping dry pigment into hot wax on paper marked with grids, she enjoyed the expressive, gestural element of the extra powdered black falling off the wax and propelled onto the sheets. Emotion and intellect, spontaneity and deliberation were embodied in this "series of ricochets between bulk and airiness, form and the action of its making."[250] The medium of encaustic thus played a key role in Witek's ongoing desire to bring expressive content into a reductive black and white format.

This page was originally published in Resource Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for more information. rev. 5/28/11

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