© copyright The Artist
(AR) 1994
Bill Woodrow (1948 – )
Details
- Dimension
- 50 X 43 CM
- Media
- LINOCUT
- Accession number
- P6441
Summary
This series of works is based on the twenty-one chapters of Primo Levi’s book The Periodic Table, first published in Italian in 1975. Primo Levi (1919-1987) was an Italian Jew who had trained as a chemist. He survived imprisonment in Auschwitz, and The Periodic Tableweaves fiction and autobiography together loose analogies are drawn between the properties of elements and Fascist ideology.
Woodrow had been deeply moved by the book and when invited by Charles Booth-Clibborn to make a set of prints decided upon The Periodic Table, using the book as a point of departure. He chose to use lino cut as the medium was direct and relatively quick. One or two drawings were made for each chapter, the final drawings was transferred to the lino block prior to cutting, and the work proofed in batches of three of four.
The project resulted in book a portfolio and book edition both published in 1994 by Charles Book-Clibborn under his imprint The Paragon Press and printed in editions of 50 by Simon King. The work here is from the portfolio edition as represents argon (Ar).
Further reading:
Contemporary Art in Print, Scottish National Gallery of Modern and The Paragon Press, 1995, texts by Jeremy Lewison, Duncan Macmillan and Patrick Elliott
Glossary
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Edition
All copies of a book, print, portfolio, sculpture, etc., issued or produced at one time or from a single set of type. Printed works can be made in an edition of between one and many thousands of copies. With most printing techniques the plate or screen will become worn if very many prints are made, so to maintain quality (and exclusivity) editions of original prints are usually kept below one hundred copies and normally average between thirty and fifty copies. Prints made up of several different plates can be extremely complicated and time-consuming to edition, so in these cases editions are kept low for practical reasons. Sculptural editions are a set of cast sculptures taken from the same mould or master. These editions are usually much lower, consisting of no more than six casts. Though each cast in an edition might have a lower value than a unique piece, it may be a more effective way of offsetting costs of an expensive process such as bronze casting.
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Imprint
In a bibliographic item, the name of the publisher, distributor, or manufacturer, and the place and date of publication.
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Medium
Refers to either the material used to create a work of art, craft or design, i.e. oil, bronze, earthenware, silk; or the technique employed i.e. collage, etching, carving. In painting the medium refers to the binder for the pigment, e.g. oil, egg, acrylic dispersion. The plural form is media.
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Portfolio
A set of pictures (as drawings, photographs or prints) either bound in book form or loose in a folder. These can be by the same artist or individual works by a selection of artists. The term also refers to the folder which holds the set.
