PRINTS AND PRIVILEGES: REGULATING THE PRINT IN SIXTEENTH CENTURY ITALY

At the Fogg Museum

Through Dec. 27

The current Prints and Privileges: Regulating the Print in Sixteenth Century Italy show at the Fogg is not one to be raced through. It requires concentration. You have to be, unlike me, willing to read all of the fine print. My first time visiting the exhibit, I walked through the hallway and one room a bit confused. I could not ascertain what the thread was that linked these varied Renaissance prints together. I was totally oblivious to the point being made.

Within five minutes of speaking to the curator of the exhibition, Lisa Pon (a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art and Architecture department), I realized that my ignorance at Prints and Privileges was largely self-induced. If only I had read the short descriptions which accompany each piece attentively, I would have learned so much. If you survey the exhibit as it was intended to be seen, patiently looking at each piece in order and reading all of the corresponding text. If you devote to it the period of approximately 45 minutes which is necessary to grant it the respect it deserves, then you are guaranteed to walk away with a wealth of knowledge.

The exhibit is essentially an exploration of the print in Renaissance Italy as a form of counterfeit. It features both prints and some privileges, a deed given to an artist by the government stating that no one can copy their work. Some walls display a juxtaposition of originals with their respective copies; frequently though, the copies stand alone. It is organized thematically, according to the different media copied, and focuses mostly on the Durer/Marcantonio Raimondi pieces in the hallway as a point of departure for considering all of the other prints.

Marcantonio was Lisa Pon's personal point of departure as well: "The idea actually started when I was studying last year for my exams. I was pulling out all of the Marcantonio prints and Marjorie Cohn [Carl A. Weyerhauser Curator of Prints] asked me if I wanted to do a show." Marcantonio was a rather infamous counterfeiter in his time. He is considered the preeminent reproductive engraver, "the first and the best." For Pon the show began as a meditation on Marcantonio's copies of Durer, but evolved because she wanted to put those prints (the ones in the hallway) into a historical context.

The show affirms that although Marcantonio may have been notorious, he was certainly not unique in his practice. "By the time of these prints, the printing press had already been around for a long time. The Renaissance itself was a movement founded on looking at predecessors." Marcantonio was in good company. The exhibit showcases a wide variety of types of art copied including religious pictures, maps, texts and chiaroscuoro woodcuts. Pon, in her manner of hanging and through textual supplements, subtly illustrates that, "copying isn't necessarily a bad thing, it was integral to the [Renaissance] visual culture." Here copies exist as veritable pieces of art, not mere imitations.

The idea of copying as it both contributes to and defies art was explored further in the junior tutorial in the History of Art and Architecture department which Pon taught last year. The class was developed in conjunction with this show. Both the lectures which various students from that tutorial will be giving in the upcoming months and the symposium on "The Materiality of Print in Early Modern Europe" will refer to the apparent parallels between these issues of copying during the Renaissance and contemporary artistic concerns.

Pon herself suggests that the changed relationship of the general public to images spawned by the invention of the printing press was a phenomenon similar to the tumultuous alterations currently resulting from the Internet. "The presence of the Internet in our world changes the way we perceive images."

It certainly provokes a multitude of questions regarding authorship and ownership in art. Do you own an image you produce or is it independent of you? Can someone else reproduce your image and then call it their own because they produced their copy? How can that image then be used? Is a multiplicity of identical images less valuable than a single one? All of these questions which society is deliberating now were equally significant at the turn of the century with the invention of photography, and even before that, four centuries ago, in the time of Marcantonio and Durer.

Prints and Privileges, although suggestive of broader art historical themes, is essentially a show about details. Each group of prints is the remnant, the souvenir, which represents a story of interaction between artists and publishers and artists with each other.

You will leave struck by the variety of purposes and styles which characterized printmaking in the Renaissance. At least come to see the Barbari "Bird's Eye View of Venice" and "The Submersion of Pharoah's Army in the Red Sea" next to each other, if nothing else. Acquiring the Barbari from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts was Pon's great curating acheivement and, as the visual centerpiece of the entire exhibit, it was well worth the effort. Then again, all of Pon's efforts here, if noticed, are fruitful. Pon has provided all of the clues to understanding and appreciating prints and privileges in the Renaissance--all you have to do is look for them.