Is there a name for the style of these works?
July 9, 2019 5:32 AM   Subscribe

If they are indeed linked at all...
This page from Maus, the comic.
Fritz Eichenberg's art for Jane Eyre (and his stuff in general).

They look kind of vaugely gothic to me? but if there are any specific names or terms I'd love to know it, or any leads.
posted by womb of things to be and tomb of things that were to Media & Arts (8 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: They look to me as if they were linoleum prints, or inspired by the style of linoleum or woodblock prints while still being ink drawings. It's certainly a style I've seen and associate with elderly picture books. It's also something I associate with German paper cutting (scherenschnitte) because of similar themes of drama and monochrome representations of light and shadow.

LOVE that Eichenberg link.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:42 AM on July 9, 2019


Best answer: Personally I'd use "woodcut" to describe that style, even if nowadays it's more likely linocut.
posted by sukeban at 5:44 AM on July 9, 2019 [2 favorites]


Best answer: In addition to both being wood/linocut, German Expressionism would be my guess. That particular page from Maus is from Prisoner on the Hell Planet, one of Spiegelman's earlier works, and I think it was intenended to evoke pre-war Germany.
posted by pullayup at 5:46 AM on July 9, 2019 [3 favorites]


Best answer: The article about Eichenberg calls them engravings. I am lucky enough to have my mom’s copy (as well as the matching Wuthering Heights), and we both always thought they were woodcuts.
posted by elphaba at 7:52 AM on July 9, 2019


Best answer: I also thought of "German Expressionist woodcuts" on seeing those images. According to this article by Spiegelman, they were one of his main influences in drawing those pages:
To make a wood engraving is to insist on the gravitas of an image. Every line is fought for, patiently, sometimes bloodily. It slows the viewer down. Knowing that the work is deeply inscribed gives an image weight and depth. Two years after meeting Lynd Ward, when I was beginning to seriously explore the limits and possibilities of comics, I drew a four-page comics story about my mother’s suicide called “Prisoner on the Hell Planet.” (It was eventually included in my long comic book for grown-ups that needed a bookmark, Maus.) I was then twenty-four years old (the same age as Ward when he made Gods’ Man), and the scratchboard drawings I did were very influenced by Ward’s engravings and by German Expressionist woodcuts.
posted by rollick at 9:11 AM on July 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


Best answer: Wood engraving is another search term you may have luck with. See Barry Moser's wood engravings and his book on the subject.
posted by carrioncomfort at 9:28 AM on July 9, 2019


Best answer: So wood cuts and wood engraving used to be the standard method of reproducing (printing) an image. They are slightly different from each other. In a wood cut the parts of the image which are going to be white are cut away, making a depression in the wood. The parts of the image which are going to be black are left in place. To take a print, ink is rolled on the remaining flat surface, paper is laid on top of the block and well rubbed, when the paper is lifted off there is a black line or imprint where ever the surface of the block is intact and was covered in ink. This is called letterpress printing and is also the original method of printing typeset material ie books and newspapers etc.

Engraving is slightly different because the ink fills the depressions that have been cut out of the printing plate or wood block. This is called intaglio printing and is a much longer process than printing off the top uncut areas of a flat surface. The ink is pushed into the depressions and then the flat surface is carefully wiped until it's so clean there won't be any marks transferring onto the paper from it. Only ink in the depressions makes a mark. Then the paper is laid on and pushed into the depressions (not too hard!) Engravings are finer and more detailed than wood cuts generally.

However one characteristic of both wood cuts (and lino cuts) and wood engravings is a strong black line. Well, you can make prints in any colour you have available but black is the most common. Also, the image doesn't contain any grey, or soft tones. Any gradations of tone are achieved using a solid line, as in cross hatching. I mean, a wood cut won't generally have cross hatching in it but a wood engraving might. Or shading might be achieved by using very fine parallel lines close together.

The Eichenberg are wood engravings, which are still used for fancy illustrated books such as those from the Folio Society. They are a mark of high quality - sometimes luxury quality - in a modern (20C onwards) book. Before then wood and metal engraving (and metal type) were the bog standard method of illustrating books, magazines, leaflets etc; anything that needed to be reproduced in print. After the invention of photography with the introduction of the half-tone process there was a couple of decades or so when engravers became desperately skilled and fast in an effort to compete with this new method of reproduction. They did of course lose; from an industrial process wood cuts and wood engraving turned into a fine art occupation.

There isn't a straightforward difference in quality between wood cuts and wood engraving though. Sometimes the simplicity, even the relative crudeness of wood cuts is preferred, as during the German Expressionist movement - the search term rollick posted gives useful examples. You might also specifically look up Kathe Kollwitz, one of the expressionists, because I think the style Spiegelman is drawing in is very much based on her.

Now. Spiegelman himself isn't using woodcuts or any sort of printmaking. 'and the scratchboard drawings I did were very influenced by Ward’s engravings and by German Expressionist woodcuts. ' He has made drawings on a scratchboard. This is a shiny white cardboard that you pour a wash of indian ink over and then scratch off where you want your drawing to show white. So it's a drawing, but made with a technique that is deliberately invoking the strong line, stark black and white and crudeness of a woodcut.
posted by glasseyes at 10:21 AM on July 9, 2019 [3 favorites]


I dunno if a usable descriptor for the style might be ... graphic? Graphic-y? It's difficult because graphic techniques (that is the techniques of graphic design, which includes anything printed) have undergone a massive, massive change with the introduction of digital media and even before then. Once upon a time, and I mean up to at least the late 70s, to describe something as graphic almost certainly meant something looking like this
posted by glasseyes at 10:35 AM on July 9, 2019 [1 favorite]


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