British writer Montague Rhodes James develops, in one of his most celebrated ghost tales, a plot about committing a crime through the metamorphosis which seems to undergo a framed engraving print hanged on the wall. An astonished narrator contemplates the sequence of an abduction revealing itself on the printed image day by day. In the beginning there is only the view of an innocuous eighteenth-century mansion.
But, what may this literary anecdote have in common with the issue we are considering? A lot, as we will see here. In James’s tale, not only do we find a deep aesthetic meaning dormant in the nature of the narrating character; that is to say, the mezzotint process he is applying to the engraving, but also the attribution of contrasting cultural values between Spanish and foreign contexts. This becomes evident in the fatal loss of meaning with the translation of the title; a fact which, no doubt, we should mention to be able to appreciate the originality of Marta Blasco’s work in all its extent.
The mezzotinto engraving, “la manière anglaise”, or mezzotint is an engraving technique which evolves highly remarkable methodological and expressive characteristics. Firstly, James’s literary device clearly associates this technique to a gloomy chiaroscurist atmosphere, as it is typical of fantasy and horror genres, usually with romantic or gothic tinges. Here, characters don’t appear on the stage in their plenitude, but they are progressively revealed, always emerging from a thick, deep, dark backstage, also disturbing and frequently menacing. As mezzotint is, par excellence, the graphic technique of formal suggestiveness, incompletion, evanescence and inspiration. The whole process inevitably requires the subjective involvement of the observer, when using its capacity of imaginative projection to be able to interpret images the artist offers only superficially sketched and illuminated.
The method of the engraving plate itself implies the same unveiling character, as it starts with the preparation of a surface densely stippled by thousands of minute grooves made directly and patiently by the artist armed with a sharp berceau1. Myriads of wounds on a plate which if inked and later printed, would give out an absolutely dark stain. From this plate, the engraver should ”bring tones out” by roughening and burnishing the grained surface with progressive intensity. Thus, the whole process turns out to be a creative genesis based on a sort of quasi-epiphanic gradual birth. Moreover, the mezzotint process achieves a great richness concerning light registers, namely its absolute tonal continuity, that is to say, a total absence of brisk transitions. This fact is totally innovative and practically unachievable to the rest of the printmaking techniques of the intaglio family. Therefore, it is precisely this unique epiphanic surprise offered by mezzotint what is delicately and precisely shown on Marta Blasco’s project, dawning from the most luxuriant and primitive darkness the nascent image of a feminine figure like a mythological nymph.
Furthermore, considering James’ tale again, we notice the way he turns a pre-eminent feature of graphic arts into a literary device, not only referring to mezzotint but, in general, to all engraving processes. Precisely, its evolving nature has been both historically and conventionally confirmed through the successive proofs. Therefore, the criminal sequence articulated along the British writer’s tale is virtually inscribed to the same technique of the final print: the metamorphic character of every engraving in its slow way, stage by stage, towards the final proof, or “bon á tirer”, as it is called in French. In that sense, Marta Blasco’s project also denotes, in different ways, that processing character, essentially lively and life-giving, which is inherent in graphic arts. The artist tackles these processes using video-graphic animation devices as well as deconstruction collage methods, making use of the different printing proofs. Both methods proved, alongside their process of development, to be suitable and complementary contexts in which to reflect upon the actual genesis of every portrait, understood as an ephemeral vision trapped in an eternal, continuous dialectic of appearance and disappearance.
“Papeles rotos”, title of Marta Blasco’s present work, defines the previous stage essential to any recomposition in collage form. In this particular circumstance the artist drastically transgresses one of the taboos traditionally conferred to the printed image: its auratic and precious sacralization. On the contrary, Marta Blasco, after a slow and laborious working process to prepare the plate, to later burnish and print it, has otherwise decided to mercilessly tear the product of her endeavour apart. This act places her in an utterly critical position regarding any traditional stereotyping, and, simultaneously, it clearly inscribes his work into an essentially contemporary framework. Not in vain has the American theorist Arthur C. Danto considered collage as the last great methodological paradigm for the program of artistic modernity . In respect to this question, Blasco’s contribution is framed in a deconstructive reflection on the concept of portrait. This fact denotes an emotional implication on the behalf of the artist, by means of a dual action which articulates, firstly a destructive process (as with the picture of a traitor, a hated person or, why not, your own image at low self-esteem or penitent moments) and then a subsequent, nostalgic and patient reconstruction, once the object of love or desire, our own or someone else’s, is recovered, in spite of the already inexorable scars left by the traumatic rejection.
We have already mentioned above the inexplicable and unjustifiable loss of meaning in the Spanish translation of James’s tale’s title as compared to the original one. Moreover, when the entries “manera negra” and “mezzotinta” are registered in some Spanish dictionaries and encyclopaedias. The reason is, undoubtedly, the insignificant tradition of this technique in the history of Spanish engraving. On the contrary, in the British context the situation is precisely the opposite. Even the Spanish art historian Francisco Steve Botey considers that it is precisely concerning mezzotint that we can talk about a genuine British engraving school. And the reason is the adjustment of this technique to two genres held in high regard during the British eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, namely portrait and landscape. Concerning this aspect, the essay writer and artist William Gilpin, maybe the first analytical theorist who has approached graphic arts from an aesthetic perspective, considers in Essay on Prints (1768) that the inherent characteristics of mezzotint are softness, tenderness and ductility. So to speak, all aspects related to light treatment and its subtle transitions; specially referring to the portrait which is perfectly able to provide the represented object with a light of epidermic sensuality. Thus, we can understand the success of the numerous feminine portraits made from canvases and drawings by the great Joshua Reynolds’. For instance, the exquisite Anne, Duchess of Cumberland made by the engraver James Watson in 1773. The protruding surface of the plate grained by the berceau scratches the paper on which it is printed, leaving its surface broken in tiny hairy bits which endow the final print with a velvety finishing. This last characteristic reinforces the quasi-tactile or haptic presence on which Marta Blasco’s project is articulated. A fact which justifies even more, if it’s possible, the election of mezzotint as its technical support.
In conclusion, Marta Blasco has coherently and exceptionally started from the position of the contemporary artist who nowadays shows open multi-disciplinary mystifying attitudes, although they generally do it without any personal implication and lacking a deep approach to any discipline, but as a mere testimonial and misappropriating pose. Marta, on the contrary, has herself gone much further: from pure intentionality to the real action. Action, in this case, means facing a project on the portrait in depth, without any contemporaneous prejudice against a historically adequate technique as it mezzotint has proved to be; although it is an expressive means which is burdened by the significant preparation effort implied. However, difficulty and technical effort has been far exceeded by the artist as it is shown in the exhibited work. Moreover, her project has understood and completely fitted the peculiar aesthetic and plastic scope that mezzotint, as any other classical or modern expression means, opened on its day and still offers, even nowadays, to an authentically polyhedral and polyglot artist. For all these reasons, Marta Blasco’s work guides us to the contemplation of both the present and the past, with a collection of long-term possibilities to explore in order to achieve free experimentation.
1The berceau, cradle in French, or grainer, is a “tool with a wooden handle which holds a steel rectangular piece ending in a sharp, curved, bevelled, serrated point. In mezzotint technique, it is used to stipple the plate homogeneously before flattening the grained surface with scrapers and burnishers. The rocking movement of the tool justifies its French name, berceau” (translated from the definition in the Spanish art dictionary, Diccionario del dibujo y la Estampa, Madrid, Calcografía Nacional, 1996)