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“Graphic art” in the classical sense refers to “visual art expressing a line-generated image on a flat surface.” Prints, along with drawings, are a typical form of graphic art.
              Originally, prints were fundamentally created by single-color printing, and technology did not yet exist for expressing colored surfaces with gradations. In those days, the principal method for expressing forms in a woodblock or copperplate print was to use contour lines to create borders with peripheral areas. To give a form a three-dimensional texture, tonal or shading effects were expressed by hatching, an artistic technique, common to engravings and etchings, employing multiple parallel lines of various lengths and densities.
              Later, techniques were developed that enabled surface expression with tonal variations of the kind found in aquatints and lithographs. Then, starting in modern times, the content depicted in artistic expression itself underwent significant changes, a liberation from the earlier reproduction of realistic subjects, and with these changes the meaning of “drawing lines” underwent transformation as well.
              Once they were liberated from the need to serve as a component element of a form, lines became free to play a leading role in an artwork in their own right. It also became possible to express a print image by physical rhythm: the act of drawing lines by moving a burin or needle across a copper plate, or by applying crayon on a lithographic stone. In these ways, artistic expression that derives chiefly from lines has given birth to many attractive works of great diversity and new meanings.
              This exhibition will offer visitors a look at prints featuring impressive expressions of lines gleaned from CCGA’s Tyler Graphics Archive Collection, including works by Frank Stella and Nancy Graves, among others. We hope the exhibition will offer an opportunity to discover the appeal of many different lines and the images conceived from them.