Stages in Woodblock Printing

Woodblock, or woodcut, printing requires several steps. First, a design is executed on paper, and then the paper is pasted, with the design face downward, on a section of wood. The back of the paper is sanded (or made translucent with water) until the image can again be seen through the thin remaining layer and serve as a guide for carving. The image in the wood is thus a negative, or mirror-image, of both the original design and the picture to be printed. The wood surfaces that remain elevated aftercarving are inked, and paper is applied to them with pressure. Transfer of ink from block to paper produces the woodblock print.

Carving the Woodblock

The effects of woodblock printing depend on what areas of the woodblock are left in relief.The area carved away will appear white when the block is printed therefore, when lines are to be printed either in black or color, they are left in relief and the block is said to have positive carving . This has been the traditional technique in China. If the design will be realized by white lines and/or areas against a black ground, however, they are carved intaglio into the block, and the process is called negative carving . Negative carving and positive carving can be combined in the same woodblock. During the first decades of the twentieth century, extensive negative carving was popular among some American and Russian printmakers whose work later influenced Chinese printmakers, especially from the 1930s through the 1950s. Positive carving, however, has generally been the choice of modern as well as traditional Chinese woodblock printmakers.

In wood engraving, a variety of woodblock printing, the block is carved with numerous fine lines left in relief; tonal effects in the print are achieved through hatching and by varying the density of the lines. The Chinese call such detailed work the "wood engraving style," and it carries with it connotations of foreign origin because traditional Chinese woodblock prints did not have tonal effects.

The artist's choice of wood is largely determined by his or her artistic style. An artist like Xu Kuang , who works in the engraving style, chooses a cross section of wood because it has a finer grain than a vertical section, and therefore lends itself to detail. Zhao Yannian , who seeks great freedom when carving, prefers a vertical section of timber, particularly ginko wood, because it has a softer and more open grain. A vertical section of wood is also the choice of nianhua workshops for printing the strong black outlines of the traditional nianhua style (see below). Most Chinese woodblock artists, in fact, prefer the vertical section of a log because it suits the positive carving of strong lines and large printed area they favor and because the vertical section is generally larger than its cross section, enabling the artist to produce a large print with a single block. On the other hand, several blocks of cross section must be assembled to produce a large print in the engraving style practiced by artists like Xu Kuang or Lin Jun .

An artist's choice of wood is also affected by the type of ink he intends to use; for example, because they stand up well to moisture, fruit woods are preferred when the inks used for printing are to be water-based.

It may be noted that because plywood is cheap and available in large sizes, it has become a choice for some artists.

The artist's interest in the block of wood is primarily as a medium for transferring his design, not as an art object in itself. This said, blocks carved for printing are often themselves works of art.

Several kinds of carving tools are made and used in China, including types that originated in other countries. The European types of carving knives have a short, angled blade that lends itself to carving on the cross section of a log and, therefore, to engraving. Traditional Chinese knives, straighter and considerably larger than these, are used in nianhua workshops; they are designed for use on the longitudinal section of wood and are good for making outlines. When using such knives, the carver's dominant motion is from top to bottom, similiar to the movement of the brush in calligraphy and painting. The Japanese types of carving knives, held like a pen and easy to control, are used to carve in all directions&emdash;from the bottom up, from the outside inwards, or from the top down. Since the 1930s the Japanese types of knives have been much used by Chinese printmakers. The repertoire of Japanese blades includes open- mouthed (i.e., round-tipped), three-sided (i.e., "v"-shaped), flat and serrated types.

Inks and Printing

Even before starting to carve, an artist knows what effects he wishes to create and which printing inks will achieve them. Oil-based inks were introduced into China as part of the Creative Print Movement's adoption of the European expressionist approach to woodblock creation. Oil-based inks are applied with a roller, which transfers the ink from a glass ink-slab (where it has been worked into a smooth paste with a palette knife) to the elevated surfaces of the carved block. After the block is inked, the paper is applied to it and rubbed with a hard burnishing tool of glass, wood, or metal. For intense black, the process may be repeated, but this requires great care to maintain an exact register. Oil-based inks are usually more opaque and intense than water-based colors and are more easily layered one on top of the other. Thus artists choose oil-based inks when they are seeking dense color.

During the Cultural Revolution, artists often created their ink by thinning oil-based industrial inks, and even enamel paints, with additional oil. All of the very large prints in the exhibition from that decade were printed with such inks, which were available everywhere, were easy to apply and had the glossy charactertistics approved of at the time.

Chinese woodblock printing, however, traditionally used water-based inks in a method called shuiyin -literally, "water print. " In shuiyin printing, inks are applied to the block with a brush, paper is pressed against the inked block, and then the back of the paper is rubbed with a soft barren of bamboo or a cloth pad.

Shuiyin is the universal method of printing in popular printing workshops (see below), where it has a centuries-old history of uninterrupted use. It was brought into fashion for use by academically trained artists in the late-1950s as an artistic assertion of national identity and in response to Mao Zedong' s admonition to "make the past serve the present."

Polychromatic printing, whether using shulyin or oil-based inks, typically is done with douban. In this method, first used with shuiyin in China in the Ming Dynasty (1368- 1644), a separate block is carved for each color and shade.

Shading and nuance in shuiyin also can be achieved with xuanran . In this process the block is dampened with clean water before being inked, and the brush laying down the ink moves from what, on the block, is to be a dark area in the print to what is to be light. Most modern woodblock artists printing with water-based inks use xuanran.

When rubbing the paper during ink transfer, the movement of the hand and degree of pressure is quite individual and varies somewhat even when the same artist reprints the same block. Some Chinese artists use a press (as is more usually the case in Europe) because it distributes the pressure evenly over the design. Lu Xun , however, advocated hand-printing, and most Chinese woodblock printmakers pride themselves on executing the ink transfer manually.

Paper

Paper was invented in China about 2,000 years ago. Its nature is determined by the type of plant fibers used in its manufacture and the way the fibers are processed. There are a number of kinds of Chinese papers. Xuan paper (often called "rice paper" in English), named after the place in Anhui Province where it was first made during the Tang Dynasty (630-930), is a classic Chinese support for both painting and printing. Xuan paper is made with bast fibers from the jingdan tree (a member of the mulberry family), usually with the addition of rice straw, but bamboo and other fibers may also be added. After maceration, the fibers are treated with lime, exposed to sunlight, bleached, and washed with starch. Prized xuan papers are cast by hand. They are fine, soft, resistant to insect damage, and their pure white color lasts forever; to retard absorption of the ink, they may be treated with alum. Where not otherwise indicated, the Chinese papers used for prints in the exhibition are on a variety of xuan paper.

Gaoli , or Korean, paper, is heavy and therefore lends itself to thick color printing or painting. Its added strength tolerates more rubbing than other papers do and, in addition, oil inks appear matt rather than glossy.

Pi , or leather, paper is made primarily from bast fiber (mulberry and bamboo). The fibers are finely macerated and the filaments evenly interlocked to produce a paper that is thin and soft. It absorbs water quickly, but oil-inks slowly. Color sinks below the surface, so that its brightness is diminished; thus, pi paper is especially suitable when a matt black or colored ink is desired. It is not used when extensive rubbing is required.

Daolin , commonly used as newsprint, is manufactured from chemically treated wood fibers that are not finely processed. The least expensive of Chinese papers, it is chosen for this reason by some nianhua workshops in order to keep their products affordable by the mass market. The name daolin is actually the rendering of the name in Chinese writing for the British company Dowling, Ltd., Hong Kong, which supplied imported paper for offset printing before 1950.

Yang paper has the qualities of foreign rag papers, which are thicker and tougher than xuanpaper. Because they are less likely than xuan to tear when being rubbed, they are ideal for thick, repeated printing. They are also stiffer, thus obviating the necessity for backing or mounting after printing.The word yang means"foreign,"but today such papers are made in China, retaining the name as a reminder of origin. It is a favorite of artists printing with oil-based inks, who seek rich, full ink values.

As the name indicates, cotton is one of the basic fiber ingredients of Japanese cotton paper. This gives it qualities similiar to Western rag papers, which are stronger (i.e., less likely to tear when wet) than Chinese papers, but at the same time it absorbs water or oil quickly, as Chinese papers do.

Printing Workshops

The Chinese emphasize the distinction between the creation process introduced with the Creative Print Movement, in which the artist designs, carves and prints the work himself, and the traditional Chinese method used in woodblock printing workshops , in which designing, carving and printing are each the specialty of a different person. Prints produced by the latter method were traditionally considered the work of artisans, not artists; the name of the workshop was sometimes carved into the block but rarely that of the designer, carver or printer. Since 1950, however, those involved in the collaboration are more likely to be recognized for their artistry, and their names more often found along with that of the workshop, although they rarely appear in Chinese dictionaries of artists.

Nianhua

Traditional workshops produce nianhua (see below). Some, like Yangliuqing, use a combination of outline printed by a woodblock (called a keyblock) and coloring that is added by hand; the resulting style has some of the nuances of painting and appeals to urban dwellers. Others, such as Yangjiabu and Taohuawu , are masters of the "black outline and flat color" style especially loved by rural people; in these studios, the design outline is printed by the keyblock, and unmodulated color usually is put in through a stencil or laid on by hand.

Nianhua , or New Year's pictures, are so called because these traditional, popular prints were taken down annually and replaced with new pictures during the festive lunar New Year's period, which fell just before spring. (After 1949, it was called Spring Festival, and New Year's day was celebrated on January 1.) The traditional subjects were gods, symbols of good luck (with emphasis on long life, prosperity, and many sons), and well-loved and entertalmng storles with a (usually Confucian) moral. Believed to attract into the home the virtues of the things they portrayed, the pictures were also decorative. After 1949, gods and mythical heroes were replaced by soldiers, workers and peasants, and the emphasis was on hard work rather than luck; girls as well as boys appeared as subjects, and ordinary field crops replaced the traditional talismanic fruits and flowers. Socialist slogans appeared in place of the traditional invocations to the gods.

Collective Creation

The cooperation practiced in traditional woodblock printing workshops differs from collective creation , which produces collaborative and group works. In collaborative works, several artists produce a single creation, but the division of work is not according to specialization. Several artists may work on all the procedures together with artists assigned particular areas of the work, or one person may sketch the outline, while another fills in the design (a process often used when professional artists aid non-professionals). The names of the participants may or may not be written in the margins. During the Cultural Revolution, individualism was criticized as counterrevolutionary, and collaborative works thus received special praise.

In group works, each artist creates his own picture, which forms part of a larger series on a theme or is one of a series of illustrations for a story or event.

Illustration

Prints are often used for story illustration . The artlst may make up his own story and create illustrations for it which require little or no supplementary text; when text is added, the artist may write it himself or ask someone to write it for him. The artist may also illustrate select incidents from a well-known story or novel. Lu Xun's stories, for example, have always inspired printmakers to illustrate them.

Lianhuanhua , literally, "linked serial pictures," are special to China. They are story books that combine pictures with text much as comic books do; however, the pages are much smaller than those in comic books, and the text is usually placed above, below or beside the picture ratherthan issuing from the speakers' mouths in balloons. Unlike book illustration, where only selected incidents are chosen for visual expression and meaning depends primarily on the text, the plot of lianhuanhua can be understood fairly well just from the numerous pictures. The illustrations may be created in various media, including pen-and- ink, gouache, oils and woodblock prints; they are then reproduced by mechanical means, reduced in size and printed in the mass- produced lianhuanhua format.

Contrary to the literati judgments of his time, which dismissed the format as "primitve," "infantile," and unworthy of serious attention, Lu Xun had advocated that artists create lianhuanhua and work to improve their aesthetic level; he saw the origin ofthe format in ancient Buddhist wall murals and thus considered it to have a distinctly Chinese character. Lu recommended lianhuanhua be used as propaganda tools because of their appeal to a semi-literate audience and the cheapness with which they could be mass-produced. Even before his death, in 1936, his followers in the Creative Print Movement had executed prints for lianhuanhua , illustrating their own stories as well as Lu's writings. After the Yan'an Talks in 1942 (discussed in the essay "Themes, Style and Historical Background"), artists were told that, along with nianhua , the lianhuanhua format was to be given precedence over other kinds of art as both were easily appreciated by peasants and thus good vehicles for the delivery of propaganda.

Propaganda and History

Propaganda and history are official designations for categories of art in exhibitions and publications; both are popular among printmakers and, in practice, sometimes overlap. Propaganda pictures depict models meant for emulation-representations of people going about study and work in the approved way-as well as visions of agricultural and industrial accomplishments. History pictures include portraits of individuals and depictions of historical events. Pictures of historical personalities had long been painted in China, including pictures of persons long dead; however, such pictures were not expected to resemble the actual appearance of the subjects but to depict the individual in such a way that the "essence" of his character, as history had recorded it, was conveyed. The idea that a portrait should bear a close likeness to the subject was imported from Europe and did not have wide currency in China until the nineteenth century. With the advent of photography, the appearance of individuals could be copied easily in art, but the goal of imparting the essence of the individual remained. Prints in our exhibition with portraits of leaders and heroes were modelled on published photographs that had been vetted for conveying correct essence; in this way artists could be sure to depict the individual's recognizable features in an approved fashion.