"Critical Printing" is an experimental course offered by Harvard’s Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies that integrates studio and seminar instruction, allowing students to explore print as artists and scholars simultaneously. In this installation, as in the course, prints are organized not by medium or chronology, but by fundamental modes of critical thinking that emerge from the printmaking process. In the gallery, works are grouped around the following themes: Reversal, Pressure, Color Separation, Depth, and Replicability.
Over 20 prints are featured, including works by the following artists: Otto Dix, Helen Frankenthaler, Jesse Aron Green, Jasper Johns, Corita Kent, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, May Stevens, Utagawa Hiroshige, Edouard Vuillard, and John Wilson. Also included are examples of Notgeld, emergency currency printed in Weimar Germany around 1920.
