The Prairie Print Makers by Karal Ann Marling, Elizabeth G. Seaton, and Bill North

Just the gift prints

The 2001 book entitled The Prairie Print Makers was published in association with a traveling exhibition of prints curated by ExhibitsUSA, a program managed by the Mid-America Arts Alliance, headquartered in Kansas City. The Prairie Print Makers was an organization founded by ten Kansas artists in 1930 for the purpose of staging exhibitions of prints and promoting graphic arts in the media of lithography, etching, and relief prints. The group eventually grew to include over 100 artists from all over the United States and Canada, including some of North America’s finest printmakers. The majority of its members produced art in a realist or regionalist style, with landscapes, nature studies, and images of rural life being common subjects.

The text of this book consists of three short essays by cultural historian Karal Ann Marling and art historians Elizabeth G. Seaton and Bill North. The latter two are both curators at the Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University. In addition to providing a very brief overview of the group’s formation and its activities, the essays provide some insightful context on how the Prairie Print Makers fit into the American art scene of their time, growing out of a need for inexpensive art during the Great Depression, and how they eventually disbanded as abstract expressionism rose to prominence.

In addition to active members (the artists invited to join the group), the Prairie Print Makers had associate members. These were not artists but rather patrons and supporters of the arts, print collectors, and so on. In exchange for a modest annual membership fee, these associate members would receive a gift print each year. The Prairie Print Makers produced 34 of these gift prints from 1931 to 1965 (they skipped 1963), usually printed in editions of 200. The exhibition by ExhibitsUSA consisted of these 34 gift prints, and that is what is illustrated in the book. Each gets a full-page reproduction. Four are color prints, the rest black and white. Seeing all the gift prints assembled in one location is nice, but it’s kind of a lazy way to put together an exhibition on the Prairie Print Makers. A few of the gift prints were made by artists who clearly were not among the organization’s best. There are also examples of great artists turning in merely good work, sometimes not in their medium of expertise. One matter I’ve never found explained, in any source on the group, is how these gift prints, and the artists who made them, were chosen. Other than a concerted effort at variety in subject and style, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the selection. Was it a competition, or did the board just delegate an artist to do the job each year? If the latter, on what basis were they chosen?

Each gift print is accompanied by a short write-up, mostly consisting of biographical information about the artist. One of the most valuable aspects of this book is that it lists bibliographical references for most of the artists whose work is included in the volume, which brings the reader’s attention to some sources that are more informative than this one. Though Seaton’s and North’s essays are pretty good, the brief text of the book provides only the barest-bones overview of the Prairie Print Makers. A more thorough and attractive introduction to the Prairie Print Makers is the 1984 book of the same title by Barbara Thompson O’Neill, George C. Foreman, and Howard W. Ellington. It goes into much more detail on the formation of the group and the careers of its founding members, and the images chosen for reproduction are among the best works of some of the more important artists in the group.

If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R165ATHQS41L5D/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm

Prints reproduced in the book

Birger Sandzén, A Kansas Creek, lithograph, 1931

Norma Bassett Hall, La Gaude – France, color woodcut, 1943

Luigi Lucioni, Theme in White, etching, 1955

Birger Sandzén: An Illustrated Biography by Emory Lindquist

A befitting monument to Kansas’s greatest painter
Birger Sandzén (1871-1954) is widely regarded as the preeminent artist in the history of the state of Kansas. Born and educated in Sweden, he emigrated to America in 1894 to accept a teaching position at Bethany College in Lindsborg. He taught there for over 50 years, and remained in Lindsborg until his death. He had a profound impact on the development of the arts in Kansas, yet his influence spread far beyond the borders of the state. He produced a prodigious output of paintings and prints which were exhibited both nationally and internationally.

Despite its subtitle, this volume is not a biography in the traditional sense. It is a retrospective tribute in which biography plays a small part. The events and accomplishments of Sandzén’s life are not related chronologically, but rather organized thematically into a series of essays. The first three chapters are biographical in nature, but successive chapters focus on individual aspects of his career such as teaching method, travel, family and friends, painting technique, printmaking, critical response to his work, and the establishment of the Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery at Bethany College. In the treatment of his subject, author Emory Lindquist is relentlessly laudatory. He has not come to bury Sandzén, but to praise him. From reading this book one would suspect that Sandzén never committed a sin, no one ever had anything bad to say about him, and the only hardship he ever faced was death itself. Two mind-numbing chapters of excerpts from exhibition reviews cite heaps worth of adulation, garnished with less than a handful of sentences even remotely critical of the artist’s work.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed this book in spite of its lack of objectivity. What Lindquist does well is capture Sandzén's infectious excitement and enthusiasm for art and education. Despite isolating himself in a remote outpost on the prairies, Sandzén managed to execute works of art that rivaled those produced in the great art centers of the world and earned the respect of critics worldwide. Though he devoted himself to interpreting the landscapes of Kansas, the Rocky Mountains, and the Southwest, he never became an American regionalist painter. He built his own individual style upon a tripod of Nordic traditions, French impressionism, and German expressionism. Sandzén brought high artistic and intellectual standards to a small town in central Kansas, and with the help of friends and colleagues established at Lindsborg his own little Parnassus on the Plains.

This volume is heavily illustrated with both historical photos of the artist and pictures of his work. To those unfamiliar with Sandzén’s art, his painting style could best be described as a combination of Van Gogh with a fatter brush and Monet on steroids. No printed page could ever do justice to Sandzén’s brilliant colors, but the 49 color plates included here succeed admirably. The 26 black and white figures reproduce his prints and drawings absolutely beautifully. In addition to presenting a lovely gallery of the artist’s work, this book is the most authoritative resource we have on Sandzén and his inspiring accomplishments as an artist and educator. For that, it is a book to be respected and treasured.

Landscape with Four Trees, 1920, oil on canvas, 35.625 x 47.75"

Hour of Splendor, Bryce Canyon, Utah, 1928, oil on canvas, 80 x 60"

Republican River, 1945, linoleum block print, 16 x 12"

For more information on Birger Sandzén, and more images of his work, see the web site of the Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery at Bethany College in Lindsborg, KS: http://www.sandzen.org/

If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
http://www.amazon.com/review/RB8FB0O8YNQTH/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

The Prairie Print Makers by Barbara Thompson O’Neill, George C. Foreman, and Howard W. Ellington

A fine tribute to Kansas’s greatest artists
This beautiful little volume, a slim 60 pages, may be the best book available on the Prairie Print Makers. Officially formed in 1930, this confederation of print makers was founded by ten Kansas artists: C. A. Seward, Birger Sandzén, Leo Courtney, Charles M. Capps, Lloyd C. Foltz, Herschel C. Logan, Clarence Hotvedt, Edmund M. Kopietz, Arthur W. Hall, and Norma Bassett Hall. The book begins with an introduction describing the formation, mission, and activities of the group, along with a brief synopsis of its history. This is followed by short biographies of the ten founding artists. Most of the founders started out as graphic artists working for print shops in Wichita or Topeka, with the notable exception of Sandzén, an art professor born and educated in Sweden who became one of the greatest artists ever to call Kansas home. The art that the Prairie Print Makers produced was of a regional realist style. They worked in all print media: woodcut, linocut, etching, aquatint, drypoint, lithography, and even serigraphy in the later years. Their by-laws stated that art produced for the organization should be derived from nature, thus landscapes of Kansas were prevalent, but many of the artists also had connections to the Taos, New Mexico art scene, so southwestern imagery was also common. Eventually the group grew to include artists from all over the U.S. and even Canada, including Luigi Lucioni, Stow Wengenroth, Clare Leighton, and Maynard Dixon. The book does not discuss these later members in detail, only lists their names, but it does include about a dozen images from artists outside the original ten.

This brief 9 x 12" saddle-stitched booklet is well designed and printed in two colors, black and tan, on high quality paper. The 72 illustrations are reproduced big and beautiful in black and white, with some duotones. (Norma Bassett Hall was the only founding member to print extensively in color.) This book was published by a gallery in Wichita, and for that reason is probably intended to serve more as a collector’s guide than a biography of the group. Thus the accounts of the artists are entirely positive with copious details of their accomplishments, sometimes reading more like resumés than biographies, but they are penned in a sufficiently lively style that genuinely inspires enthusiasm for these artists and their accomplishments.

The Prairie Print Makers produced some of the finest art ever to come out of the American midwest. They deserve a full-length scholarly monograph with 200 full-page illustrations. Until we get that, this is the best reference on the subject. The authors did an admirable job with this book. It is a valued volume in my collection.



Birger Sandzén, Smokey River, lithograph, 12 x 18"



Herschel C. Logan, Fodder in the Shock, blockprint, 5 x 7"



Charles M. Capps, Moonlit Mills, aquatint etching, 7.5 x 9.5"


For more information on the Prairie Print Makers, and more images of their work, see the web site of the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas in Lawrence:
http://www.spencerart.ku.edu/exhibitions/ppm/

If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2623DD69XO359/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm