Hue & Cry: Printmaking and the Debate over Colors
Henri Rivière, Aspects de la Nature, no. 11: Sunset, 1898, colour lithograph on wove paper. The Clark Art Institute, 1984.110.
Although today brightly colored prints and posters are synonymous with Belle Époque Paris, in the 1890s colour in print was an outlier phenomenon. Not only was printed color difficult and expensive to achieve, it was also frowned upon as a matter of aesthetic taste. Value-laden descriptors like “garish, cheap, commercial” became attached to color printmaking, discouraging attempts in this area even after technical advances made it more feasible and affordable. Hue & Cry: Printmaking and the Debate over Colors explores the surprising but steady opposition to printed color in nineteenth-century France, showcasing the Clark’s extraordinary holdings of French color prints by artists including Pierre Bonnard, Mary Cassatt, Paul Cézanne, Jules Chéret, Maurice Denis, Camille Pissarro, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Edouard Vuillard.
It follows the Clark’s earlier exhibition The Impressionist Line: From Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec which still provides a rich resource for exploring colour prints from this period.