décoration

Decoration in printmaking

Translating their designs for the lithographic stone or wooden block helped modern printmakers to achieve ‘flat’ compositions of lines, planes, patterns and colours.

For inspiration, these artists looked primarily to Japanese wood block prints, admiring their bold outlines, elongated silhouettes, large expanses of colour and unconventional viewpoints.

Symbolist printmakers learned from these examples that it was not necessary to represent the world as a naturalistic illusion.

By carefully arranging their prints into decorative compositions, they sought — like their Symbolist counterparts in music and poetry — not only to stimulate their viewers’ senses, but also to touch their souls.

Printmaking as decoration

Artists introduced decoration into everyday life by producing autonomous fine-art prints and commercial graphic work, primarily for their own, closed cultural worlds of theatre, music and literature.

On the other hand, their posters and magazine illustrations were intended for everyone.

Brightly coloured advertisements adorned the grey streets of Paris, where these ‘frescoes for the crowd’ could indeed be admired by all.