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Posted By: Max Weder

Despite David's kind words on another thread for tax lawyers, I am somewhat surprised to see that the board has so little adverse reaction to Harper's woodcuts, given the general aversion to cut-outs and trimmings. Despite the aesthetics of their creation, I'm not sure how these differ from other unintended cut-outs. As I understand it, the woodcut process was not a form of limited edition production in which the artist had control not only through the creation of the block but also the printing process, but was a mass printing of a newspaper with the woodblock used as the printing plate. (David: is there more to the printing than this? How was the woodblock incorporated into the text for the printing process?)

I know David has earlier commented on the artistic process necessary to produce the block http://www.network54.com/Forum/message?forumid=153652&messageid=1104264101&lp=1105711868 but how is this different from a newspaper cartoon or painting that was originally created for the paper, and that was similarly reproduced in many thousands of copies? Any print artist I know would surely say that such a newspaper printing of the woodcut was not "their" print, if the artist had no involvement in the actual printing process. Am I missing something in the process? Is there anything more to mass printing a woodcut?

My question then is how these differ from the cut-out photos of Reach and Spalding guides that are endlessly flogged on ebay.

The Harper woodcuts are also a removal from and a destruction of the original document, yet there seems to be no general adverse reaction to this. Is it simply because the cuts eminate from the 19th century, and (for the most part) we don't see the destruction before our very eyes as is the case with the guides? Is it the artistic process that overcomes the vintage collector's anathema towards cut-outs? Is it simply because the woodcuts look more like cards than photographic cut-outs?

I don't have any particular aversion to displaying these but I'm just curious as to why the market has seemingly accepted these without reservation.

Thanks and wondering what exists inside old Atlantic Monthly's,



Max