Crown Point Press

John Cage (American, 1912-1992). Day Three, 1978, etching, drypoint, soft ground etching, and sugar lift aquatint. National Gallery of Art, Washington. 

Crown Point Press, a San Francisco Bay Area publisher, is renowned for its use of intaglio printing, one of the oldest printmaking processes. Since 1962, the Press has worked with artists to create prints. Founding director Kathan Brown is an artist, writer and printer credited with reviving etching as a contemporary art medium. An exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, Yes, No, Maybe: Artists Working at Crown Point Press, examines the stages of printmaking as a sequence of decisions, from revisions to the final print. Working proofs and prints produced by Crown Point between 1972 and 2010 are on display, representing 25 artists. 

Richard Diebenkorn (American, 1922-1993). Green, 1986, color spit bite aquatint, soap ground aquatint and drypoint. National Gallery of Art, Washington, copyright the Estate of Richard Diebenkorn. 

Kathan Brown printing in the first Crown Point Press studio, Point Richmond, California, 1962.

Brown refers to Crown Point as a studio rather than a printshop. The printing presses are integrated into the artists' workspace rather than occupying a separate area. 

John Cage, 75 Stones, 1989, color spit bite aquatint and sugar lift aquatint on smoked paper. National Gallery of Art, Washington. 

Julie Mehretu (American, b. Ethiopia 1970). Circulation (working proof 9), 2005, color etching, spit bite aquatint, aquatint, and engraving with ink wash, graphite and additions. Crown Point Press. 

Tomma Abts (German, b. 1967). Untitled (diagonals), 2009, color aquatint and soft ground etching. National Gallery of Art, Washington. 

To make an intaglio print (etching, drypoint, engraving), the artist makes indentations in the surface of a copper plate. The plate is then inked and the image transferred from the inked plate to paper with a printing press. Hard ground and soft ground etching produces lines, and lift ground and aquatint methods yield areas of tone. Multi-color prints require multiple plates. "Intaglio and relief prints are the only types Crown Point Press produces," says Brown. "This is partly because in general I like the looks of these processes better than those of silkscreen or lithography. In intaglio and relief prints the artist's drawing and the print are usually quite different, something that seems a virtue to me." 

Pia Fries (Swiss, b. 1955). Falc, 2007, color soap ground aquatint, spit bite aquatint, photogravure, and roulette. National Gallery of Art, Washington. 

Artists making etchings at Crown Point are representative of a wide variety of contemporary art approaches. For many, the Press has provided their introduction to printmaking. "We've worked with Conceptual artists, Minimal artists, realists, and artists hard to characterize," says Brown. "Many of them have said that using old, slow, cumbersome printing processes has helped them to understand better what they are already doing in painting and sculpture. They often express how valuable it is to see their images pulled apart and broken down into layers. These layers can be individually moved within the image, and colors easily changed before arriving at a finalized image. They also are left with a physical record of all of the working states of their image along with this final print. No other medium other than printmaking allows for this kind of flexibility." 

Pat Steir (American, b. 1938). Kweilin Dreaming 88, 1998, color woodcut with painting and pen-and-ink drawing on silk mounted to paper. Crown Point Press, copyright Pat Steir. 

Printers Renée Bott and Daria Sywulak in the Hawthorne studio, 1991.

Printers work closely with the artists to produce original prints in limited editions, they also act as curators for the editions. They assist the artist to realize their best work in the printmaking medium through their skills and craftsmanship. A three-year apprenticeship is required to become a printer at the Press. The average two-week print project that an artist participates in equals a printer's work of approximately half a year. A project's development can be unpredictable, depending on the artist's idea for the print, revisions to the plates and proofing leading to the artist signing the OK to Print Proof. Editions are small, usually from ten to thirty-five impressions. 

Richard Diebenkorn, High Green Version 1, 1992, color spit bite aquatint, soap ground aquatint, soft ground etching, and etching with pasted element. National Gallery of Art, Washington. 

Crown Point publishes the prints and exhibits them in their gallery. "We can only do five projects a year, so that really limits the artists we can work with," says director Valerie Wade. "We usually only invite five or six artists a year and we often repeat the artists. So that would leave maybe one or two spots open for a new artist which is not very many compared to other galleries that have twelve exhibitions a year. We take our suggestions both from looking at museum shows and from artists that we have worked with ourselves for a long time. We are interested in choosing an artist who represents the best of a certain stylistic trend within the time period they're working in." 

John Cage, 17 Drawings by Thoreau, 1978, uniquely inked color photo-etching on Japanese paper. National Gallery of Art, Washington. 

After five decades, with its diverse group of artists and projects, Crown Point Press has evolved into one of the leading fine art publishers.

The National Gallery of Art, on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW. On view through January 5th.