Printmakers have evolved vocabularies of marks to express their ideas and translate the attributes of artworks from other media. These other works -- paintings, drawing, sculptures--may have formed the aesthetic of the culture in which the printmaker worked, yet the resources of the print do not, cannot, and perhaps should not duplicate the possible colors, textures, volumes, and demensions available in other techniques.

This exhibition, organized by students in a Harvard seminar on the history of printmaking, presents a variety of graphic systems. The works on display accommodate to the limitations of techniques, express particular subjects or aesthetic concepts, and strive for legibility in the larger visual cultures of many periods and audiences. The exhibition asks visitors to look closely at the nature of graphic marks and to understand printmaking as a language with its own vocabulary, grammer, and syntax; to observe its poetry and prose; and to discern, above all, the potential of its conventions and their disruption.

Coordinated by Marjorie B. Cohn, Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints.