Wood engraving on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
ARTIST ROOMS
National Heritage Memorial Fund
Art Fund
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/vija-celmins-2731" aria-label="More by Vija Celmins" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Vija Celmins</a>
Ocean Surface Wood Engraving 2000
ARTIST ROOMS
Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008
emotions, concepts and ideas
environment / nature
formal qualities
sea
seascapes and coasts
texture
universal concepts
wave
<p>Ocean Surface Wood Engraving 2000 <span>is a wood engraving of ocean waves on Zerkall paper, printed and published by The Grenfell Press, New York in an edition of seventy-five prints plus artist’s proofs. The copy held by ARTIST ROOMS is signed and dated by the artist at the bottom right corner, along with the inscription 54/75 at the bottom left, recording its numerical place within the edition. </span>The artist Vija Celmins has described the process of making this particular print:</p>
paper print wood engraving
14 March 2009 – 8 November 2009
2009-11-08
12 March 2009 – 8 November 2009
2009-11-08
2009-03-12
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Edinburgh, UK)
http://www.nationalgalleries.org/
2009-03-14
ARTIST ROOMS Vija Celmins
Collection based display
21 May 2011 – 30 July 2011
2011-07-30
21 May 2011 – 30 July 2011
2011-07-30
2011-05-21
Gracefield Arts Centre (Dumfries, UK)
http://www.dumgal.gov.uk/gracefield
2011-05-21
ARTIST ROOMS 2011: Vija Celmins
Loan-out
4 April 2015 – 28 June 2015
2015-06-28
4 April 2015 – 28 June 2015
2015-06-28
2015-04-04
National Centre for Craft & Design (Sleaford, UK)
2015-04-04
ARTIST ROOMS 2015: Vija Celmins
Loan-out
21 September 2019 – 22 February 2020
2020-02-22
21 September 2019 – 16 November 2019
2019-11-16
2019-09-21
Quay Arts (Newport, UK)
2019-09-21
ARTIST ROOMS 2019: Vija Celmins
Tate partnerships & programmes
3 February 2024 – 18 May 2025
2025-05-18
3 February 2024 – 4 May 2024
2024-05-04
2024-02-03
Hatton Gallery (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK)
19 October 2024 – 12 January 2025
2025-01-12
2024-10-19
The Box (Plymouth, UK)
2024-02-03
Vija Celmins
Loan-out
Ocean Surface Wood Engraving 2000
image: 207 × 257 mm
frame: 566 × 473 × 38 mm
<a href="/search?gid=999999788" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">ARTIST ROOMS</a>
Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the <a href="/search?gid=999999967" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">National Heritage Memorial Fund</a> and the <a href="/search?gid=999999968" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Art Fund</a> 2008
<div class="text">
<p>Ocean Surface Wood Engraving 2000 <i>is a wood engraving of ocean waves on Zerkall paper, printed and published by The Grenfell Press, New York in an edition of seventy-five prints plus artist’s proofs. The copy held by ARTIST ROOMS is signed and dated by the artist at the bottom right corner, along with the inscription 54/75 at the bottom left, recording its numerical place within the edition. </i>The artist Vija Celmins has described the process of making this particular print:</p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>This work is done with an engraving tool … The idea is that you carve the wood, take a roller, put black paint on it, put a paper on it, run it through the press … What we did is put the image, which I took many years ago, on the wood itself with an emulsion so that I would be able to see the image. As soon as you start carving, the wood underneath is white and then you see how you’re drawing it. Then, of course, we print it and it all goes black. </blockquote>
<blockquote>(Quoted in Sollins 2003, pp.172–3.)</blockquote>
<p>This is a very small image relative to the size of the paper on which it has been printed, the proportions emphasising the level of fine detailing and complexity achieved on such a miniature woodblock. As a wood engraving it is much more decorative and graphic than the majority of prints by Vija Celmins, which often use a photo-mechanical transfer technique such as photogravure to directly reproduce drawings onto the metal plate surface. At a distance, these prints achieve a degree of photo-illusionism, whereas <i>Ocean Surface Wood Engraving 2000 </i>is more clearly recognisable as a handmade wood engraving. Nonetheless, the artist remains interested in cultivating a suspended relationship between the decorative and the photographic in this work. Discussing this particular print in 2002, Celmins stated: </p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>My wood engraving has that slightly old, superficial look to it, but when you look closer you can see my mark is not mechanical. I hope it’s a work where stillness and movement, flatness and depth, are held together in a delicate balance. I like to hide things behind looks, so that the work first looks like a photograph but when you get up close you see it’s something handmade and carved from wood: a kind of surprise.</blockquote>
<blockquote>(Quoted in Rippner 2002, pp.41–3.)</blockquote>
<p>Unlike Celmins’s mezzotint and aquatint prints such as <i>Untitled (Web 1)</i> 2001 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/celmins-untitled-web-1-ar00476" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00476</span></a>), this wood engraving does not print in greyscale tonalities: the image is composed only of black inked areas and the engraved, therefore un-inked, lines of the ivory-coloured paper. Towards the top edge of the print, the inked portions are reduced to incredibly small dots and dashes, which together suggest waves seen at a distance. The print is blackest at its bottom right corner, where less wood has been cut away, and lightest diagonally opposite at the top left, where Celmins has engraved many closely aligned repeating incisions into the wood. The rhythmic ocean entirely fills the printed surface, with no horizon line or sky visible, although it does recede perspectivally on a steeply-inclined picture plane. This rectangular section of ocean is presented anonymously, with no indicators of geographic location, weather conditions or time of day. The representational subject matter of the ocean becomes a means through which to test the limits and possibilities of the printmaking surface.</p>
<p>This ocean image is based on one of a group of photographs of the Pacific Ocean, taken by the artist near her home in California in the late 1960s. The first works to derive from these ocean photographs were a series of graphite pencil on paper drawings in 1968 that experimented with variations in the density and tone of graphite across the various photographic iterations, such as <i>Untitled (Ocean) </i>1968 (reproduced in Lingwood 1996, p.57). The artist retained these photographs to use in her prints many years later, such as Ocean Surface Wood Engraving 2000. Within the extensive group of prints by Celmins in ARTIST ROOMS there are two other works that utilise the ocean motif, and in all likelihood the same source photographs from the 1960s, as the starting point for the printed image. These are <i>Drypoint – Ocean Surface </i>1983 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/celmins-drypoint-ocean-surface-ar00467" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00467</span></a>) and Ocean Surface Woodcut 1992 1992 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/celmins-ocean-surface-woodcut-1992-ar00484" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00484</span></a>). Along with Ocean Surface Wood Engraving 2000, these works demonstrate the persistence and longevity of the ocean image as subject matter, migrating to different printmaking techniques in the artist’s practice over three consecutive decades.</p>
<p>Referring to this work, the only wood engraving Celmins has thus far undertaken, the artist revealed: </p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>It was very hard for me to keep my imagination in that space for so long. In a way, that print is a record of an incredible amount of attention that someone could pay to a tiny surface to make it coherent and maybe even interesting to look at. When I’m out of it, like now, I can’t imagine ever having done it.</blockquote>
<blockquote>(Quoted in Rippner 2002, p.45.)</blockquote>
<p>
<b>Further reading </b>
<br/>James Lingwood (ed.), <i>Vija Celmins: Works 1964–96</i>, exhibition catalogue, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London 1996.<br/>Samantha Rippner, <i>The Prints of Vija Celmins</i>, exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2002, reproduced p.39. <br/>Susan Sollins, ‘Vija Celmins’, in <i>Art 21: Art in the Twenty-First Century 2</i>, New York 2003, pp.162–73, reproduced p.172. </p>
<p>Stephanie Straine <br/>May 2010</p>
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Summary
2012-07-03T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<p>Celmins's intense monochromatic images, based on photographs, focus on small and individual marks in the context of vastness. The images seem fragile because they record a specific human glimpse through a telescope or camera which is frozen in time. Celmins's serial exploration of her subjects, including ocean surfaces, allows the artist to exploit the distinct characteristics of the variety of media she uses. Celmins worked on this wood engraving for a number of years, beginning in 1995. She used an engraving tool rather than a knife to make detailed incisions which produce a variety of markings on the paper, from deep black to the white surface of the waves.</p>

Online caption
2009-04-16T00:00:00
online-caption
ONLINE_CAPTION
emotions, concepts and ideas environment / nature formal qualities sea seascapes and coasts texture universal concepts wave