Aquatint, mezzotint and drypoint on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
Works on loan
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ARTIST ROOMS
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<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>
Alliance
ARTIST ROOMS
Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Presented by the artist 2010
astronomy
emotions, concepts and ideas
formal qualities
galaxy
landscape
night
photographic
ship, warship, ‘USS Alliance’
sky
society
star
times of the day
transport: water
universe
<p><span>Alliance </span>1983 is a print that combines two plates placed one above the other in the centre of a single sheet with wide borders. The images are different sizes, the lower one being just slightly smaller than the top one. They are different in style – the top one depicts a line drawing of a ship and the bottom one a close-up depiction of the night-sky, where a black surface is covered in white stars. The print is made using aquatint, mezzotint and dry-point, which are all used when making intaglio etchings. Celmins has a long history of using traditional methods of print-making in her practice; this work is one of a number of intaglio prints that she made at Gemini, GEL in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s. Related prints include <span>Jupiter Moon – Constellation </span>1983 (Tate ARTIST ROOMS AR00481)<span>, Constellation – Uccello</span> 1983 (Tate ARTIST ROOMS AR00606) and <span>Concentric Bearings A</span> 1984 (Tate ARTIST ROOMS AR00469) – all of which similarly combine two images on a single plate.</p>
paper unique aquatint mezzotint drypoint
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
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)
17 May 2024 – 18 August 2024
2024-08-18
2024-05-17
Burgh Hall (Dunoon, UK)
19 October 2024 – 12 January 2025
2025-01-12
2024-10-19
The Box (Plymouth, UK)
2024-02-03
Vija Celmins
Loan-out
Alliance
frame: 641 × 530 × 37 mm
<a href="/search?gid=999999788" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">ARTIST ROOMS</a>
Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Presented by the artist 2010
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<p>
<i>Alliance </i>1983 is a print that combines two plates placed one above the other in the centre of a single sheet with wide borders. The images are different sizes, the lower one being just slightly smaller than the top one. They are different in style – the top one depicts a line drawing of a ship and the bottom one a close-up depiction of the night-sky, where a black surface is covered in white stars. The print is made using aquatint, mezzotint and dry-point, which are all used when making intaglio etchings. Celmins has a long history of using traditional methods of print-making in her practice; this work is one of a number of intaglio prints that she made at Gemini, GEL in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s. Related prints include <i>Jupiter Moon – Constellation </i>1983 (Tate ARTIST ROOMS <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/celmins-jupiter-moon-constellation-ar00481" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00481</span></a>)<i>, Constellation – Uccello</i> 1983 (Tate ARTIST ROOMS <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/celmins-constellation-uccello-ar00606" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00606</span></a>) and <i>Concentric Bearings A</i> 1984 (Tate ARTIST ROOMS <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/celmins-concentric-bearings-a-ar00469" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00469</span></a>) – all of which similarly combine two images on a single plate.</p>
<p>Meticulously rendered details of natural environments, such as night-skies, lunar landscapes, the desert and seascapes, are all subjects that Celmins repeatedly explores in her work. In <i>Alliance</i>, she combined one of her ‘star-field’ images alongside a delicately drawn image of a boat. The boat image is taken from a found source, most probably an engineer’s drawing of a ship, which Celmins meticulously copied. The use of photographs is central to Celmins’s practice. Whether painted, drawn or etched, most of her work has its origins in some sort of photographic image, either a found image or a photograph taken by the artist herself. Celmins often isolates part of the source image, rendering it as a close-up detail, so that it appears fragmented. Art historian Lane Relyea has argued that Celmins’s images appeal ‘to a reality beyond the material facts … the reference itself always points in two directions, claiming simultaneously its own sudden presence as well as its unavoidable displacement.’ (Relyea, Gober and Fer 2004, p.87.) It is typical of Celmins’s prints that they often sit within a large white border. Elke M. Solomon has suggested that this method helps ‘Celmins to apprehend her subject as a clearly defined object and not fragmentary images: the subject matter is clearly a photograph.’ (Cited in Storsve 2007, p.21.)</p>
<p>
<i>Alliance </i>is one of the first prints in which Celmins combined two or more plates on a single sheet. Prior to this, she had made drawings in which images of night skies were juxtaposed with details of natural landscapes, such as <i>Untitled (Desert – Galaxy) </i>1974 (Tate ARTIST ROOMS <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-desert-galaxy-ar00162" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00162</span></a>). Discussing her decision to create work in which she juxtaposed two or more images, Celmins explained:</p>
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</p><blockquote>After some five years of doing intense single images with no composition, but just subtle adjustments to the plane, I could stand it no longer, so I started putting one image next to another. Sort of just shoving them together ... like a galaxy image that invites you in, next to a desert surface that projects out at you. It meant that when you were close to the work each eye would see a different image, or you would have to move your attention from one to the other, but when you pulled back a bit, the images seemed to be working together, and made for a more complex spatial experience. For a while I liked that, and I did a series of double and triple-image works using pictures, mostly torn from books and magazines, that I had collected over the years. I’m creating a flat, invented world. Imagination comes in from building an image so that it has a physical reality with some real staying power. I try to make a work that is thoroughly considered and has a strong form. However, the manipulating of the surface is subtle and sensuous. It is in the nuances of the way the graphite feels and the marks that are left.</blockquote>
<blockquote>(Quoted in ‘Me, You, Us: Anthony d’Offay and Others on ARTIST ROOMS’, Tate Etc., no.16, Summer 2009, p.79.)</blockquote>
<p>
<i>Alliance</i> was included in the major exhibition of Vija Celmins’s prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 2002.</p>
<p>
<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Jonas Storsve, <i>Vija Celmins: Dessins/Drawings</i>, exhibition catalogue, Centre Pompidou, Paris 2007.<br/>Lane Relyea, Robert Gober and Briony Fer, <i>Vija Celmins</i>, London 2004.<br/>Samantha Rippner, <i>The Prints of Vija Celmins</i>, exhibition catalogue, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2002, reproduced p.20.</p>
<p>Kyla McDonald<br/>May 2010</p>
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Summary
2013-10-30T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
astronomy emotions, concepts and ideas formal qualities galaxy landscape night photographic ship, warship, ‘USS Alliance’ sky society star times of the day transport: water universe