Etching on paper
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<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/alexander-brodsky-18140" aria-label="More by Alexander Brodsky" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Alexander Brodsky</a>, <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/ilya-utkin-18210" aria-label="More by Ilya Utkin" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Ilya Utkin</a>
Hill with a Hole
Presented by Frayda and Ronald Feldman (Tate Americas Foundation) 2015
<p><span>Hill with a Hole</span> 1987–90 belongs to a portfolio of thirty-five copper plate etchings that depict imaginary urban worlds and environments. Each work contains narrative text and draws upon architectural, literary and visual sources, from biblical references to classical mythology, Russian literature and Russian folk traditions. References to architectural history include the pyramids and sphinxes of Egypt, Renaissance and mannerist details, and modernist towers. Reccurring motifs include ships, which evoke escape from the city as well as journeys of the imagination, and islands, island dwellings and residential spaces, which suggest the importance of the private domain. Museums can be seen to reference the preservation of the past, and bridges the need for links between individuals as well as the past, present and future. The theatres that appear in a variety of forms point to the idea of everyday life as spectacle.</p>
paper print etching
19 May 2014 – 27 September 2015
2015-09-27
19 May 2014 – 27 September 2015
2015-09-27
2014-05-19
Tate Modern (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
2014-05-19
Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin
Collection based display
Hill with a Hole
image: 740 × 572 mm
Presented by Frayda and Ronald Feldman (Tate Americas Foundation) 2015
<div><p><i>Hill with a Hole</i><span> 1987–90 belongs to a portfolio of thirty-five copper plate etchings that depict imaginary urban worlds and environments. Each work contains narrative text and draws upon architectural, literary and visual sources, from biblical references to classical mythology, Russian literature and Russian folk traditions. References to architectural history include the pyramids and sphinxes of Egypt, Renaissance and mannerist details, and modernist towers. Reccurring motifs include ships, which evoke escape from the city as well as journeys of the imagination, and islands, island dwellings and residential spaces, which suggest the importance of the private domain. Museums can be seen to reference the preservation of the past, and bridges the need for links between individuals as well as the past, present and future. The theatres that appear in a variety of forms point to the idea of everyday life as spectacle.</span></p><p><span>Executed in a dense engraving style, the images are derived from both real and imaginary cities depicted in American films and magazines, and confront the functional and unimaginative urban planning of the Soviet Union at the time. Viewing the modern city as ailing, Brodsky and Utkin propose its salvation through imaginative transformation. The etchings in </span><i>Projects </i><span>1981–90</span><i> </i><span>reflect not only on the unbridled modernisation of the city and the accompanying loss of the past, but on the effect the city has on the human psyche.</span></p><p><span>The works reveal the artists’ ongoing interest in ruins, from their preservation of entire buildings in the </span><i>Columbarium</i><span> etchings (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/brodsky-utkin-columbarium-architecturae-museum-of-disappearing-buildings-p14566" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P14566</span></a> and <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/brodsky-utkin-columbarium-habitabile-p14567" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P14567</span></a>), to the fallen and shattered structure in </span><i>Glass Tower</i><span>1984–90</span><i> </i><span>(Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/brodsky-utkin-glass-tower-p14578" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P14578</span></a>). Their critique of modern mass society focuses on the alienation experienced by the individual in the urban environment. Many of their images reflect on lives spent under a totalitarian regime. </span><i>Villa Claustrophobia</i><span> 1985–90 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/brodsky-utkin-villa-claustrophobia-p14596" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P14596</span></a>) is an inverted panopticon in which residents of the villa look out in search of each other only to encounter endlessness. </span><i>Villa Natuilus</i><span> 1990 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/brodsky-utkin-villa-nautilus-p14597" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P14597</span></a>), which shows a hermit’s dwelling located on a traffic island in the middle of a major urban thoroughfare, reflects man’s simultaneous ‘will to resistance, an aspiration to open struggle, and (an) intimate desire to hide’ (Brodsky &amp; Utkin 1991, p.12).</span></p><p><span>Brodsky and Utkin trained as architects in the Soviet Union, developing a practice that has moved between the worlds of fine art and architecture. Having met at the Moscow Institute of Architecture (MArkhI) in 1972, they began collaborating and became part of an informal movement known as the Paper Architects, a group who sought creative outlet in theoretical designs rather than practical expression. Since the early 1980s Brodsky and Utkin have worked primarily with etchings, creating an effect of extreme aging by scoring the surfaces, a technique they also use in their plaster sculptures. Both contributed to the conception and execution of the etchings in </span><i>Projects</i><span>. In 1993 they stopped working collaboratively to pursue individual practices. Their ‘Paper Architecture’ schemes of the 1970s and 1980s contrasted markedly with Brezhnev’s doctrine of unadorned ‘architectural utilitarianism’ and became a graphic form of architectural criticism.</span></p><p><i>Projects</i><span> complements Brodsky’s architectural sculpture </span><i>The Factory</i><span> 2012 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/brodsky-the-factory-t13939" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>T13939</span></a>), placing this contemporary work within the historical context of Brodsky and Utkin’s ‘Paper Architecture’.</span></p><p><span>The copper plates were etched in the Soviet Union between 1981 and 1990 except for </span><i>Amphitheater </i><span>(Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/brodsky-utkin-amphitheater-p14564" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P14564</span></a>), </span><i>Columbarium Habitabile</i><span> (Tate <span>P14567</span>), </span><i>Dome </i><span>(Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/brodsky-utkin-dome-p14574" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P14574</span></a>) and </span><i>Unknown Person (Composite of Nine Heads) </i><span>(Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/brodsky-utkin-unknown-person-composite-of-nine-heads-p14590" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P14590</span></a>), which were etched at San Diego State University in 1989. All plates have been cancelled. The paper is 75% rag German Etching Paper. Jean-Loup Msika of Tanit Editions and Kathy Caraccio printed the etchings at K. Caraccio Etching Studio, New York. The publisher is Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, Inc., New York. Each etching bears the artists’ copyright stamp and the blind stamps of the publisher and each printer. Each work is dated with two dates: the first is the year the artists etched the plate, the second the year of publication. The colophon is not signed, but the individual works are signed and dated.</span></p><p><span>The portfolio has been published in an edition of thirty (numbered 1/30 to 30/30) as well as ten artists’ proof portfolios (numbered 1/10 AP to 10/10 AP); two printers’ proof portfolios (numbered 1/2 PP to 2/2 PP); three Hors Commerce portfolios (numbered 1/3 HC to 3/3 HC); one European Exhibition proof portfolio (numbered I/I EEP); one Bon à Tirer portfolio (numbered BAT); and a few individual trial proofs exist of some of the etchings, some on different paper. Tate owns number 15/30 as well as the ten artist’s proofs and two printer’s proofs.</span></p><p><span>The colophon lists the sequence of works alphabetically by title, not chronologically. There are no specific instructions for the display of the etchings in any particular order. The works are unframed, and are presented in a specially-designed box, which has an image of </span><i>Dome</i><span> and the artists’ names embossed on the cover. The texts of each etching have been reprinted in the publication </span><i>Brodsky &amp; Utkin. The Complete Works</i><span> exactly as they appear on the prints (except for editing appearing in brackets).</span></p><p><span>In addition to the edition printed in the United States, there are limited copies of some of the etchings, which were previously printed on different paper in the Soviet Union. Due to a paper shortage in the Soviet Union, the artists often numbered etchings in anticipation of future production, which in fact never occurred. Regardless of the random numbers these prints bear, the copies vary from just a few to rarely more than twenty. Most of these were dedicated to friends, used for competition entries or for exhibition purposes.</span></p><p><span>One set of etchings has been broken, and two prints from that set are in the collection of the Victoria &amp; Albert Museum, London, </span><i>Columbarium Architecturae</i><span> and </span><i>Columbarium Habitabile</i><span>.</span></p><p><b>Further reading</b><br/><i>Brodsky &amp; Utkin, The Complete Works</i><span>, New York 1991.</span></p><p><span>Juliet Bingham</span><br/><span>April 2013</span></p></div>
Summary
2024-06-07T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT