Mezzotint 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>
Web 2
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
animals: features
astronomy
emotions, concepts and ideas
ephemerality
fragility
universal concepts
universe
web
<p><span>Untitled (Web 2) </span>is a mezzotint print of a spider’s web on Hahnemühle Copperplate paper. It was printed and published by Lapis Press, Los Angeles, in an edition of fifty plus ten artist’s proofs. The copy held by ARTIST ROOMS is edition number 7/50, inscribed at the bottom left corner of the print, and signed by the artist at the bottom right corner in pencil. The subject matter of this print – as is the case with the majority of Vija Celmins’s drawings, prints and paintings – is based on a photograph of a spider’s web rather than the direct observation of nature. The art historian Susan Lambert has outlined the basic tenets of mezzotint as a technique, one which Celmins has utilised in numerous prints, writing:</p>
paper print mezzotint
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
19 October 2024 – 12 January 2025
2025-01-12
2024-10-19
The Box (Plymouth, UK)
2024-02-03
Vija Celmins
Loan-out
Untitled (Web 2)
image: 177 × 194 mm
frame: 497 × 414 × 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
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<p>
<i>Untitled (Web 2) </i>is a mezzotint print of a spider’s web on Hahnemühle Copperplate paper. It was printed and published by Lapis Press, Los Angeles, in an edition of fifty plus ten artist’s proofs. The copy held by ARTIST ROOMS is edition number 7/50, inscribed at the bottom left corner of the print, and signed by the artist at the bottom right corner in pencil. The subject matter of this print – as is the case with the majority of Vija Celmins’s drawings, prints and paintings – is based on a photograph of a spider’s web rather than the direct observation of nature. The art historian Susan Lambert has outlined the basic tenets of mezzotint as a technique, one which Celmins has utilised in numerous prints, writing:</p>
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</p><blockquote>Mezzotint is a form of tonal engraving and, because the engraver works from dark to light, it is often described as a negative process. The plate is prepared so that it will print an even, deep black. This is done by pitting its surface systematically with a serrated chisel-like tool, known as a rocker, which raises a uniform burr. The design is formed by smoothing the burr so that different areas of the plate will hold different quantities of ink and therefore print different tones of grey. A scraper is used to remove large areas of burr, and a burnisher for more delicate work. Highlights are achieved by burnishing the plate quite smooth so that when it is wiped no ink remains on these areas. </blockquote>
<blockquote>(Susan Lambert, <i>Prints: Art and Techniques</i>, London 2001, p.50.)</blockquote>
<p>This is a small, landscape-oriented print on a much larger sheet of portrait paper, its rich grey tonal values heightened by the vast expanse of surrounding white paper. It is one of four numbered <i>Untitled (Web) </i>prints by Celmins in ARTIST ROOMS that utilise various printmaking techniques, presenting a series of four different web formations (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>–<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-4-ar00479" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00479</span></a>). There is a gradual shift from <i>Untitled (Web 1) </i>to <i>Untitled (Web 4)</i> in the character of these printed webs: from a high contrast, carefully delineated construction to a blurry, greyscale image in which the gossamer threads seem to recede into the darkness, hardly differentiated at all. In Untitled (Web 2) the web fills almost the whole picture plane, with very little empty background space, the largest area being in the lower left corner. The image prints closest to black along the top edge, with a definite lightening of the web towards the lower edge of the print. The repeating circular pattern within the nearly square space of the plate creates a geometric tension; however, there are some loose threads on the web which disrupt the precision of this pattern, and serve as a reminder of its source in nature. </p>
<p>The tonal mezzotint background is smooth and even, yet almost pixellated in its regular precision, echoing the reproduced, photographic source material. This work relates to the series of web charcoal on paper drawings which Celmins begun in the late 1990s with <i>Web #1 </i>1999 (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-web-1-ar00164" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00164</span></a>). Stressing the interrelation between her drawing and printmaking practices, in particular the mezzotint <i>Web </i>prints, Celmins has commented: </p>
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</p><blockquote>I believe working on the mezzotint, which I found to be very bizarre at first – working from black to white – influenced all those charcoal drawings. I started the drawings because I was beginning to think my painting was getting too concentrated, too tight, and I wanted to make work that was a little more open, maybe get more gesture in there with my hand.</blockquote>
<blockquote>(Quoted in Rippner 2002, p.28.)</blockquote>
<p>Crediting the print technique with a productive effect on her use of charcoal, the artist underlines their shared status as negative processes – in the drawing, there is a gradual uncovering of the white paper surface as the charcoal is erased, and in the working up of a mezzotint the plate undergoes a tonal progression from dark to light. Indeed, these reversals also refer back to the works’ source material – mimicking photography – in which the image is captured on film in reverse, as a negative trace. Celmins has said of the web that: ‘It’s an image that’s got a lot of associations with it, which I put in this very cold, scientific kind of dressing that I like to put my work in … you know, just the facts. I was seeing whether I could put an image that’s so charged emotionally in this kind of context.’ (Quoted in Sollins 2003, p.171.) This renunciation of overt interpretations and effacement of emotional or theatrical presence is fundamental to the artist’s approach to her photographic subjects, which also include night skies, oceans and vast expanses of desert. </p>
<p>In conversation with fellow artist Robert Gober in 2002, Celmins further explained her personal relationship to the spider web, both as an image and as a material presence: </p>
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</p><blockquote>[R]ecently I’ve picked up this spider web image, which is an image that’s very, very fragile, and implies something maybe more broken, more old, more tenuous … I found them in science images and I was drawn to them … I’ve been letting the cobwebs grow and am very delighted that, somehow, from the pictures in books they’ve come out in the real world.</blockquote>
<blockquote>(Quoted in Gober 2004, p.25.)</blockquote>
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<b>Further reading </b>
<br/>Samantha Rippner, <i>The Prints of Vija Celmins</i>, exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2002, reproduced p.40. <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.170. <br/>‘Robert Gober in Conversation with Vija Celmins’, in Lane Relyea, Robert Gober and Briony Fer, <i>Vija Celmins</i>, London and New York 2004, pp.8¿–38.</p>
<p>Stephanie Straine <br/>June 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 camera which is ephemeral and frozen in time. Celmins's serial exploration of her subjects, including spider webs, allows the artist to exploit the distinct characteristics of the variety of media she uses. This meticulous, translucent web is typical of her apparently fragile, ephemeral images. These images echo the web-like construction of the universe, a further preoccupation of the artist. Celmins has explained: “Maybe I identify with the spider. I'm the kind of person who works on something forever and then works on the same image again the next day.</p>

Online caption
2009-04-16T00:00:00
online-caption
ONLINE_CAPTION
animals: features astronomy emotions, concepts and ideas ephemerality fragility universal concepts universe web