Aquatint and drypoint 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 3
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 3) </span>is a one-colour aquatint print, with burnishing, scraping and drypoint, of a spider’s web on Hahnemühle Copperplate paper. It was printed by Jennifer Turner and Carmen Schilaci at Gemini G.E.L. (Graphic Editions Limited) in Los Angeles, where it was published in 2002 in an edition of sixty-five. The copy held by ARTIST ROOMS is edition number 34/65, inscribed at the bottom left corner of the print and signed and dated by the artist at the bottom right 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. It is one of four numbered <span>Untitled (Web) </span>prints by Celmins in ARTIST ROOMS that utilise various printmaking techniques, presenting a series of four different web formations (Tate AR00476–AR00479). There is a gradual shift from <span>Untitled (Web 1) </span>to <span>Untitled (Web 4)</span> 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. The curator Susan Lambert has described the basic premise of aquatint, which is an intaglio technique whereby the print surface is sunk beneath the areas that are to remain blank:</p>
paper print aquatint drypoint
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
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
Untitled (Web 3)
image: 380 × 482 mm
frame: 548 × 652 × 37 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>
<i>Untitled (Web 3) </i>is a one-colour aquatint print, with burnishing, scraping and drypoint, of a spider’s web on Hahnemühle Copperplate paper. It was printed by Jennifer Turner and Carmen Schilaci at Gemini G.E.L. (Graphic Editions Limited) in Los Angeles, where it was published in 2002 in an edition of sixty-five. The copy held by ARTIST ROOMS is edition number 34/65, inscribed at the bottom left corner of the print and signed and dated by the artist at the bottom right 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. 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. The curator Susan Lambert has described the basic premise of aquatint, which is an intaglio technique whereby the print surface is sunk beneath the areas that are to remain blank:</p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>Aquatint is a method of etching in tone. The key to the technique lies in the application of a porous ground, consisting of particles of finely powdered asphaltum or resin. The acid contacts the plate where it is unprotected between the particles, thereby etching pits in the metal which gives a grainy texture when printed. The tone of any part of the printed image is dependent on the depth to which the pits are etched, so the design is built up in stages by stopping out areas once they have been adequately bitten.</blockquote>
<blockquote>(Lambert 2001, pp.60–1.)</blockquote>
<p>This granular, etched surface quality is immediately visible in Untitled (Web 3). This is a very fine greyscale image with no opaque black ink areas. Lambert also notes that as ‘with line etching, continuous gradations of tone cannot be achieved with pure aquatint. After the plate has been etched and the ground and varnish removed, however, the flat tonal areas can be modified by the use of a burnisher in the same way as in mezzotint’ (ibid., p.61). At close range, the linear web structure, hovering centrally against an empty dark background, reveals the stroking marks from the burnisher and scraper tools alongside the drypoint needle’s etching, accumulating repetitive incisions across the plate surface and further modulating the aquatint ground with patterned linear traces. The lines of the web display not the crisp white of the paper but rather are slightly hazy, coated in a light grey tone so that the web appears almost to sink backwards into the darkness. Several individual threads extend to the plate’s four edges, some disappearing as if to suggest a potential continuation of the structure. It is not made apparent what the web is attached to, the viewer is shown only its suspension against the milky darkness. The web is simultaneously irregular and regular – the repeating columns of lines that lead to its empty centre are interrupted by wayward patterns and broken chains. The threads become more spaced out as the web enlarges, and towards the edges there are huge gaps between individual threads. Untitled (Web 3) appears almost precisely like one of Celmins’s series of charcoal drawings, such as <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>), complicating the mechanical reproduction of printmaking with its variety of hand-drawn marks. The curator Samantha Rippner has written of the arrival of the web motif into Celmins’s restricted range of imagery: </p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>Celmins’s webs arrive absent their makers: no obvious signs of life or its intrinsic expressiveness are visible. Yet we are left, ironically, to contemplate the product of a painstaking effort – by both the spider and the artist. This is because Celmins does not imbue the spider with iconographical significance, as other artists have done. She takes a more pragmatic approach, identifying with it as a fellow builder of structures that, although possessing an inherent constancy, are each subtly different. </blockquote>
<blockquote>(Rippner 2002, p.9.)</blockquote>
<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>
<p class="cttext">
</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>
<p>
<b>Further reading </b>
<br/>Susan Lambert, <i>Prints: Art and Techniques</i>, London 2001.<br/>Samantha Rippner, <i>The Prints of Vija Celmins</i>, exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2002, reproduced p.41. <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