Photo-etching, 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>
Night Sky 2 Reversed
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
abstraction
astronomy
from recognisable sources
landscape
landscape
night
sky
star
times of the day
universe
<p><span>Night Sky 2 Reversed </span>is a three-colour, multi-technique print on medium weight, off-white Hahnemühle Copperplate paper that depicts a negative version of a starry night sky. It was printed and published by Gemini G.E.L. (Graphic Editions Limited) in Los Angeles 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. It forms a pair with <span>Night Sky 1 Reversed </span>2002 (Tate AR00474), of which the copy held by ARTIST ROOMS has a matching edition number, 34/65.</p>
paper print photo-etching 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
29 March 2014 – 28 June 2014
2014-06-28
29 March 2014 – 28 June 2014
2014-06-28
2014-03-29
Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum & Arts Centre (Lochmaddy, UK)
2014-03-29
ARTIST ROOMS 2014: 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
Night Sky 2 Reversed
image: 387 × 480 mm
frame: 563 × 656 × 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>Night Sky 2 Reversed </i>is a three-colour, multi-technique print on medium weight, off-white Hahnemühle Copperplate paper that depicts a negative version of a starry night sky. It was printed and published by Gemini G.E.L. (Graphic Editions Limited) in Los Angeles 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. It forms a pair with <i>Night Sky 1 Reversed </i>2002 (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-night-sky-1-reversed-ar00474" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00474</span></a>), of which the copy held by ARTIST ROOMS has a matching edition number, 34/65.</p>
<p>The star-filled composition of this print – as is the case with the majority of Vija Celmins’s drawings, prints and paintings – is based on a photograph rather than direct observation of the night sky. Among the works by Celmins in ARTIST ROOMS, this strand of starry imagery is prominent: prints like <i>Mount Holyoke </i>1987 (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-mount-holyoke-ar00471" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00471</span></a>), the four-part seroes <i>Concentric Bearings </i>1984–5 (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-concentric-bearings-a-ar00469" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00469</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-concentric-bearings-d-ar00470" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00470</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-concentric-bearings-b-ar00482" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00482</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-concentric-bearings-c-ar00483" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00483</span></a>), and the charcoal drawing <i>Night Sky #19 </i>1998 (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-night-sky-19-ar00163" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00163</span></a>) all make use of a constellation, galaxy or night sky photographic source. The artist has discussed her relationship to these source materials:  </p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>I have millions of night sky images and they’re all unsatisfactory. They’re all flat photographs and they’re printed. I like that printed quality. It’s my job to make them satisfying and put them in the real world as real textural objects. I’m redescribing the image in another medium that’s real, that has some substance. </blockquote>
<blockquote>(Quoted in Seymour 2001, p.55.) </blockquote>In its visual and textural redescription of the night sky image, <i>Night Sky 2 Reversed </i>combines four different printmaking techniques, with each method applied to the copper etching plate separately. The first is photoetching: an intaglio process that coats the plate with a light-sensitive ground which is then exposed to a photographic image and etched with acid (see Gemini G.E.L. Online Catalogue Raisonné, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., <a href="http://www.nga.gov/gemini/glossary.htm">http://www.nga.gov/gemini/glossary.htm</a>, accessed 22 June 2010). This is followed by aquatint, a ‘method of etching in tone’ that produces a print quality similar to a watercolour wash, and is here used to achieve a finely textured surface onto which the photogravure process is transferred using light-sensitive gelatine and water immersion (see Lambert 2001, pp.60, 67). The final stage involves drypoint. This is an intaglio engraving technique, which means that the design is incised and the ink is sunk into the resulting grooves beneath the surface of the metal plate (see ibid., p.38). Drypoint is essentially a form of linear mark-making, and in <i>Night Sky 2 Reversed</i> it has been used to render the smallest and most detailed black ink stars. This print has a double margin: inside the rectangular impression of the plate mark there is a hand-drawn and slightly irregular inked border line, from where the image begins. This dual reinforcement of the contained image plane is a reminder of the image’s photographic origins – the vast, dispersed field of stars cannot spread out infinitely, as it is restricted by the definite limits of the foundational rectangle of information, selected by the camera’s viewfinder and recorded on the negative film. <br/>Unlike its partner print, in Night Sky 2 Reversed there is very little incidental linear marking of the plate surface, with a more even coverage to the background. The star ink spots look especially painterly, and yet the endlessness of the sky is given a restrictive frame. The print represents a vast, far away section of space, but the stars appear like miniscule marks, closer to a random, abstract pattern than an astronomical rendering. Half of the stars appear etched, half appear to derive from photogravure (these have more tonal variation). Looking closely it is possible to see the tiny particles that comprise the celestial matter. It is highly granular, reinforcing Celmins’s claim to create ‘real textural objects’ from her photographic sources. In conversation with the curator Anne Seymour, the artist commented that:
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>one of the things about the night sky images was the image became a little more abstract and a little less specific. By making a drawing in a very careful and sensuous way, I think <i>that’s</i> where the specificness goes. It’s really a drawing first, and second there’s an image kind of emerging from it.</blockquote>
<blockquote>(Quoted in Seymour 2001, p.54.)</blockquote>
<p>This comment holds equally true of this print, where the complex relationship between the variously achieved set of engraved, etched and photo-mechanically produced marks is given precedence over the specificities of the night sky detailing, and indeed the photograph itself.</p>
<p>
<i>Jupiter Moon – Constellation</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-jupiter-moon-constellation-ar00481" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>AR00481</span></a>)<i> </i>is a dual-image print combining mezzotint and etching that depicts a photograph of one of Jupiter’s moons together with a constellation image in reverse. Celmins has remarked of <i>Jupiter Moon – Constellation</i> that ‘the Jupiter moon is such a fabulous image, which I found in one of my travels through bookstores looking at pictures. At the bottom of that print is a reversed galaxy, an image that I’m interested in again now’ (quoted in Rippner 2002, p.23). This final comment refers to works such as <i>Night Sky 1 Reversed</i> and <i>Night Sky 2 Reversed</i>, which were produced almost twenty years after this first appearance of the inverse constellation motif. The reversed night sky also features in a painting made one year before these two prints, <i>Night Sky #18 </i>2000–1 (reproduced in Lane Relyea, Robert Gober and Briony Fer, <i>Vija Celmins</i>, London and New York 2004, p.141). These works demonstrate the persistence and longevity of this subject matter, migrating to different facets of the artist’s practice across a substantial period of time.</p>
<p>
<b>Further reading </b>
<br/>Susan Lambert, <i>Prints: Art and Techniques</i>, London 2001.<br/>Anne Seymour and others, <i>Vija Celmins – Drawings of the Night Sky</i>, exhibition catalogue, Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London 2001.<br/>Samantha Rippner, <i>The Prints of Vija Celmins</i>, exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2002, reproduced p.46. </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 negative image of the night sky turns the sky white and star formations are transformed into black markings.</p>

Online caption
2009-04-16T00:00:00
online-caption
ONLINE_CAPTION
abstraction astronomy from recognisable sources landscape landscape night sky star times of the day universe