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RAM Talks Art: Looking for a little satire in your life? Meet Warrington Colescott

By Elizabeth Dailing, Education Director, Rockford Art Museum

To some art aficionados, the name Warrington Colescott may sound familiar. To printmakers, the name is known by all.

Warrington Colescott has a significant number of pieces in the RAM Permanent Collection that can now be viewed in the new exhibition Warrington Colescott: A Brief & Inaccurate History. In most cases, Colescott's pieces contain characters you know - in situations you don't.

An artist statement reveals: “My prints and paintings are narratives, both direct and metaphorical. The intent is moral, if your morality is in my ballpark. The method is satire; comedy is OK, but pretty much anything goes it if fits my drawing concept on paper or copper plate.”

Colescott was born in Oakland, Calif., in 1921. He got his bachelor of arts degree at University of California at Berkeley and was then inducted into the wartime Army in 1942. Four years later, he returned to UC Berkeley to begin his master of arts in painting. And, in 1949, Colescott took a position in the art department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This position and establishment in Madison lasted the majority of Colescott's career.

Since 1986, Colescott has been professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He extensively researched the history of satire and its components: greed, vanity, pride, lust, social ambition, fads and fashions. Many times, his prints have underlying social messages - usually against the abuse of power existing in American society.

RAM owns 11 prints from Colescott's History of Printmaking series. Produced throughout the 1970s, it pays homage to the pioneers of printmaking - and critiques the myths surrounding these artistic legends. As a tongue-in-cheek nod to his subject matters, he employs each artist's method to create the respective prints.

Because Alois Senefelder discovered the process of lithography, Colescott's work History of Printmaking: Senefelder Receives the Secrets of Lithography is a lithograph. In the print, he parodies the moment the Bavarian playwright, looking for a cost-effective way to distribute his plays, discovers the process-the legend goes that Senefelder tricked ancient Teutonic gods into giving him the secrets of lithography. The gods surround him, naming different elements needed for the process. Thunder god Thor bellows out the underlying secret: "Grease repels water."

In another piece from this series, History of Printmaking: Durer at 23; in Venice, in Love, his Bags are Stolen, Colescott shows Durer in the heart of Venice (in front of an art shop-selling originals and reproduction works) surrounded by the sight, sounds and people of the city. Look at the skies of Venice, however, and you will see a cathedral ceiling covering the city, showing the rich religious and architectural influence of the culture…all while Durer is about to lose his luggage to the clever thief approaching from around the corner…which just happens to allude to the fact that Venetian engraver Marcantonio imitated Durer's work and published them as his own. Who knows what was found in that luggage!

There is so much to discover in all of the pieces in this exhibition. Sometimes you will catch yourself laughing out loud at a quirky image you had not formerly seen.

The images are captivating, and require you to reflect on politics, society and history all at once. Just take a look at History of Printmaking: Picasso at the Zoo and view the woman visiting the zoo with Pablo Picasso-she looks like she fell right out of one of his paintings.

So, if you're looking for something you may not have seen before, come and check this exhibition out. Warrington Colescott: A Brief & Inaccurate History will be on display at RAM through Aug. 9.

from the Jan. 7-13, 2009 issue

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