The Craze for Prints is a thematic exhibition revolving around the question as to how prints affect the social transition and aesthetic trend that show the way for the development of popular culture in a region. Harnessing the linkage and dialogue among the NTMoFA’s prints collection, the prize-winning entries to the International Biennial Print Exhibit: ROC over the past years, and priceless collections of prints by world-famous artists, this exhibition seeks to make an argument about how prints respond to their times and blaze trails in terms of cultural influence and aesthetic trend.

Printmaking as a replication technology has been intimately bound up with publication. The earliest prints were the graphics produced massively for spreading religious beliefs. Although printmaking has metamorphosed into a creative medium nowadays, the plural expression and cultural influence of prints still attract many creators’ interest in communicating their ideas with printmaking methods and concepts. The graphic language of prints as people-oriented as eye-catching has greatly facilitated the information dissemination and cultural exchange in the global village. Printmaking has become a powerful medium beyond the border of any single state, period and ethnic group, capable of connecting the communities and stimulating the information flow around the globe. Accordingly, this exhibition highlights three aspects of the art of printmaking: (1) the generation, dissemination and evolution of its graphic symbols; (2) its influence in terms of cultural communication; and (3) the transformation of its aesthetic meanings.

The exhibition is further divided into four sections. The first section — “Masters’ Classics” — is the prologue to the entire exhibition, showcasing the prints created by world-famous artists with diverse media and forms in the 20th century. Prints are no longer merely literary illustrations or replicas of paintings, but a creative approach to artists’ self-expression. The replicability of printmaking also makes itself a tool for the crème de la crème of contemporary printmakers to promote themselves. The second section — “The Power of Realism” — sets great store by prints as a platform for public discourses and a field of social practice, showing how prints start from, reflect on and reconstruct realities, and how they serve as a driving force behind social awareness. The third section — “Modern Trends” — foregrounds the pivotal role of prints in the modernization of traditional cultures in different regions by drawing the example of the modern prints movement in Taiwan sparked by occidental thoughts. The fourth section — “Contemporary Interpretation” — focuses on contemporary prints that re-orientate themselves from technique towards discourse, demonstrating how printmaking conveys its creativity and intervenes in contemporary art by questioning its own definition.

This exhibition seeks to transcend the previous overemphasis on technique and restore the intrinsic folk character of printmaking. We on the one hand explore printmaking’s long-term, profound connections with the public and popular culture from the perspective of the history of visual culture, and on the other hand cogitate upon, respond to and unlock the future potential of printmaking by reference to its portmanteau nature composed of social communication, aesthetic delight, printing technology, and life application.

Curator : Chien Po-Ju