Articles list
Complex psychology adds to Chmutin's mezzotints. The Ithaca Journal/ Arts Leisure, Thursday, April 18-25,1996
Alexander Sizif, "Grand Master of Mezzotint"
Michael Anikin about Chmutin's works.
Mezzotint technique
Complex psychology adds to Chmutin's mezzotints
In England and Europe, Konstantin Chmutin is regarded as a major printmaker, and with reason. The large show of his works on paper at the Upstairs Gallery is a blend of technical bravura and metaphysical moodiness. His village scenes evoke his native Russia, while his still lifes have deep historical roots in Mannerism.
The handful of pastels in the show are overpowered both in number and in esthetic strength by the 40-some mezzotints. Remarkable for the rich quality of the blacks it produces, mezzotint is a demanding process seldom employed by print-makers today. The copper printing plate is first laboriously scraped with a rocker until it will print solid black. Then the design is created on the rough surface by scraping and burnishing.
To get an approximate idea of the difficulty of creating the image, blacken a sheet of paper with charcoal, then selectively erase until you have a negative of what you want to see.
Most of Chmutin's mezzotints are tiny, and his subjects are the simplest of everyday objects: an egg, a seashell, carrots, potatoes. There is an intense intellectualism throug out and a dramatic approach to the subject egg is balanced on the very edge of a table in a preposterously contrived fashion that nonetheless rivets our attention with its uneasy equilibrium. Another egg stands on its crushed end, alluding perhaps to the old tale of how Christopher Colombus demonstrated to the Spanish intellectuals that it was not impossible to stand an egg on its tip.
There is a restlessness in the forms, particularly those of the vegetables, that makes them expressive in a taut, uneasy way, as if they are suffering silently from internal strains that mirror our psychological reaction to them.
The tubers appear unnaturally deformed, the lighting defining the proportion and perspective in disconcerting ways. The shimmering half-lights seem to penetrate and distort the flesh.
As in the historical Mannerism of Tintoretto and El Greco, or more appropriately of Giuseppe Arcimboldi's fantasy portraits made of fruit, vegetables, and flowers, there are two modes in Chmutin's mezzotints, the technical and the psychological. Behind the technical ingenuities of the style and the medium there is a complex psychology that strains the form with disproportion and disturbed balance. In their disjointed and unexpected ways, Chmutin's objects exploit ambiguities and complexities to create a very physical and mysterious visual poetry.
The Ithaca Journal/ Arts Leisure, Thursday, April 18-25,1996
"Grand Master of Mezzotint"
«For the mezzotint artist the outer darkness is the Source of the World Creation, out of which, by exertion of the creative spirit, the images of all things appear. Accordingly light for the artist by no means is not the opposition to the darkness, but only derivation of its different degrees of solidity of states.
Taking into account everything said about Konstantin Chmutin it's possible to come to the natural conclusion: this artist was born for mezzotint, also known as "black manner". He, dedicated, the missionary, wondering around the World seeking for the always slipping off ultimate meaning of art and life itself. For there is no end. But there is the great diversity of inexplicable.
"And the light is shining in the darkness, and the darkness has not embraced it". So it is not important at all, what objects are depicted in his mezzotints. Maestro Chmutin prefers fruits and vegetables, still-lifes, sometimes landscapes and other genres. But whatever he makes, behind the irreproachable naturalistic images one can always reveal the symbolical, verging on mystic. Stunning impression, that his depicted "herous"- garlic, onion, eggshell and other familiar items of our everyday life- are as if hiding, scrutinizing us, onlookers...»
Alexander Sizif
«The vision of light by K.Chmutin may be related to the one of Rembrandt. In this regard "Decent from the Cross" by the famous Dutch and many graphic works of our artist have the common essence - only Rembrandt turns to the evangelical subject, somehow secularizing it, and Konstantin Chmutin, though obviously avoiding appeal to the Gospel, raises his still-lifes to the sacral level...»
Michael Anikin, senior curator , the State Hermitage,
member of the Writers Association of Russia.
Mezzotint
The technique of mezzotint printing was invented in the 17th century in Holland by the German Von Siegen ( the first known mezzotint is dated 1642)
Mezzotint reverses all other printing techniques in that the artist "draws" on engraving plate from black to white. Shape and light as if emerge from its black surface, producing tonal variations which are not possible to achieve in any other way.
Mezzotint is a method of engraving by systematically "roughing up" the entire surface of a copper plate with a rocker - a crescent ended tool with a serrated edge having a certain number of teeth. "Rocking" with it produces little digs into the plate, each of which throws up a tiny pinnacle of metal. When the plate is entirely "rocked", the ink is held between these pinnacles and an impression then taken through an etching press would give the velvet black, characteristic only of this medium. The desired forms are then defined by scraping and burnishing down these innumerable burrs. The gradations of tone depend on the depth scraped off - the deeper the plate is flattened by tools, the less ink, when it is "wiped" it holds and would consequently print the lightest.
The mezzotint technique has been exploited mostly to reproduce paintings, as it gave the maximum of possibilities in comparison with any other one. But with the advent of photography in the 19th c. the mezzotint plunged into obscurity. Only in the second half of the 20th c. some enthusiastic artists around the world started to revive the mezzotint. But this time not to produce reproductions, but for the sake of creating the original art. Though, being the most complicated and "hard-labour" one among all the intaglio techniques the mezzotint probably will never become as popular as "Mass-Media".
