_____This resulted in the portfolio of six color etchings, The Year of the Drowned Dog (1983), printed in Zürich by Peter Kneubühler. All of Blum’s publications received critical attention, but this project seemed to capture the public imagination, crossing over from the print world to the art world in general. It was the subject of a feature article in Artforum magazine. In the portfolio, the prints fit into plastic sleeves, allowing the viewer to see the piece as one image, of which the six prints are separate components. The individual prints can, of course, be viewed separately, or in different combinations. The unifying factor is color, aqua to aqua of tropical ocean water connecting one image to the next. Beach scenes formed an important part of Fischl’s work at the time, updated versions of European scenes of leisure from the previous century. There is something reminiscent of images by Winslow Homer as well, in Fischl’s use of figures in white pants, the depiction of wind in their clothing, and the use of blue for shadows on the white. There is a narrative drama in the portfolio’s presentation, with the final image one finds being the one of the figure crouching over the drowned dog.
_____Blum continued to work with Fischl, publishing Untitled (1984), an aquatint, printed by Kneubühler, a black and white image of two figures from Year of the Drowned Dog; Floating Islands (1985), five color etchings, printed by Kneubühler; and Puppet-Tears (1985), an aquatint, again printed by Kneubühler. The images in Floating Islands show Fischl’s desire to take on art historical models, while keeping his imagery firmly in a 20th-century setting. One print of a nude recalls Courbet’s Origin of the World, while a contemporary-looking figure in a hat cavorts on a beach nearby. Another image, of a nude woman being entertained by a child doing a puppet show (this is also the subject for Puppet-Tears) brings to mind Velazquez’ Rokeby Venus. Fischl clearly wants the viewer to make these connections, and with them the concomitant comparisons. He cares less about how his art will fare in such comparison than about having the freedom to reference specific art historical models, simultaneously making the point that contemporary life is every bit as “classic” as that of any other period.
_____Blum had worked with Kneubuehler in Zürich earlier on a set of prints by John Baldessari and thought he would be right for Year of the Drowned Dog. When Blum showed him the watercolors Fischl had done for the project, Kneubuehler was surprised, because he had never attempted or seen anything like that graphically. Fischl, for his part, had not done a print project of such ambitious scope. Together, they embarked on a path of discovery. “Eric went to Zürich,” Blum remembers, “and he spent five or six weeks working on this project. He told me later how he got sick at night, because he didn't know how he could possibly make a project and be able to complete the idea of these images. He learned, I would say, through Peter Kneubuehler, and through this project, ‘Printmaking from A to Z’ —being able to think differently than with a brush, which can add some paint and color — to give some nuance, or feeling, some color and image — which is not easy to do in printmaking.”
_____Blum and Fischl did one other publication, the book Scenes and Sequences (1989), which contains 58 monotypes, printed by Maurice Sanchez, and a poem by E.L. Doctorow. Sanchez presented Fischl with the possibility, in the process of making his monotypes, of using a figure or other image more than once, recycling it by including it in the subsequent monotype, instead of wiping down the plate completely. All of Fischl’s prints with Blum show an immediacy of approach and application, but nowhere is that more vivid than in Scenes and Sequences. In “Stroll March 1,” two figures on a beach, the effect of light on their bodies is effective, and the background brushstrokes convey movement. Some of the images are cinematic, as though the figures are being tracked by a film camera; suddenly, the point of view seems to be from in the water, as beach and dunes can be seen behind the figures, and the accidental sprays and stops of the brush are appropriate to, without illustrating, the spray of waves.
_____In 1986, Blum decided to ask the Swiss artist, Josef Felix Müller, to do a woodcut portfolio. Müller, born in 1955, is a little younger than the other artists with whom Blum was used to working. Often working sculpturally with wood, while also making oil paintings, Müller’s work has a rough-hewn quality that, particularly in his figure sculptures, puts it in a lineage that includes Georg Baselitz. Müller began to attain renown in the early 1980s, and his work was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Kunsthaus Zürich (1983), Musée d’art et d’histoire, Geneva (1984), and the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Basel (1985); his work was shown in New York at the Lang & O’Hara Gallery in 1987. His large wooden sculptures are roughly cut and feature male figures, often with erect penises. He is capable of a raw, Expressionistic vision of man, as in his sculpture Mann mit Kind (1987, Lindenholz, Höhe 257 cm, Privatsammlung Frankfurt), and he is capable of a quiet delicacy, as his wood carvings of internal organs prove.
For the Blum publication — four woodcuts with the collective title Tasten Durch Den Feinen Nebel Der Sinnlickheit (Groping Through the Fine Mist of Sensuousness) — Müller embarked on a project, which must be seen in the context of performance to be fully appreciated. Its immense size alone (three woodcuts are nine feet by fifteen feet seven inches, and the fourth is nine feet by six feet three inches), and its small edition of only five impressions, guarantees a special status in the history of prints. Fortunately, a video was made of the making of this edition, and what the video captures forms an integral part of its existence.
It is worth giving an account of the video as this description provides an insight into the performative component of the print that could be missed, if one simply discussed the resulting prints. Following is my account of the video:
shot of floor: painted lines form Clemente-esque face on wood floor
M picks up chainsaw, cuts into painted lines on floor
fast fluid movements, cuts quite controlled
sweeps dust away from image with hand
goes over cuts with chisel, removing excess shavings from cut lines
new shot: sweeps away shavings with a broom
cut images seem to float over grained sweep of wood’s texture
M works by hand, scraping or cutting out lines already cut by saw
faces with features — eyes, nose, mouth — but no hair, no eyeballs, no ears
carefully working over each area of cut
adding other cut marks into floor by hand
new shot: prints already on wall
inking rollers, rolling ink onto floor in framed area
three men unrolling large sheet of paper on top of inked area
lay it down, carefully registering corners
standing on paper, sweeping it off
large white rectangular sheet laid down on black inked area
three men begin slowly walking up and down length of sheet
and back and forth, minimalist dance
new shot: hanging prints visible, in distance, in far corner of studio,
men still walking on paper, now M is sliding on paper on his
behind, using hands to propel him, now all three are sliding their
butts back and forth across paper, more dance movement
now also using hands to smooth paper, socked feet
corner weights kicked off, paper ready to be lifted, impression seen
they begin peeling it long ways
new impression laid out, wet as fish
now they pick it up with bar, print hangs across bar at its middle
