Applied and easel in the woodcut

Abstract

European graphics, like all fine arts, has always sought to easel, to maximize their freedom from practical application (William Maurice, with his ideas of introducing art into industry, is a rare exception). The easel graphics in Europe is called «Freigraphik», i.e. free graphics. Russian art, on the contrary, has long remained within the Eastern traditions of decorative two-dimensionality. Only after the reforms of Patriarch Nikon Russian art rushed to catch up with the «Western progress», long since striving for to verism and photography. It is the planar background of the Russian graphics that explains the popularity of woodcutting in Russia. Woodcut, even reproduction, imitating photographic three-dimensionality in the 19th century, stubbornly clinging to the plane of the sheet, did not let the spirit of easel play its role. The beginning of the 20th century returned woodcuts to the plane of the sheet, and considered the aesthetics of a reproductive engraving a hopeless anachronism. An engraver or a carver, faced with the technological features of wood engraving, willy-nilly becomes wiser as an artist, choosing the best way to achieve color and linear expressiveness. European typography is entirely due to woodcut. The moving letters are small woodcuts, now molded in metal, but the former were once carved on a single board. Another example of the stubborn aspiration of woodcuts to utility is an attempt in the 16th century to use it as a reproduction of painting. The article mentions the invention a chiaroscuro by Hugo da Carpi. Attention should be paid to the fact that it was applied painters-jewelers, stained glass artists and architects of the 16th century who widely used woodcuts as a means of reproducing and widely popularizing their ideas and inventions. Surprisingly, these engravings-drawings nowadays perceived as a purely easel works. Many of the authors of these prints are mentioned in this publication. Artists of our time have noticed that the engraved or chopped board is much more beautiful than the print from it. This phenomenon prompted the idea to decorate interiors with huge woodcuts. So xylography invaded architecture. This is a paradox: large-format woodcuts, it would seem, should be ideally easel, but no, it retains the functions of applied art.