Charles Marion Russell's The Custer Fight (1903). Note the range of tones, fading toward the edges.

Lithography (from Greek λίθος - lithos, 'stone' + γράφειν - graphein, 'to write') is a method for printing using a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface. Invented in 1796 by Bavarian author Alois Senefelder as a cheap method of publishing theatrical works,^[1][2] lithography can be used to print text or artwork onto paper or other suitable material.^[3]

Lithography originally used an image drawn (etched) into a coating of wax or an oily substance applied to a plate of lithographic stone as the medium to transfer ink to a blank paper sheet, and so produce a printed page. In modern lithography, the image is made of a polymer coating applied to a flexible aluminum plate. To print an image lithographically, the flat surface of the stone plate is roughened slightly—etched—and divided into hydrophilic regions that accept a film of water, and thereby repel the greasy ink; and hydrophobic regions that repel water and accept ink because the surface tension is greater on the greasy image area, which remains dry. The image can be printed directly from the stone plate (the orientation of the image is reversed), or it can be offset, by transferring the image onto a flexible sheet (rubber) for printing and publication.

As a printing technology, lithography is different from intaglio printing (gravure), wherein a plate is either engraved, etched, or stippled to score cavities to contain the printing ink; and woodblock printing, and letterpress printing, wherein ink is applied to the raised surfaces of letters or images. Most types of books of high-volume text are printed with offset lithography, the most common form of printing technology. Etymologically, the word lithography also denotes photolithography, a microfabrication technique used to make integrated circuits and microelectromechanical systems, as such are more technologically akin to etching than lithography, printing from a stone plate.

The principle of lithography[link]

Lithography uses simple chemical processes to create an image. For instance, the positive part of an image is a water-repelling ("hydrophobic") substance, while the negative image would be water-retaining ("hydrophilic"). Thus, when the plate is introduced to a compatible printing ink and water mixture, the ink will adhere to the positive image and the water will clean the negative image. This allows a flat print plate to be used, enabling much longer and more detailed print runs than the older physical methods of printing (e.g., intaglio printing, letterpress printing).

Lithography was invented by Alois Senefelder in Bohemia in 1796. In the early days of lithography, a smooth piece of limestone was used (hence the name "lithography": "lithos" (λιθος) is the ancient Greek word for stone). After the oil-based image was put on the surface, a solution of gum arabic in water was applied, the gum sticking only to the non-oily surface. During printing, water adhered to the gum arabic surfaces and avoided the oily parts, while the oily ink used for printing did the opposite.

Lithography on limestone[link]

Lithography stone and mirror-image print of a map of Munich

Lithography works because of the mutual repulsion of oil and water. The image is drawn on the surface of the print plate with a fat or oil-based medium (hydrophobic) such as a wax crayon, which may be pigmented to make the drawing visible. A wide range of oil-based media is available, but the durability of the image on the stone depends on the lipid content of the material being used, and its ability to withstand water and acid. After the drawing of the image, an aqueous solution of gum arabic, weakly acidified with nitric acid HNO₃ is applied to the stone. The function of this solution is to create a hydrophilic layer of calcium nitrate salt, Ca(NO₃)₂, and gum arabic on all non-image surfaces. The gum solution penetrates into the pores of the stone, completely surrounding the original image with a hydrophilic layer that will not accept the printing ink. Using lithographic turpentine, the printer then removes any excess of the greasy drawing material, but a hydrophobic molecular film of it remains tightly bonded to the surface of the stone, rejecting the gum arabic and water, but ready to accept the oily ink.^[4]

When printing, the stone is kept wet with water. Naturally the water is attracted to the layer of gum and salt created by the acid wash. Printing ink based on drying oils such as linseed oil and varnish loaded with pigment is then rolled over the surface. The water repels the greasy ink but the hydrophobic areas left by the original drawing material accept it. When the hydrophobic image is loaded with ink, the stone and paper are run through a press which applies even pressure over the surface, transferring the ink to the paper and off the stone.

Senefelder had experimented during the early 19th century with multicolor lithography; in his 1819 book, he predicted that the process would eventually be perfected and used to reproduce paintings.^[1] Multi-color printing was introduced by a new process developed by Godefroy Engelmann (France) in 1837 known as chromolithography.^[1] A separate stone was used for each color, and a print went through the press separately for each stone. The main challenge was to keep the images aligned (in register). This method lent itself to images consisting of large areas of flat color, and resulted in the characteristic poster designs of this period.

"Lithography, or printing from soft stone, largely took the place of engraving in the production of English commercial maps after about 1852. It was a quick, cheap process and had been used to print British army maps during the Peninsula War. Most of the commercial maps of the second half of the 19th century were lithographed and unattractive, though accurate enough."^[5]

The modern lithographic process[link]

A 1902 lithograph map (original size 33×24 cm)

High-volume lithography is used presently to produce posters, maps, books, newspapers, and packaging—just about any smooth, mass-produced item with print and graphics on it. Most books, indeed all types of high-volume text, are now printed using offset lithography.

For offset lithography, which depends on photographic processes, flexible aluminum, polyester, mylar or paper printing plates are used instead of stone tablets. Modern printing plates have a brushed or roughened texture and are covered with a photosensitive emulsion. A photographic negative of the desired image is placed in contact with the emulsion and the plate is exposed to ultraviolet light. After development, the emulsion shows a reverse of the negative image, which is thus a duplicate of the original (positive) image. The image on the plate emulsion can also be created by direct laser imaging in a CTP (Computer-To-Plate) device known as a platesetter. The positive image is the emulsion that remains after imaging. Non-image portions of the emulsion have traditionally been removed by a chemical process, though in recent times plates have come available which do not require such processing.

Lithography press for printing maps in Munich

The plate is affixed to a cylinder on a printing press. Dampening rollers apply water, which covers the blank portions of the plate but is repelled by the emulsion of the image area. Hydrophobic ink, which is repelled by the water and only adheres to the emulsion of the image area, is then applied by the inking rollers.

If this image were transferred directly to paper, it would create a mirror-type image and the paper would become too wet. Instead, the plate rolls against a cylinder covered with a rubber blanket, which squeezes away the water, picks up the ink and transfers it to the paper with uniform pressure. The paper passes between the blanket cylinder and a counter-pressure or impression cylinder and the image is transferred to the paper. Because the image is first transferred, or offset to the rubber blanket cylinder, this reproduction method is known as offset lithography or offset printing.^[6]

Many innovations and technical refinements have been made in printing processes and presses over the years, including the development of presses with multiple units (each containing one printing plate) that can print multi-color images in one pass on both sides of the sheet, and presses that accommodate continuous rolls (webs) of paper, known as web presses. Another innovation was the continuous dampening system first introduced by Dahlgren instead of the old method which is still used on older presses (conventional dampening), which are rollers covered with molleton (cloth) which absorbs the water. This increased control of the water flow to the plate and allowed for better ink and water balance. Current dampening systems include a "delta effect or vario " which slows the roller in contact with the plate, thus creating a sweeping movement over the ink image to clean impurities known as "hickies".

The process of lithography printing is seen here. This simplified version of a lithographic printing press gives you an idea of how the printing process works. This press is also called an ink pyramid due to the fact that the ink is transferred through several layers of rollers with different purposes. The lithographic printing presses are commonly used in newspaper production where fast rolling and jumping rolls are a famous part of the pressing scene in every newspaper production movie.

The advent of desktop publishing made it possible for type and images to be modified easily on personal computers for eventual printing by desktop or commercial presses. The development of digital imagesetters enabled print shops to produce negatives for platemaking directly from digital input, skipping the intermediate step of photographing an actual page layout. The development of the digital platesetter during the late 20th century eliminated film negatives altogether by exposing printing plates directly from digital input, a process known as computer to plate printing.

Microlithography and nanolithography[link]

Microlithography and nanolithography refer specifically to lithographic patterning methods capable of structuring material on a fine scale. Typically, features smaller than 10 micrometers are considered microlithographic, and features smaller than 100 nanometers are considered nanolithographic. Photolithography is one of these methods, often applied to semiconductor manufacturing of microchips. Photolithography is also commonly used for fabricating Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices. Photolithography generally uses a pre-fabricated photomask or reticle as a master from which the final pattern is derived.

Although photolithographic technology is the most commercially advanced form of nanolithography, other techniques are also used. Some, for example electron beam lithography, are capable of much greater patterning resolution (sometimes as small as a few nanometers). Electron beam lithography is also important commercially, primarily for its use in the manufacture of photomasks. Electron beam lithography as it is usually practiced is a form of maskless lithography, in that a mask is not required to generate the final pattern. Instead, the final pattern is created directly from a digital representation on a computer, by controlling an electron beam as it scans across a resist-coated substrate. Electron beam lithography has the disadvantage of being much slower than photolithography.

In addition to these commercially well-established techniques, a large number of promising microlithographic and nanolithographic technologies exist or are being developed, including nanoimprint lithography, interference lithography, X-ray lithography, extreme ultraviolet lithography, magnetolithography and scanning probe lithography. Some of these new techniques have been used successfully for small-scale commercial and important research applications. Surface-charge lithography, in fact Plasma desorption mass spectrometry can be directly patterned on polar dielectric crystals via pyroelectric effect,^[7] Diffraction lithography.^[8]

Lithography as an artistic medium[link]

Smiling Spider by Odilon Redon, 1891

During the first years of the 19th century, lithography had only a limited effect on printmaking, mainly because technical difficulties remained to be overcome. Germany was the main center of production in this period. Godefroy Engelmann, who moved his press from Mulhouse to Paris in 1816, largely succeeded in resolving the technical problems, and during the 1820s lithography was adopted by artists such as Delacroix and Géricault. London also became a center, and some of Géricault's prints were in fact produced there. Goya in Bordeaux produced his last series of prints by lithography—The Bulls of Bordeaux of 1828. By the mid-century the initial enthusiasm had somewhat diminished in both countries, although the use of lithography was increasingly favored for commercial applications, which included the great prints of Daumier, published in newspapers. Rodolphe Bresdin and Jean-François Millet also continued to practice the medium in France, and Adolf Menzel in Germany. In 1862 the publisher Cadart tried to initiate a portfolio of lithographs by various artists which was not successful, but included several superb prints by Manet. The revival began during the 1870s, especially in France with artists such as Odilon Redon, Henri Fantin-Latour and Degas producing much of their work in this manner. The need for strictly limited editions to maintain the price had now been realized, and the medium become more accepted.

In the 1890s color lithography became greatly popular with French artists, Toulouse-Lautrec most notably of all, and by 1900 the medium in both color and monotone was an accepted part of printmaking, although France and the US have used it more than other countries.

During the 20th century, a group of celebrated artists, including Calder, Chagall, Dufy, Léger, Matisse, Miró, and Picasso, rediscovered the largely undeveloped art form of lithography thanks to the Mourlot Studios, also known as Atelier Mourlot, a Parisian printshop founded in 1852 by the Mourlot family. The Atelier Mourlot originally specialized in the printing of wallpaper, but was transformed when the founder's grandson, Fernand Mourlot, invited a number of 20th-century artists to explore the complexities of fine art printing. Fernand encouraged the painters to work directly on lithographic stones in order to create original artworks that could then be executed under the direction of master printers in small editions. The combination of modern artist and master printer resulted in unique and visually striking lithographs, which were used as posters to promote the artists' work.^[9][10]

Grant Wood, George Bellows, Alphonse Mucha, Max Kahn, Pablo Picasso, Eleanor Coen, Jasper Johns, David Hockney, Susan Dorothea White and Robert Rauschenberg are a few of the artists who have produced most of their prints in the medium. M. C. Escher is considered a master of lithography, and many of his prints were created using this process. More than other printmaking techniques, printmakers in lithography still largely depend on access to a good printer, and the development of the medium has been greatly influenced by when and where these have been established. See the List of Printmakers for more practitioners.

As a special form of lithography, the Serilith process is sometimes used. Serilith are mixed media original prints created in a process in which an artist uses the lithograph and serigraph process. The separations for both processes are hand-drawn by the artist. The serilith technique is used primarily to create fine art limited print editions.^[11]

Gallery[link]

• Old Man with his Head in his Hands (At Eternity's Gate).jpg

  At Eternity's Gate, 1882 lithograph by Vincent van Gogh.

• 

  Washington's Residence, High Street, Philadelphia, 1830 lithograph by William L. Breton.

• 

  An 1836 lithograph of Mexican women making tortillas by Carl Nebel.

• 

  An example of a 19th-century lithograph depicting royal Afghan soldiers of the Durrani Empire in Afghanistan.

• 

  Sea anemones from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur (Artforms of Nature), 1904.

• 

  In the Park, Light - George Bellows 1916

• GeorgeLeybourne2.jpg

  Alfred Concanen's 1867 design for Champagne Charlie

See also[link]

• Block printing
• Color printing
• Etching
• Flexography
• History of graphic design
• Letterpress printing
• Lineography
• Photochrom
• Rotogravure
• Seriolithograph
• Stereolithography
• Typography
• Lithography using MeV ions - Proton beam writing
• Theodore Regensteiner inventor of the four-color lithographic press

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lithography

• Twyman, Michael. Early Lithographed Books. Pinner, Middlesex: Private Libraries Association, 1990
• Lithography and other printmaking definitions
• Museum of Modern Art information on printing techniques and examples of prints
• The Invention of Lithography, Aloys Senefelder, (Eng. trans. 1911)(a searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries; DjVu and layered PDF format)
• Theo De Smedt's website, author of "What's lithography"
• Extensive information on Honoré Daumier and his life and work, including his entire output of lithographs
• Digital work catalog to 4000 lithographs and 1000 wood engravings
• Detailed examination of the processes involved in the creation of a typical scholarly lithographic illustration in the 19th century
• Nederlands Steendrukmuseum
• Delacroix's Faust lithographs at the Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University
• A brief historic overview of Lithography. University of Delaware Library. Includes citations for 19th century books using early lithographic illustrations.
• Philadelphia on Stone: The First Fifty Years of Commercial Lithography in Philadelphia. Library Company of Philadelphia. Provides an historic overview of the commercial trade in Philadelphia and links to a biographical dictionary of over 500 Philadelphia lithographers and catalog of more than 1300 lithographs documenting Philadelphia.
• Swiss Cities

Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close (born July 5, 1940) is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits. Though a catastrophic spinal artery collapse in 1988 left him severely paralyzed, he has continued to paint and produce work that remains sought after by museums and collectors.

Life and work[link]

Close was born in Monroe, Washington.^[1] His father died when he was eleven years old. Most of his early works are very large portraits based on photographs (Photorealism or Hyperrealism technique) of family and friends, often other artists. In an interview with Phong Bui in The Brooklyn Rail, Close describes an early encounter with a Jackson Pollock painting at the Seattle Art Museum: "I went to the Seattle Art Museum with my mother for the first time when I was 11. I saw this Jackson Pollock drip painting with aluminum paint, tar, gravel and all that stuff. I was absolutely outraged, disturbed. It was so far removed from what I thought art was. However, within 2 or 3 days, I was dripping paint all over my old paintings. In a way I’ve been chasing that experience ever since."^[2]

In 1962, he received his B.A. from the University of Washington in Seattle. He then attended graduate school at Yale University, where he received his MFA in 1964. After Yale, he lived in Europe for a while on a Fulbright grant. When he returned to the US, he worked as an art teacher at the University of Massachusetts.

Close had been known for his skillful brushwork as a graduate student at Yale University. As he explained in a 2009 interview with the Cleveland Ohio Plain Dealer, he made a choice in 1967 to make art hard for himself and force a personal artistic breakthrough by abandoning the paintbrush. "I threw away my tools", Close said. "I chose to do things I had no facility with. The choice not to do something is in a funny way more positive than the choice to do something. If you impose a limit to not do something you've done before, it will push you to where you've never gone before."^[3]

Close's first one-man show was in 1970. His work was first exhibited at the New York Museum of Modern Art in early 1973. In 1979 his work was included in the Whitney Biennial. "One demonstration of the way photography became assimilated into the art world is the success of photorealist painting in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is also called super-realism or hyper-realism and painters like Richard Estes, Denis Peterson, Audrey Flack, and Chuck Close often worked from photographic stills to create paintings that appeared to be photographs. The everyday nature of the subject matter of the paintings likewise worked to secure the painting as a realist object."^[4]

One photo of Philip Glass was included in his black and white series in 1969, redone with water colors in 1977, again redone with stamp pad and fingerprints in 1978, and also done as gray handmade paper in 1982.

Close suffers from Prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, in which he is unable to recognize faces. By painting portraits, he is better able to recognize and remember faces.^[5] On the subject, Close has said, "I was not conscious of making a decision to paint portraits because I have difficulty recognizing faces. That occurred to me twenty years after the fact when I looked at why I was still painting portraits, why that still had urgency for me. I began to realize that it has sustained me for so long because I have difficulty in recognizing faces."^[6]

Although his later paintings differ in method from his earlier canvases, the preliminary process remains the same. To create his grid work copies of photos, Close puts a grid on the photo and on the canvas and copies cell by cell. Typically, each square within the grid is filled with roughly executed regions of color (usually consisting of painted rings on a contrasting background) which give the cell a perceived 'average' hue which makes sense from a distance. His first tools for this included an airbrush, rags, razor blade, and an eraser mounted on a power drill. His first picture with this method was Big Self Portrait, a black and white enlargement of his face to a 107.5 in by 83.5 in (2.73 m by 2.12 m) canvas, made in over four months in 1968, and acquired by the Walker Art Center in 1969. He made seven more black and white portraits during this period. He has been quoted as saying that he used such diluted paint in the airbrush that all eight of the paintings were made with a single tube of mars black acrylic.

Later work has branched into non-rectangular grids, topographic map style regions of similar colors, CMYK color grid work, and using larger grids to make the cell by cell nature of his work obvious even in small reproductions. The Big Self Portrait is so finely done that even a full page reproduction in an art book is still indistinguishable from a regular photograph.

Close has also continued to explore difficult photographic processes such as daguerreotype in collaboration with Jerry Spagnoli and sophisticated modular/cell-based forms such as tapestry. Close's photogravure portrait of artist Robert Rauschenberg, “Robert” (1998), appeared in a 2009 exhibition at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York, featuring prints from Universal Limited Art Editions.^[7] Close's wall-size tapestry portraits, in which each image is composed of thousands of combinations of woven colored thread, depict subjects including Kate Moss, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Lucas Samaras, Philip Glass, and Close himself.^[8] They are produced in collaboration with Donald Farnsworth of Magnolia Editions in Oakland, CA.^[9]

In 2000, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.^[10]

Close currently lives and paints in Bridgehampton, New York. He has been represented by The Pace Gallery, in New York since 1977.^[11]

Close appeared on The Colbert Report on August 12, 2010, where he admitted he watches the show every night.

Christopher Finch wrote a biography, Chuck Close: Life, which was published in 2010, a sequel of sorts to Finch’s 2007 book, Chuck Close: Work, a career-spanning monograph.^[12]

"The Event"[link]

On December 7, 1988, Close felt a strange pain in his chest. That day he was at a ceremony honoring local artists in New York City and was waiting to be called to the podium to present an award. Close delivered his speech and then made his way across the street to Beth Israel Medical Center where he suffered a seizure which left him paralyzed from the neck down. The cause was diagnosed as a spinal artery collapse.^[13] Close called that day "The Event". For months, Close was in rehab strengthening his muscles with physical therapy; he soon had slight movement in his arms and could walk, yet only for a few steps. He has relied on a wheelchair since.

However, Close continued to paint with a brush strapped onto his wrist with tape, creating large portraits in low-resolution grid squares created by an assistant. Viewed from afar, these squares appear as a single, unified image which attempt photo-reality, albeit in pixelated form. Although the paralysis restricted his ability to paint as meticulously as before, Close had, in a sense, placed artificial restrictions upon his hyperrealist approach well before the injury. That is, he adopted materials and techniques that did not lend themselves well to achieving a photorealistic effect. Small bits of irregular paper or inked fingerprints were used as media to achieve astoundingly realistic and interesting results. Close proved able to create his desired effects even with the most difficult of materials to control. He spoke candidly about the impact disability had on his life and work in the book Chronicles of Courage: Very Special Artists written by Jean Kennedy Smith and George Plimpton and published by Random House.^[14]

See also[link]

• List of Chuck Close subjects
• The Portrait Now

References[link]

Sources[link]

• Bartman, William; Joanne Kesten (editors) (1997). The Portraits Speak: Chuck Close in Conversation with 27 of his subjects. A.R.T. Press, New York. ISBN 0-923183-18-3. 
• Greenberg, Jan; Sandra Jordan (1998). Chuck Close Up Close. DK Publishing. ISBN 0-7894-2658-7. 
• Wei, Lilly (essay) (2009). Chuck Close: Selected Paintings and Tapestries 2005-2009. PaceWildenstein. ISBN [[Special:BookSources/978-1-930743-99-8|978-1-930743-99-8]]. 

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Chuck Close

• The Pace Gallery
• Watch Chuck Close and Robert Storr in Conversation on BUniverse
• Watch/listen to full episode of KCRW's "Art Talk: Close-Up on Chuck Close"
• "Close Encounters," artNet Magazine, 8-05-08.
• "Close Call" By Jon Marmor
• Chuck Close at the Museum of Modern Art
• Chuck Close at the Walker Art Center
• Images of Chuck Close tapestries
• Chuck Close: Process & Collaboration
• Habits of Disbelief: Chuck Close by John Haber
• Book Review of "A Couple Ways of Doing Something"
• Images of Chuck Close Prints
• Antiques Roadshow segment with a Chuck Close abstract painting

Interviews[link]

• Smithsonian Archives of American Art: Interview, 1987
• Finding the Color World: Interview with Chuck Close, 2002
• Chuck Close and Bob Holman in Conversation, 2006
• One hour interview with Charlie Rose at Google Video (March 15, 2007)
• Chuck Close Q&A with Men's Vogue
• Chuck Close with Phong Bui The Brooklyn Rail, June 2008
• URBAN-MUSE.COM interview with Chuck Close at his NYC Studio (Young Artists and 9/11)
• "Close-Up," Chuck Close interviewed by biographer Christopher Finch in Guernica Magazine

Keith Gerard Mallinson Wood (born 27 January 1972, Killaloe, County Clare) and educated at St Munchin's College, Limerick is a former international rugby union footballer who played hooker for Ireland, the Lions, Garryowen, Harlequins and Munster.

He was nicknamed 'The Raging Potato' because of his bald head. He was also known as 'Uncle Fester' due to his resemblance to a character in The Addams Family.^{[citation needed]} His father, Gordon Wood, played prop 29 times for Ireland.

He started his career with Garryowen who he helped to All Ireland titles in 1992 and 1994 before moving to Harlequins. He returned to play with Munster Rugby in the 1999-2000 season and played in the European Rugby Cup final that Munster Rugby lost to Northampton Saints 9-8 in Twickenham Stadium before returning to Harlequins. Wood made his international debut in 1994 against Australia. He was capped 58 times for Ireland and five times for the Lions. Renowned for playing with his heart on his sleeve, Wood always put his body on the line with trademark charging runs at the defence, or bullish tackles. Never the most accurate player in the set piece his real strength was in leadership and open play where he dominated the world XV's hooker spot.

He played on the 1997 and 2001 Lions tours, and was the inaugural winner of the IRB World Player of the Year award in 2001. He played a major part in the Lions' 2-1 series victory over the Springboks in 1997. Wood captained Ireland. He was followed as Ireland captain by Brian O'Driscoll. Wood retired from playing after the 2003 Rugby World Cup.

In 2005 the Munster Rugby star was inducted into the Rugby Hall of fame.

He currently holds a world record of 15 full international test tries scored by a hooker, previously held by Sean Fitzpatrick (12) of the New Zealand All Blacks.

Wood used to play hurling, and was a member of the Clare GAA side that played in the inaugural Nenagh Co-op hurling tournament in 1988.

He scored 4 tries in one game in the 1999 World Cup, in the pool stage against the USA. Ireland were later eliminated from the tournament when they lost in a nail-biting encounter to Argentina in the quarter-final play-off.

Keith Wood now works for the BBC and The Daily Telegraph as a freelance journalist.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Munster profile
• IRFU profile
• B&I Lions profile

Awards
New title	IRB International Player of the Year 2001	Succeeded by Fabien Galthié