Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Warrington Colescott
American; 20th-century
Bloomington, IL: Cometogetherspace
60%
Christmas with Ziggy. 1965. Color etching, drypoint, hard- and soft-ground etching, with roulette and vibrograver
Colescott, a consummate printmaker, tends to teeter on the line that separates medium specificity from medium fetishism. (This is a problem many printmakers have.) To make this print he used a smorgasbord of techniques, and at times the resulting combination of surface properties, types of line, levels of saturation, and degree of clarity is aesthetically significant. At times, though, it feels indulgent. You have the Picassoid bull in the lower right, for instance, which is embossed such that it appears to sort of preside over the whole image, but you also have all the layers of linework comprising the figures and their setting, which seems like an etcher losing himself in the delights of working his plate. The textual components are a little hacky, but the composition — which manages to look full where it's empty and empty where it's full — is worthwhile. (TFS, 2025)