TitleModern Times
Artist
Robert Blackburn
(American, 1920 - 2003)
Date1984
MediumColor woodcut on white Japanese paper
DimensionsSheet size: 21 15/16 × 16 in.
Image size: 11 1/4 × 11 5/16 in.
Mat size: 25 × 18 in.
EditionEdition unknown
SignedSigned in graphite at LR: "Robert Blackburn".
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, 1998
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1998.7
Label TextRobert Blackburn was born in Summit, New Jersey and spent his formative years in Harlem. At age thirteen, he participated in Charles Alston's Harlem Arts Workshop and while still in high school took art classes, including lithography, at the WPA-sponsored Harlem Community Art Center. He attended the Art Students League from 1940 to 1943, studying with Will Barnet, NA, with whom he would forge a lifelong friendship. He later collaborated with Barnet in the creation of color lithographs from as many as fifteen stones, a highly complex and innovative approach for American printmaking in the early 1950s. From 1957 to 1963 Blackburn worked at Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) in Long Island, as their first master printer. His work there printing for Helen Frankenthaler, NA, Grace Hartigan, Jasper Johns, NA, and Robert Rauschenberg, NA, contributed to the graphics boom of the early 1960s. Blackburn's most important achievement was founding and overseeing the cooperative Printmaking Workshop in New York. Founded in 1948, the Workshop provided artists a congenial atmosphere in which to create lithographs (later offering facilities for other printmaking techniques), an environment much more conducive to experimentation than commercial printing workshops. Renamed the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in 2002, it continues its founding mission of "fostering an artistic community of racial, ethnic and cultural diversity for the making of fine prints within an environment responsive to exploration, innovation and collaboration; and to promoting the global appreciation and understanding of the fine art print."
Deborah Cullen, who worked with Blackburn at the Printmaking Workshop, has written of his working process and his conception of imagery in a horizontal orientation, a flatbed approach to which printmaking lends itself. While he is better known for his lithographs, Blackburn created a handful of woodcuts and in more than one instance he reassembled the blocks used in one print to create new prints. As his goal was expression and experimentation, he often failed to document how many impressions of each work were printed, leaving the edition unknown. "Modern Times" combines a collage aesthetic with the Cubist influence manifest in Blackburn's previous works. Close observation reveals that the yellow-green was printed first, followed by red, then black, then blue. The shapes are balanced so that the lighter areas read as positive rather than negative space, and incomplete coverage of the ink in all areas adds texture to the otherwise flat shapes. A version of this woodcut was first printed in 1975, created from blocks initially made for Block on Blue (1974; Library of Congress, Washington, DC). Blackburn reprinted "Modern Times" in 1984, at which time he added the yellow-green background color, and again in 1996, when he rotated the image ninety degrees clockwise, and titled it Urban Renewal (Library of Congress, Washington, DC).
