TitleCain and Abel
Artist
Bernard Brussel-Smith
(American, 1914 - 1989)
Datec. 1957
MediumMixed media intaglio on cream wove paper
DimensionsSheet size: 24 5/8 × 17 3/16 in.
Plate size: 19 5/16 × 11 7/8 in.
Mat size: 27 3/8 × 22 1/4 in.
SignedSigned in graphite at LR: "Bernard Brussel-Smith N.A."
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, April 2, 1973
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1982.2450
Label TextA native New Yorker and known primarily for his figurative prints and illustrations, Brussel-Smith studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the New School for Social Research in New York, where he learned wood engraving from Fritz Eichenberg. In 1935 he traveled to Europe on a Cresson Traveling Scholarship. Brussel-Smith worked extensively in commercial illustration and taught printmaking at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, the Brooklyn Museum Art School, Philadelphia College of Art, City College of New York, and the National Academy of Design (1966-67 and from 1972-73).Brussel-Smith worked almost exclusively in the graphic arts and was exceptionally gifted as a wood engraver. His fondness for printmaking is evident in the statement: "The graphic artist . . . has an affinity for materials which to him are alive. He watches a piece of boxwood breathe and pulsate under his graver, he feels the molecular flow of copper as though it were a self-contained body of water being displaced under the thrust of his burin." Uncharacteristically abstract for Brussel-Smith, this image of Cain and Abel was undoubtedly created while the artist was working in Atelier 17, Stanley William Hayter's printmaking workshop in Paris. Renowned for its technical innovations, Atelier 17 was Brussel-Smith's chosen venue in which to develop a new method of relief etching for use in his commercial illustration work. The artist wrote in December 1959 of his success in finding a printmaking technique that would enable greater tonal effects while remaining compatible with letterpress printing, something not available through wood engraving or traditional etching. During his six-month stay at Atelier 17 he helped to develop of a new kind of acid-resist process that is used to draw the design on the metal plate. This allows the artist to print the image in relief while simultaneously creating tonal gradations.
Although "Cain and Abel" is not a relief etching, it does utilize the technique of textured patterns pressed into softground, a technique that he would incorporate into his relief etchings, and one that he most likely learned at Atelier 17. Another technique commonly used at that workshop was gauffrage, here visible in the small area of white relief at lower left. It is achieved by gouging into the plate an area that is too wide to hold ink when the surface is wiped off prior to printing. The overall aesthetic of the print is also directly related to the influence of Hayter and his studio: expressive, curving lines drawn with the burin, indicating movement as well as form. The composition of "Cain and Abel" requires focused viewing to be discerned, but is in keeping with earlier images such as Albrecht Dürer's "Cain Slaying Abel of 1511," a woodcut Brussel-Smith no doubt would have known. Here, however, the combination of Surrealist-inspired imagery and iconic subject matter also calls to mind Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko's important statement defending their use of abstraction as a universal language to represent mythological, archaic, and otherwise "timeless" subject matter. These artists' statements reflected an aesthetic turning point for the painters of the New York School in the mid-1940s.
