The Process of Mass Duplication and Its Impact on Visual Artists from Rembrandt to Warhol

Bill Leighton, “The Process of Mass Duplication and Its Impact on Visual Artists from Rembrandt to Warhol,” BOZetto, Vol. 4, Autumn 2016, 4-7.

The process of mass duplication has been prevalent throughout art history.  Rembrandt van Rijn and Andy Warhol are thought to be some of the greatest printmakers in the history of the visual arts, the one a seventeenth-century Dutch painter and the other a contributor to the twentieth-century Pop Art movement.  Rembrandt’s early etchings Self-portrait in a Cap Laughing, Self-portrait in a Cap Open-Mouthed, Self-portrait Frowning, Self-portrait Opened-Mouthed, as if Shouting (all ca. 1630) along with Andy Warhol’s silkscreened Self-Portrait (1963) are the result of a mass duplication process.  Here I will argue that Rembrandt and Andy Warhol employ different mass duplication methods and do so to serve very different communicative purposes. Rembrandt creates his own “encyclopedia of expression” as a visual resource for his later historical works while Warhol comments on the nature of capitalism. Their processes and styles of mass duplication and contexts of use show just how different the outcome of mass duplication can be.

The process mass duplication may be the only thing that Rembrandt and Warhol have in common. Rembrandt excelled at etching self-portraits. The process of etching is rather elementary: the artist would take a copper plate and apply a layer of acid resistant ground; the design would then be traced into the ground with a needle, revealing pieces of the plate which, when subjected to an acid bath, would be bitten away as semi-circular grooves; the plate would then be extracted, cleaned, inked, wiped, and then run through a press along with a sheet of paper; the plate would be pressed so firmly against the paper that the ink would adhere to the surface. As basic as this process might seem, it was no easy task in the seventeenth century. The delicate steps concerning the application of the ground, if not done correctly, could easily ruin a piece an artist had been working on for months. For example, Rembrandt’s first attempt to create Christ on the Cross, his largest plate, had to be tossed out since the acid managed to work its way beneath the ground, destroying his previous days’ work! To solve this problem, Rembrandt devised an entirely new plate ground using a mixture of wax with a softer version of varnish that could be drawn on almost as effortlessly as paper. This, together with experiments with ink and paper, allowed him the opportunity to produce an assortment of visual effects. Perhaps Gary Schwartz had this in mind when he wrote of the etchings, “As important as Rembrandt's paintings and drawings are, it was Rembrandt the etcher who most palpably changed the course of the history of art.”^[1]

Warhol excelled at silkscreened self-portraits. The silkscreen process is a form of stenciling: a stencil would be placed by hand or affixed photo chemically onto porous mesh material; ink would then be poured on the screen and forced through the tiny openings by drawing a squeegee across the mesh material; the ink would only pass through the areas where there was no stencil and adhere to the flat canvas below. Similar to Rembrandt, Warhol had a bit of a learning curve when it came to mastering the medium.  Around 1961-1962, the artist decided that brushwork led to hand-crafted effects that were less relevant than the effects of mass production, and he adopted the silk screening process.^[2] His creative process began with a photo—or, more ambitiously, four sequential photos of himself adopting various poses in a photo booth at a dime store.^[3]  Thereafter he made several important decisions pertaining to the enlargement of the print, number of colors, registration of the image, and size of the canvas.^[4] Despite the mass-printing mechanism, he was able, as Susanne Hilberry has written,  to manipulate the silk screen process, to retain and exaggerate imperfection so as “to achieve very painterly results.”^[5]

            On the surface, Rembrandt and Warhol share an interest in creating multiple self-portraits.  Rembrandt studied his own reflection in a mirror to create images of genuine emotion; Warhol performed before a camera an array of emotions that might later serve as a sign of individuality.  However, their creative and viewing contexts differ greatly.

At first glance, Rembrandt’s Self-portrait in a Cap Laughing, Self-portrait in a Cap Open-Mouthed, Self-portrait Frowning, Self-portrait Opened-Mouthed, as if Shouting resemble hurried sketches, but they actually record the moment in which he became aware of the benefits of his self-portraiture to his larger body of painted work.^[6] These figures are representative of Rembrandt’s effort to acquire a wide range of raw human emotion, a range of emotion no one had yet accomplished.^[7] It is speculated that in Rembrandt’s efforts to document these emotions he might have been following the advice of Karel Van Mander, who wrote that different facial features were key to the depiction of different emotions and that artists must find true representations of feelings and emotion in their own surroundings.^[8] Historians have established that Rembrandt would study his face before a mirror to obtain such lively expressions^[9]; some scholars even speculate that he experimented with acting as a way of obtaining expressions, performing plays within his own studio.^[10] The artist clearly looked upon his own face as an invaluable resource for generating visual evidence of raw emotion as well as extreme circumstances. Done within the span of a year, the etchings show that Rembrandt was highly skilled in conceptualizing complex expressions.

Moving to Warhol’s Self-Portrait (1963) or, more precisely, self-portrait times four, we see that this painting was meant to read like a book or newspaper, the viewer’s eye moving from top to bottom quadrant and from left to right. The juxtaposition of the four portraits conveys a sense of drama derived from the poses and props within each field as well as the erratic “movement” of Warhol among the frames.^[11] The self-portrait possesses a sense of mystery and rebellion. Warhol wanted the appearance of mass production to be evident in viewing his works. These particular works convey the longing Warhol had to be “a machine” and produce “machine like pictures.”^[12] This self-portrait conveys that Warhol wished to idealize his own image as well as his lifestyle in the same way celebrities did. Through these repeated images, Warhol breaks free of mainstream commemorative portraiture and becomes what many dream to be: a celebrity. Warhol hoped that his face would join the community of other celebrities.^[13] In viewing this work, the viewer feels a sense of apathy as he/she is exposed to a mindless bombardment of data continually being produced by American advertising.^[14] I am inclined to agree with Hilberry: “Warhol’s Self-Portrait (1963) acts like a mirror, reflecting what we worship, aspire to be, and actually are.”^[15] No matter how glamorous or sophisticated Warhol tries to appear, the image possesses an eerie yet quiet quality.

Finally, a word might be said of the place of their works of art within their respective oeuvres. Each artist offered his own unique expression and later integrated it into a masterpiece which informed the subsequent development of art. The expression of anguish in Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait Opened-Mouthed, As if Shouting appears in a painting done the next year, Christ on the Cross. This depiction is exactly what he thought Christ might have looked like and what he was feeling at that particular moment he hangs on the cross. The expression of bewilderment in Self-Portrait in a Cap, Opened-Mouthed appears on many of the faces in a later painting, Raising of Lazarus (1630-31). A look of pure anger in Self-portrait, Frowning appears in Descent from the Cross: the man on the ladder, positioned to the right of the cross, assisting in the removal of Christ’s body from the crucifix.^[16] These comparisons reaffirm the notion that Rembrandt was studying human expression as well as the emotions associated with that expression.^[17] These early etchings prove that what some might have thought to be rushed sketches were in actuality—as H. Perry Chapman has pointed out—inspiration for later depictions of important characters within powerful visual masterpieces. One could argue that had not Rembrandt looked upon himself as a reference for the genuine depiction of human expression, his later paintings might not have had such powerful characterizations

Warhol's mass production of art contributed greatly to the development of art. The silkscreen process made the artistic community realize that great art could be produced in a mechanical fashion if done correctly. Warhol had rejected all common practices associated with making visual masterpieces.^[18] The artist instead created his own one of a kind images with a sequential process encompassing new methods, allowing him to make hundreds of “copies” of the same image. Germano Celant has observed: “The change in method was revolutionary because its aim was to dissolve the role of the creator in favor of the producer.”^[19] These images are just as significant as anything hand painted.  Through them Warhol asserts that our society is plagued by the insatiable consumption of materialist goods. The rise in state-of-the-art technology, combined with the commercialized desire of living a celebrity lifestyle, in turn creates a sense of seclusion, cruelty, as well as that devours our society. The artist possessed an ability to take his interpretation of the American consciousness and depict them in images, images that translate our ambitions, anxieties and what we as a society believe to be true.^[20]

In conclusion, the process of mass duplication has played an important role throughout art history, affecting the purpose of master works in various ways. Rembrandt van Rijn and Andy Warhol, each used this process to further develop their own works. Both Rembrandt’s and Warhol’s processes encompassed reproductive mediums, one being etching, the other being silk-screening. Another important similarity factoring into their processes was that Rembrandt looked upon his own reflection in the effort to depict true emotion; this is similar to Warhol’s process in that he looked to his own goals, feelings, and personality. However, their contexts of use are very different. Rembrandt was able to use these etchings as an encyclopedia of reference which he could incorporate into later works; Warhol’s, on the other hand, was a commentary on America’s consumption of materialistic commodities. They take art history in separate directions. Rembrandt's contribution included the depiction of genuine emotions to make his histories more compelling, and by utilizing this method his masterworks have served as inspiration for later generations of artists. Warhol’s contributions reshaped the definition of self-portraiture as well as commented on the consumeristic nature of American society. The process of mass duplication has impacted artists from the seventeenth to the twentieth century and has helped shape the world as we know it.