ENGLISH VIA ART

The latest painting of King Charles has divided the internet but is not the first royal portrait to stir controversy.

Conservator and printmaker Christina Taylor demonstrates the jigsaw woodcut printing technique that artist Edvard Munch used to create the two colorful prints titled “Woman’s Head Against the Shore,” 1899, in the Harvard Art Museums’ collection. These prints will be on view at the Harvard Art Museums in the exhibition “States of Play: Prints from Rembrandt to Delsarte,” from September 4, 2021–January 2, 2022. By decoding creative choices that the artist pursued or abandoned in each successive step, the exhibition helps uncover the full breadth of experimentation and demystifies printmaking terminology and techniques. TAKE A CLOSER LOOK: + Edvard Munch, Norwegian, “Woman’s Head Against the Shore,” 1899. Woodcut printed in turquoise-green and pale and dark orange ink on off-white wove paper. Harvard Art Museums, 2021.261. © The Munch Museum / The Munch-Ellingsen Group / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

+ Exhibition—“States of Play: Prints from Rembrandt to Delsarte”:

+ Discover more printmaking and artist demonstrations, featuring works from the Harvard Art Museums’ collections:

--- Speaker: Christina Taylor, Assistant Paper Conservator, Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies Programs, Harvard Art Museums. This video is part of our Art Talks series in which curators, conservators, fellows, and graduate students share short, informal videos that offer an up-close look at works from our collections. -- Recorded June 14, 2021. © President and Fellows of Harvard College. Video: Christina Taylor. For questions related to permission for commercial use of this video, please contact the Department of Digital Imaging and Visual Resources at [email protected].