Ink, Paper, Metal, Wood: Painters and Sculptors at Crown Point Press.

It is simplistic to classify the print workshop Crown Point Press, the subject of this book, as solely a business venture, since prudent finance has never interfered with its activities in the feast and famine of the art market. The genie of the enterprise is the book's author, Kathan Brown, herself a master printer; it was Brown who willed Crown Point into being in 1962, and her determination, committed curiosity, and high standards have fueled its program ever since. Richard Diebenkorn invited himself to work there early on, and over the years a wide range of others have followed by invitation, often before they were acknowledged box-office hits. Looking at only the ABCs of Crown Point's alphabet of artists, one finds, among others, Vito Acconci, William Bailey, John Baldessari, Christian Boltanski, Chris Burden, Daniel Buren, Francesco Clemente, and Tony Cragg - a partial list that yet remains indicative of the variousness of the press' aesthetic. Crown Point will happily turn itself inside-out to accommodate both traditional and very untraditional print-making. I cannot think of anyone but Brown who would be open to seeing flames come out of her press as a novice printmaker ran a blazing sheet of paper through it. John Cage, the pyromaniac in question, made his first print at Crown Point, and so enjoyed it that he returned yearly, equipped with the I Ching and his adventurous soul. This book is the memoir/handbook of such intrepid explorations.

The text of Ink, Paper, Metal, Wood is equal parts print-media lesson, personal opinion, shop talk, and biography, all imprinted with the author's voice. (If the book had been issued as a print, it might have been classified as "mixed media with hand coloring.") Crown Point is particularly known for the quality of its intaglio printing, but it also offers expertise in photogravure, monotype, and, on occasion, woodcut. Among its more talked-about and controversial issues, in fact, was a series of the latter, commissioned by Crown Point but cut and editioned in Japan, in the time-honored ukiyo-e manner, by Japanese craftsmen - an interchange not previously tried with non-Japanese artists. This is among the projects that Brown discusses, and that she documents with images running from inception to final resolution. There are quotes and personal asides from both participants and critics, and there are very clear explanations of technical procedures. Some of the information is general to printmaking, some particular to an artist, or even to the making of an individual impression. All of it is the next best thing to being there. Brown emphatically stresses that to be successful a fine print must involve not only exacting presswork but a touch of artistic alchemy; as the examples illustrated here prove, at Crown Point both have been in remarkably good supply.

Amy Baker Sandback is an art historian and is currently at work on the catalogue raisonne for Bob Ryland.