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The Press

Maker (American, 1893-1963)
ClassificationsPRINTS
Date1934
Mediumwood engraving on paper
Dimensions8 5/8 x 8 5/8 in. (21.9 x 21.9 cm.)
SignedSigned
InscribedInscribed: Landacre...The Press...2/60
Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Mrs. Homer D. Crotty.
Label TextPaul Landacre printed his own work on a nineteenth-century press, allowing him to control the creative process from inception to finished work. In this wood engraving, Landacre portrayed his press as an aesthetic object in its own right, not simply a tool for creating art.

For Landacre, art was "more or less an emotional catharsis, and while I usually suffer during the process, I feel grand when a block is completed-that is, for a short time. So I have to do another one.... Of course as a balance, there is the physical feel of the boxwood, and the fascinating and exasperating mechanics of printing, and, as I said, the marvelous feeling of having completed something."
Status
Not on view
Object number91.284.40
2506 El Moran
Paul Landacre
1932
Object number: 91.284.50
Smoke Tree Ranch
Paul Landacre
1932
Object number: 91.284.53
Desert Wall
Paul Landacre
1932
Object number: 91.284.52
Iris
Paul Landacre
1934
Object number: 91.284.49
Jungle Storm
Paul Landacre
1933
Object number: 91.284.47
Rima
Paul Landacre
1933
Object number: 91.284.46
Poachers
Paul Landacre
1934
Object number: 91.284.60
Tuonela
Paul Landacre
1934
Object number: 91.284.59
Dark Mountain
Paul Landacre
1934
Object number: 91.284.44
Indecision
Paul Landacre
1935
Object number: 91.284.42
Laguna Cove
Paul Landacre
1935
Object number: 2014.30.87
Death of a Forest
Paul Landacre
1938
Object number: 2014.30.88