Ancient Modern Printmaking

I Just finished printing the first batch of cyanotype prints for the first grade classes I'm teaching in Sunset Park.

First the students make black paper on acetate collages.

I shoot these onto cyanotype treated fabric with my light box.  Exposure time is 15 minutes.

Then they go into a water bath to develop for five minutes.

Voila!

Even though this wasn't my intention, these prints really remind me of  Matisse's paper cut outs  www.henri-matisse.net/cut_outs.html.

This a detail from Matisse's Large Composition with Masks (1953).

Apparently Matisse's cut-outs were greatly inspired by ancient cave art.  My friend Jane showed me the cave drawings in William Justema's The Pleasures of Pattern (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1982)

and the similarity between Matisse's cut-outs and the cave drawings is astounding.  From 21st century First Graders in Sunset Park to Matisse in mid-20th Century France to 35,000 year old cave drawings-maybe these images are just in our DNA?