Durer Engravings And Woodcuts At McDougall

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29754, 22 February 1962, Page 9

Durer Engravings And Woodcuts At McDougall

The exhibition of woodcuts Ai^ech ' ui 1 KSt* qSlliL Alfs?ru^h* t f man 31X1 artist Although trained in the Gothic tradition, he was a sane? B tlle Renai ’- .’J* 1 P erson; fied the fr ° one per ’ I’t?,?* °l her ’ He com•cienti®c outlook ?. • >. Renaissance with a s> picaLy northern love of detail, so that he aimed at naturalism to an even greater degree than his Italian contemporaries, and he had the technique to excel as a reproducer of the visible world He waa an immensely skilful woodcutter and his virtuosity as an engraver on copper has never been surpassed. Before Durer. engraving in Germany had been an art of design and calligraphic line, founded on the intrinsic at the process V> ith Durer it became a mechanical means of reproduction. With immense manual skill he sought to give his engravings mechanical realism, even to the point of using stipple, as in “Melancholia.” He anticipated the textural anonymity of the photograph and by his example consigned line engraving to the lowly status of a reproductive process for centuries—“the handmaiden of the arts” it used to be called.

The true object of the engraver has never been better expressed than by Ruskin: “ to cover the surface of the metal with lovely lines, forming a lacework end including a variety of spacious, delicious to the eye,” he said. “To engrave well is to ornament a surface well, not to create a realistic impression.” In Durer’s woodcuts, the character of the medium is not so ruthlessly suppressed, because the very nature of the wood block does not allow such precision and attention to detail His woodcuts have more in common with the work of his Gothic predecessors than have his engravings, though his woodcuts have a soft pastoral quality by comparison with the angular strength of earlier German works. In this exhibition, the finest things are the woodcuts, especially the splendid “Samson and the Lion."

The woodcuts, too, are less weakened by the writhing, intestinal forms that result from Durer’s predilection for minutiae. Whenever he drew a fold of drapery Durer tortured the simple line with little folds and creases; when he drew a figure he indicated the indentations of every muscle and so on, until the insistence of the effect be-

comes tiresome, especially in the engravings. In the woodcuts it is softened into quaintness.

But the great weakness of Durer’s work is its poverty of design. Durer lacked that understanding of classical composition that was almost a science with Italian artists and he had no substitute for it, so that he arranged his pictures illustratively rather than formally. It was probably this that Raphael referred to when he remarked that Durer would have surpassed them all had he not lacked knowledge of "the antique.” The exhibition was arranged by the Auckland Art Gallery from its oct collection, from the private collection of its curator of prints (Dr. W. S. Auburn) and from the National Gallery and the McDougall Gallery (one woodcut). It is a pity other galleries do not consistently follow Auckland’s example by assembling and sending on tour loan exhibitions, because otherwise the ordinary person with an interest in art cannot hope to see the various worthwhile works especially old mas ers that are scattered throughout the country. The great value of this exhibition lies in the fact that it allows us to see for ourselves works —some ot them famous—whose true nature cannot be perceived from reproductions, usually reduced, in books. —J.N.K.