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Like printmaking, environmentalism is social by nature. We are all members of the

environment and so must democratically contribute to its healthy communal functioning.

Underlining the need for society as a whole to grasp this imperative, environmental historian

William Cronon writes, “People should always be conscious that they are part of the natural

world, inextricably tied to the ecological systems that sustain their lives. Any way of looking at

nature that encourages us to believe we are separate… is likely to reinforce environmentally

irresponsible behavior.”1 Thus traditional environmentalism has largely failed by favoring top-

down policy mechanisms and ostracizing media—instigating noncompliance and violent

divisiveness—over inclusive public engagement. We need social activism, and prints

exceptionally enable this new environmentalism because they are reproductive, cheap, easily

carried and disseminated, community-building, cathartic, and more personal than cyber media.

Printmaking more so than most other art forms engages a wide, diverse audience because

its reproductive nature produces quick copies of the same message, evoking a theme of

universality among a divided public. Though not all printmaking is reproductive, traditional print

media—woodcut, lithography, intaglio—and contemporary silkscreen prints are all stamps or

stencils that can be repeatedly reused. This reproductive nature assists activists in disseminating

information to a wide range of people as quickly as an issue arises. Some print media are better

suited for long-term reuse than others. For example, lithography uses a stone’s absorptive, flat,

erasable surface without the burrs or ruts (as in relief prints such as intaglio and woodcut) that

can be degraded with increasing numbers of editions. Likewise contemporary silkscreen

printmaking, as advanced by modern pop artist Andy Warhol, often uses durable synthetic

1William Cronon, Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1995), 85.

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fabrics rather than silk; however, biodegradable and nontoxic materials should be prioritized

when feasible.2 Also demonstrated by Warhol’s pop art, the multiplicity of the print medium can

reinforce a message of universality among all social classes and so strengthens interpersonal

relationships between people who may have previously conceived of themselves as having little

in common with their neighbors.3 This widespread understanding of commonality is crucial in

motivating action on environmental issues which both affect and are affected by us all. While

eliminating much of the labor of reproducing a standardized message to be widely disseminated

and viewed by the largest audience possible, printmaking also tends to be a far cheaper art

medium than most and thus is more accessible to all sects of the community.

Perhaps one of the most crucial imperatives for a vehicle of community engagement,

financial costs can deter less wealthy members of society from being exposed to information.

Many people do not have the funds, leisure time, or pressing desire to visit museums and

contemplate fine art. Additionally, only an elite minority of society can afford to purchase

meaningful artwork. But because printmaking is reproductive—minimizing the costs of labor—

and few materials are required in the creative process, prints are often inexpensively marketed or

freely disseminated around public spaces. A single stamp or stencil can be reused hundreds of

times, and paper and ink are cheap. Further adding to the allure of using printmaking to build the

environmental movement, the paper (or over absorptive material) need not even be new. This is

aptly demonstrated by Italian printmaker Chiara Giorgetti who printed on used railway tickets.4

2 2. “Andy Warhol: A Master of the Modern Era,” last modified March 16, 2013, accessed November 24, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-VFhb-oxHU.

3 3. Ibid.

4 4. Richard Noyce, Critical Mass: Printmaking beyond the Edge (London: A&C Black Publishers Limited, 2010), 62 (picture not provided).

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The printing medium itself is also fairly cheap. Though wood and metal plates are fairly

affordable, they can only be printed once or carved over a few times, and so a stone lithographic

tablet or screenprint likely prove more cost-efficient long-term due to their almost indefinite

reusability. Indeed, artists within the Great Depression were drawn to silkscreen: “After all, it

was an economical medium, and the technique was available to all, resulting in low prices for

prints. Screenprint was an art medium for the people, perfect for their brand of politics and art.”5

In addition to being accessible to all consumers, the cheapness of printmaking encourages

the creation of prints by those of all social classes. This empowerment of marginalized voices is

crucial in building a diverse and inclusive environmental movement—which has historically

been pioneered by a white, male elite class—because many unrepresented voices are also those

most harmed by the disproportionately substantial industrial harms inflicted upon them by the

wealthy.6 These people predominantly include nonwhites, citizens of developing countries,

women, and youth, the latter having the largest stake in the environmental movement by

experiencing the future ramifications of its success—or failure—for the longest period of time.

Though clearly more privileged than many, few have greater need for cheap self-

expression as a result of growing social awareness than college students. This was reflected in

the period preceding social cyber media in which students in both Mexico City and Paris took to

5 5. Robert Fay, “Printmaking: An Art Medium for the People,” Los Angeles Review of Books, last modified March 19, 2015, accessed November 14, 2016, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/printmaking-art-medium-people/.

6 6. Dale Jamieson, “The Nature of the Problem” in Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society, ed. John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard, and David Schlosberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 42-9.

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the streets waving and disseminating protest posters—particularly mass-produced silkscreen

prints.7 These prints were bold, emphasized by the single color tone implying a single silkscreen

pressing, and repeated visual symbols of corruption and collaboration in the form of militaristic,

striped police officers (Fig. 3), collectively raised fists (Fig. 1 & 2), and labor tools reflecting the

student support of protesting workers.8 In addition, the lightweight, two-dimensional nature of

paper prints facilitates their use as picket signs, hand-outs, and fastened posters. Though it

should be admitted that these youth-led initiatives were not successful in dismantling the

oppressive political establishments critiqued, this use of silkscreen print embodies truly

inclusive, democratic ideals necessary within the environmental movement. Perhaps more

important than the messages conveyed, these printmaking processes built grassroots networks

through the communal sharing of university presses, keeping prints cheap and activists positively

supported.

Printmaking more so than other art forms promotes democratic collaboration with the

shared use of expensive equipment and the availability of untrained roles within production.

Printing presses—while not entirely necessary in transferring an image—are often bulky,

expensive machines ensuring the paper or other absorptive material evenly receives as much of

the ink as possible. But with the New Deal Works Progress Administration’s financial support of

printmakers in the 1930s and pop art pushing knowledge of silkscreen printmaking into the

7 7. Katharine Josephson, “The Art of Protest and the Year that Changed the World: A Study of the 1968 Student Demonstration Posters in Paris and Mexico City,” University of Toronto Art Journal 4 (2011): 1.

8. Mark Vallen, “Demand the Impossible – Posters from the 1968 Paris Uprising,” Art for a Change, last modified May 2001, accessed 8 December 2016. http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Paris/paris2.html.

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public sphere mid-century, collaborative workshops began to arise.9 Indeed, the “pressing” need

to share a single piece of printmaking equipment encourages diverse exchange, cooperation, and

an admirable use of financial privileges for someone already owning a press. This is aptly

exemplified by Robert Blackburn’s printmaking workshop in mid-twentieth century New York

which aggregated people of all social classes, races, genders, ethnicities, and sexual orientations

for the collaborative, fun, friendship-building production of meaningful social art.10 Producing

highly acclaimed prints embodying racism and poverty (see Fig. 4), this workshop and similar

collaboration promotes widespread exposure to typically marginalized ideas while building a

positive support group so vital in activism.

With this, the lack of inclusivity in production seems obvious: not everyone is a trained

artist or has the leisure time available to make art. But printmaking—especially lithography and

silkscreen, but traditionally woodcut as well—promote the division of labor in such a way that

no artistic skills are required for contribution, and so certain roles can be performed regardless of

the time constraints of the individual. Additionally, as mentioned earlier within the context of

museumgoer demographics, the artistic product itself can be viewed as lofty and removed from

the common public. Likely attributable to their tendency toward simplicity and wide publicity,

prints are typically viewed as more relatable than a painting; however, some prints are seen as

more elitist than others. In the 1930s, printmakers increasingly turned away from the skill-

dependent medium of intaglio linked to “elite aestheticism,” replacing copper plates for the stone

tablets and silkscreens of more mechanical reproductive art. Due to the fact that both of these

9 . Deborah Cullen, “Art Making as Community: Robert Blackburn and the Printmaking Workshop” (presented at the “Wild Noise: Art in Times of Change” panel at El Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes organized by The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Havana, June 18, 2015); See note 2 above; Josh Macphee, Paper Politics: Socially Engaged Printmaking Today (Oakland: PM Press, 2009), 15.10 . Cullen, “Art Making as Community.”

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media incorporate several technology-based steps, such as the repeated painting of chemical

coats in lithography or creation and placement of simple stencil pieces in silkscreen, anyone can

step in at leisure to contribute their labor without creating a preclusive, unfixable void. If the

medium itself is also seen as relatable, folks will be more likely to contribute these small tasks to

workshops and in the process even learn how to perform the more highly-skilled portions. This

empowerment of marginalized groups needs to be prioritized within the environmental

movement, and the printmaking process itself should be promoted as both the uplifting of and

therapeutic opportunity for people most harmed by environmental degradation.

Printmaking—and especially relief forms—superlatively offers a cathartic process for

environmental activists to externalize their emotions and thus convert them into helpful action.

The production of art in general—and prints especially—provides an emotional outlet to deter

environmental pessimism. By staying positive, environmentalists remain motivated to persevere

in the uphill battles typical to the movement. For decades, art historians have concluded that

printmaking enables, “intense spiritual abstraction, whereby artist and audience are brought to a

new, internalized understanding of the narrative and a greater immediacy of relationship to the

[subject material].”11 Thus printmaking in particular encourages self-reflection and careful,

thoughtful renderings of potentially ostracizing information.

While this therapeutic emotional expression is typical of art in general, printmaking

uniquely maintains inclusive public engagement alongside this catharsis of physical media

manipulation. Art historian Yvonne Rees-Pagh reiterates this, noting the aggressive process of

gouging out material within relief printmaking allows artists to reflect and externalize emotions

11. Margaret Deutsch Carroll, “Rembrandt as Meditational Printmaker,” The Art Bulletin 63, no. 4 (December 1981): 585, accessed 6 December, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3050165.

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pertaining to the harm inflicted upon themselves by others.12 Using examples of Rembrandt and

Goya, Rees-Pagh argues that this embodiment drew artists to intaglio as a medium for

particularly horrendous subject material such as Christ’s crucifixion and war (see Fig. 5 and 6).13

More specific to the destruction pertaining to environmental degradation, Australian printmaker

Marian Crawford’s intaglio prints represent “loss and the mourning process,” which she feels to

be embodied by the physical removal of substance in relief printmaking as well as the

multiplicity and reproductive nature of printmaking in general.14 Therefore the way in which

printmaking mimics the emotional burdens of the subject material gives the individual artist—

even devoid of a collaborative support network—catharsis, enabling them to confront and

simplify negative subject material (such as environmental damage) that they might otherwise

evade into aesthetic products promoting social empathy.

Thus far, the advantages posed by cyber mass media over printmaking in the realms

discussed (multiplicity, cost, ease of dissemination, social connectivity, and catharsis) have been

ignored. After all, in many societies sending a tweet or uploading a picture to Instagram is

quicker, cheaper, and easier than creating and disseminating a print while reaching a larger

crowd. Most humans today have some sort of internet access, enabling similar self-expression as

artistic renderings, and so undergoing the extensive printmaking process seems superlatively

challenging for a smaller audience. However, both the process and the product of printmaking

12 . Yvonne Rees-Pagh,“Printmaking and the Language of Violence,” (PhD diss., University of Tasmania, 2013), 10-11.

13 . Ibid, 10-15.

14 . Marian Crawford, “The Unstable Image,” last modified on April 22, 2016, accessed November 14, 2016. https://theunstableimage.com/marian-crawford/.

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trump this contemporary media by promoting collaborative, thoughtful engagement with the

subject material while producing a symbol far more memorable than a digital work.

As mentioned previously, printmaking (especially lithography and silkscreen) encourages

collaboration between potentially diverse perspectives. This personal, intimate connection cannot

similarly be forged through digital media. Environmental writers have attested to this fact by

noting that the distant, impersonal, and one-sided nature of cyber media has proven ineffective in

changing behavior.15 The cyber social process is simply too fast and removed from the in-person

human communication—to which we have evolved receptivity—to promote the same meditative

contemplation and community that traditional printmaking, such as intaglio, does. Additionally,

the product of digital communication is often viewed as impersonal, irrelevant, or bossy;

whereas, with abstract artworks the audience is invited by their senses to independently

contemplate the material and form their own emotional connections and conclusions.

Perhaps counterintuitive, printmaking actually facilitates the personalization and human

connection of a social message so that a viewer might personally invest in the material more so

than with digital media. While most art forms are not reproductive, prints—especially silkscreen

and lithography, which do not require permanently changing the screen or stone medium itself—

allow for quick, easy alterations to fundamentally the same message. This is evident within Andy

Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych (Fig. 7) in which each edition easily employs a distinctive color

scheme simply by using different acrylics in each pressing. Though standardization of the print

may publicly promote a sense of unity within a community, personalization can present the

advantage of promoting artist-audience interpersonal trust in particular if more privately

15 . Susanne C. Moser and Lisa Dilling, “Communicating Climate Change: Closing the Science-Action Gap” in Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society, ed. John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard, and David Schlosberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 168.

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distributed. Both capabilities exist within printmaking, expanding the flexibility of this artistic

medium. Furthermore, printmaking distinctively diverges from the blaring neon signs of our

digital landscape because prints appear handmade, thus standing out to people evolutionarily

drawn to the human touch.16 This immediate recognition and connection establishes trust while

opening the viewer to the message depicted in a way digital media rarely can.

While many art forms enable environmental activism, printmaking uniquely provides

certain advantages for building the public engagement necessary to a unified and sustainable

cultural shift. Printmaking is reproductive, allowing activists to easily produce a large quantity of

information for a wide, diverse audience. As prints are lightweight, they can be easily

disseminated and used as protest banners, handouts, and posters. Equally corroborating the

inclusivity of this art form, prints are typically both cheap to purchase and produce, and so

environmental messages from those with significant stakes in the environmental movement have

greater access to this art form than elite, museum-confined others. Ensuring printmaking stays

cheap, sharing a printing press promotes collaborative exchange and the empowerment of people

traditionally excluded from artistic creation and environmentalism. This exchange promises to be

positive as artists therapeutically externalize their emotions into a simple, shareable symbol,

further building community on emotional empathy while promoting perseverance. Lastly, the

advantages posed by today’s cyber media—its superior speed, cheapness, and range of exposure

—are outweighed by printmaking’s cathartic, thoughtful process and greater success in building

friendships while standing out as a personal, trustworthy message among a sea of distant data.

The environmental movement requires this medium as it continues to struggle with inclusivity

despite working toward initiatives that favor all human beings: clean air, clean water, sustainable

16 . Macphee, Paper Politics, 6.

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resource use. Environmentalist William Cronon characterizes humanity by saying, “We are the

most dangerous species of life on the planet, and every other species, even the earth itself, has

cause to fear our power to exterminate. But we are also the only species which, when it chooses

to do so, will go to great effort to save what it might destroy.”17 Fundamentally, humans will put

in work when given the information and support necessary to make change, and printmaking

fulfills these pressing needs by uplifting the marginalized and showing us all the commonality of

our connection to the environment—with a medium embodying that very same universality.

Bibliography

“Andy Warhol: A Master of the Modern Era.” YouTube. Last modified March 16, 2013. Accessed November 24, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-VFhb-oxHU.

Carroll, Margaret Deutsch. “Rembrandt as Meditational Printmaker.” The Art Bulletin 63, no. 4 (December 1981): 585-610. Accessed December 6 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3050165.

17. Cronon, Uncommon Ground, 86.

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Crawford, Marian. “The Unstable Image.” Last modified on April 22, 2016. AccessedNovember 14, 2016. https://theunstableimage.com/marian-crawford/.

Cronon, William. Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1995.

Cullen, Deborah. “Art Making as Community: Robert Blackburn and the Printmaking Workshop.” Presentation at the “Wild Noise: Art in Times of Change” panel at El Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes organized by The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Havana, June 18, 2015.

Fay, Robert. “Printmaking: An Art Medium for the People.” Los Angeles Review of Books. Last modified March 19, 2015. Accessed November 14, 2016. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/printmaking-art-medium-people/.

Hoffman, Andrew. How Culture Shapes the Climate Change Debate. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015.

Jamieson, Dale. “The Nature of the Problem.” In Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society, 38-54. Edited by John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard, and David Schlosberg. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Josephson, Katharine. “The Art of Protest and the Year that Changed the World: A Study of the 1968 Student Demonstration Posters in Paris and Mexico City.” University of Toronto Art Journal 4 (2011): 1-12.

Langa, Helen. Radical Art: Printmaking and the Left in 1930s New York. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

Macphee, Josh. Paper Politics: Socially Engaged Printmaking Today. Oakland: PM Press, 2009.

Moser, Susanne C., and Lisa Dilling. “Communicating Climate Change: Closing the Science-Action Gap.” In Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society, 161-9. Edited by John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard, and David Schlosberg. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Noyce, Richard. Critical Mass: Printmaking beyond the Edge. London: A&C Black Publishers Limited, 2010.

Rees-Pagh, Yvonne. “Printmaking and the Language of Violence.” PhD diss., University of Tasmania, 2013.

Stoknes, Per Espen. What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming: Toward a New Psychology of Climate Action. White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2015.

Vallen, Mark. “Demand the Impossible – Posters from the 1968 Paris Uprising.” Art for a Change. Last modified May 2001. Accessed 8 December 2016. http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Paris/paris2.html.

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Figure 1 The Vote Changes Nothing, The Struggle Continues. 1968 Paris Student Protest Silk Screen Print, http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Paris/paris2.html

Figure 2 We are the Power, 1968 Paris Student Protest Silk Screen Print, http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Paris/paris2.html

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Figure 3 Borders = Repression portrays a French policeman painted with the stripes of a border crossing barricade. 1968 Paris Student Protest Silk Screen Print, http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Paris/paris2.html

Figure 4 Girl in Red by Robert Blackburn, 1950 Lithograph.

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Figure 5 The Three Crosses by Rembrandt van Rijn. 1653 etching, 43.8 x 38.1 cm.

Figure 6 The Disasters of War by Francisco de Goya. 1810-15 series of eighty etchings, each 15.5 x 21 cm approximately.

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Figure 7 Marilyn Diptych by Andy Warhol. 1962 silkscreen acrylic on canvas, 2054 x 1448 mm