Marian Maguire Materiality Essay
Marian Maguire, Medium and Materiality
Marian Maguire’s framed lithograph on paper, Virago (1990), can be found on the fifth floor of the James Hight Library by room 542D. Print dimensions are 720mm x 430mm. The work has been exhibited at the Canterbury Gallery in the 1991 exhibition “Life Cycle in Lithographs” and was purchased for the University of Canterbury by the now defunct Library Art Acquisitions Committee in 1995.
Lithography by its very method of production with the flat stone printing surface and a flat, pigment receiving, support material it would seem to conform to Clement Greenberg’s assertion of the importance material specificity for a “purity” in modern art. But as a lithograph is reproducible it problematizes its value as a commodity. Does it have that which Walter Benjamin in his 1936 essay , calls the “aura” and does it have the authority that is held by …show more content…
Her work from the late 1980s to 1990 regularly featured a totemic female form created with either an organic flow of lines and colours or a block-like rigidity that becomes an abstract form dealt with in terms of line, colour and pattern. She has described her lithographs, which usually have a gestation period of several months, as, “one-way journeys. Starting – knowing little; layering colours; looking for the subject and resolution” . In Virago the colours are predominantly red/brown and dark blue/green. They are earthy colours that reinforce Maguire’s concept of the female as a wholly physical being that has been regarded by many cultures as both the giver and taker of life. In the “Life Cycle in Lithographs” exhibition there were the works Persephone and Hine Nui Te Po, one a Greek goddess of spring and rebirth and the other, the Maori goddess of
Marian Maguire’s framed lithograph on paper, Virago (1990), can be found on the fifth floor of the James Hight Library by room 542D. Print dimensions are 720mm x 430mm. The work has been exhibited at the Canterbury Gallery in the 1991 exhibition “Life Cycle in Lithographs” and was purchased for the University of Canterbury by the now defunct Library Art Acquisitions Committee in 1995.
Lithography by its very method of production with the flat stone printing surface and a flat, pigment receiving, support material it would seem to conform to Clement Greenberg’s assertion of the importance material specificity for a “purity” in modern art. But as a lithograph is reproducible it problematizes its value as a commodity. Does it have that which Walter Benjamin in his 1936 essay , calls the “aura” and does it have the authority that is held by …show more content…
Her work from the late 1980s to 1990 regularly featured a totemic female form created with either an organic flow of lines and colours or a block-like rigidity that becomes an abstract form dealt with in terms of line, colour and pattern. She has described her lithographs, which usually have a gestation period of several months, as, “one-way journeys. Starting – knowing little; layering colours; looking for the subject and resolution” . In Virago the colours are predominantly red/brown and dark blue/green. They are earthy colours that reinforce Maguire’s concept of the female as a wholly physical being that has been regarded by many cultures as both the giver and taker of life. In the “Life Cycle in Lithographs” exhibition there were the works Persephone and Hine Nui Te Po, one a Greek goddess of spring and rebirth and the other, the Maori goddess of