Sandow Birk (b.1962) is an American artist whose printmaking and painting engages with social themes such as inner city violence, graffiti, national and international political issues, war and prisons.
As an artist, I'm interested in how artworks function in the world we live in, the 21st century, and I'm interested in the times we live in. I want to make works that are about something that is interesting to me. I want to make works about our times and about the world. I'm continually interested in how making things by hand in the very slow, painstaking processes of centuries ago can still be
relevant in the world today.78
My research pointed to Sandow Birk’s prints early in the project. At the start of my project, I was interested in the power of the printed medium to convey political messages, exampled in the poster art of countries such as Russia and Mexico. Political poster art was often created from woodblock and screen printing methods because of the bold graphic qualities inherent in these processes. Birk’s large woodblock prints possess the same visual qualities. Inspired by Birk, I too wanted to gouge out images; to feel the tools slicing in. In my early works I did this on large pieces of linoleum to produce images of Australian soldiers in Afghanistan and of child violence.
Birk’s preparatory drawings for his prints were small in scale. These were then greatly enlarged on a copying machine and then traced onto his plywood panels. The enlargement process can change the feel of small drawings. According to Birk ‘The sketchiness of the small-scale drawings became bolder and the gestures more apparent, the figures more “blocky” and stylised’. 79 The same thing occurred when I enlarged my small Cronulla drawings with an epidiascope onto the wall of my studio. Birk’s series of wood block prints Depravities Of War (2007) [106] addressed the USA
war in Iraq. The series was inspired by and specifically based upon the visual elements in Jacques Callot’s Miseries and Misfortunes of War (1633), also known as The Large
Miseries Of War; a suite of eighteen miniature etchings that depicted the atrocities
committed by marauding armies during Europe's Thirty Years War (1618-1648). In common with the work of Callot, Birk’s imagery is brutal and grotesque.
78
Row, D K. ‘Interview with Sandow Birk on the Iraq War and beyond’. The Oregonian, 5 November 2009. <http://www.oregonlive.com/art/index.ssf/2009/11/interview_sandow_birk_on_the_i.html>
Viewed 18 December 2010.
79 Jones, Leslie. Sandow Birk: The Depravities of War. Doc record 2009, Los Angeles County Museum of
Art (LACMA).
<http://collectionsonline.lacma.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=sandow_birk.asp;type=410> Viewed 26 December 2010.
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106. Sandow Birk. Depravities of War . 2007.
Morbid Curiosity: The Richard Harris Collection, Chicago Cultural Centre, 2012.
Whereas Callot had used an etching tool to intricately draw his graceful figures on metal, Birk used wood carving tools to carve out figures that appear solidly grounded. Wood block printing works on the subtractive: what is removed does not print, what remains does. But gouging and carving into wood can be violent and some artists express this in their prints through the ferocity of their mark making. The ‘cut’ in the woodblock can also be read, as Shikes states, as ‘the language of attack’ 80.
Birk describes why he based his print series on Callot’s:
Simultaneously I'd been wanting to do a project about the war in Iraq. I saw that if I tied it to Callot, the project wasn't just about the war in Iraq, but it was also about the universality of warfare over these hundreds of years from Callot's time to Goya's time to our time. I wanted to make this project more universal in
meaning.81
However unlike Callot’s print series, which are small and often requiring a magnifying glass in order to see what is actually happening, Birk produced his prints on a grand scale. They feature epic compositions printed with strong black ink, catching the eye with their vividness. Creating such large prints can challenge an artist and the printer. It pushes traditional printmaking boundaries making the work contemporary.
80
Shikes, E Ralph. The Indignant Eye: The Artist as Social Critic in Prints and Drawings from the Fifteenth Century to Picasso. Beacon Press: Boston, 1969,p xxiii.
81
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107. Chinese Social Realist woodblock prints.1940s.
Stylistically and technically, Birk’s prints are reminiscent of Chinese Social Realist woodblock prints.
Unlike Callot, who witnessed the events directly from his home in the Lorraine, Birk extracted imagery from media coverage of the Iraq war. Birk’s scenes are based on pictures taken by war photographers working on the ground with the troops in Iraq. Others come directly from television news footage or the Internet. Using these visual resources Birk has composed Callot-like scenes that tell the story of the tragic and seemingly endless Iraq war.
108. Sandow Birk. The Depravities of War. 2007. Title page. 48 x 96 inches.
109. Jacques Callot. Miseries of War. 1633. Title page.
In common with Callot, Birk includes a title page as a prelude to the narrative of the print series [108]. It bears the phrase ‘The Depravities of War’ chiselled into a crumbling monolithic stone monument. This is set against a war torn landscape. The monument is surrounded by gun holding American soldiers and Iraqi men praying; in the background black explosion clouds billow into the sky. His message in his title page speaks of war’s destructive futility. Callot’s title page works differently [109]; it shows a pristine monument, surrounded by theatrically posed figures in elaborate clothing. The scene is decorative, resplendent and triumphant, and appears incongruous to the words on the monument Les Miseres et les Malheurs de la Guerre.
110. Sandow Birk. Obsession. 2007.
The Depravities of War series. 48 x 96 inches.
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