IU Art Museum curator leads 'noon talk' on influential engraver

Stanley William Hayter's work and influence is the subject of an upcoming "noon talk" from 12:15 p.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday in the IU Art Museum.\nThough trained as a chemist, Hayter studied engraving under Joseph Hecht in the early 20th century. Many feel that his artwork and the studio he founded revitalized what was then considered an archaic practice, influencing generations of artists.\n"Hayter's style is based on line," Annette Schlagenhauff, an assistant curator at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, said in an e-mail interview. "Sweeping and curving lines, active and energetic lines, made with the engraving tool (burin), form the basis of most of his compositions."\nHayter practiced the intaglio and etching processes of printmaking, said IU Art Museum curator Nan Brewer.\nIn the intaglio process, the artist uses an incising tool, like a burin, to carve out grooves into a copper plate; in the etching process, the artist uses acid. The plate is covered with ink and then wiped clean. Ink remains in the grooves and is absorbed into a piece of paper pressed onto the plate.\n"Hayter explored the expressive qualities of the medium," Brewer said. Like Hecht, Hayter used the properties of the printmaking process to explore Surrealist ideas of the subconscious in his artwork. In some prints, such as "The Amazon," displayed in the IU Art Museum, he engraved the entire plate with one continuous line, a technique known as the automatic line.\nIn 1927 Hayter opened a workshop in Paris, later known as Atelier 17. His greatest legacy may lie in the lessons he taught in that workshop.\n"Atelier 17 was particularly influential in printmaking and engraving," Brewer said. "It was a collective workshop that encouraged experimentation." \n"Many artists who passed through Atelier 17 went on to found printmaking workshops of their own or joined art departments at universities in order to build up their printmaking departments," Schlagenhauff said. \nHayter's influence can be seen even in the Big Ten through his student Mauricio Lasansky, a renowned printmaker at the University of Iowa. Edward Bernstein, a professor in the IU Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts, was also his student.\nSchlagenhauff will lead the discussion of Hayter and Atelier 17. Schlagenhauff is in charge of a special exhibit on display at the Indianapolis Museum of Art called "The Other Side of the Mirror: Stanley William Hayter and Atelier 17." She has studied Hayter intensely for the past two years while planning and setting up the exhibition in the IMA.\nThe noon talks, held almost every Wednesday, are a series of free, informal gallery talks open to the public. They seek to highlight new pieces at the IU Art Museum and give participants a different perspective on current collections. This talk coincides with the new acquisition of a print by Hayter's teacher, Joseph Hecht.