Huck is best known for creating large-scale woodcuts acting as both satirical narratives and social criticism.[1] He says in his artist statement: "My work deals with personal observations about the experiences of living in a small town in southeast Missouri. The often Strange and Humorous occurrences, places, and people in these towns offer a never-ending source of inspiration for my prints. I call this work 'rural satire'".[2]
From 1995 to 2005, Huck created two woodcut folios: 2 Weeks in August: 14 Rural Absurdities and The Bloody Bucket. 2 Weeks in August: 14 Rural Absurdities, a thematically unified suite of 14 large woodcut prints, depicted 14 bizarre folk tales that allegedly occurred in Huck's hometown of Potosi, Missouri. The suite was produced in three years from 1995 to 1998. His second body of work, The Bloody Bucket, was based on violent legends surrounding a bar of that name in or around his hometown of Potosi. It comprises 10 large-scale woodcuts, executed between 1999 and 2005.
In December 1999, Huck's work represented the United States in an exhibition entitled From Kandinsky To Corneille: Linoleum in the Art of the 20th Century held at the Cobra Museum in Amstelveen, Holland. Featured in the exhibition was a large scale linoleum cut by Huck entitled "Attack of the 50ft. Yard Ornament". The piece was commissioned specifically for the exhibition by the linoleum company Forbo-Krommenie in Amsterdam.
The Whitney Museum of American Art in September 2003 featured two works by Huck in an exhibition entitled To Be Human. Both the works featured were woodcuts from the series 2 Weeks in August.
Huck is currently working on a 14-triptych cycle of woodcut prints entitled Booger Stew. The first installment of the series, a triptych entitled "The Transformation of Brandy Baghead Pts. 1, 2, & 3", was completed in March 2009. An exhibition entitled Tom Huck and the Rebellious Tradition of Printmaking opened on August 28, 2009 at the Saint Louis Art Museum. Prints by Albrecht Dürer, William Hogarth, Jose Guadalupe Posada, and Max Beckmann were featured alongside Huck's "The Transformation of Brandy Baghead Pts. 1, 2, & 3".
Electric Baloneyland
On December 19, 2011, Huck's website www.evilprints.com announced the April 1, 2012, release of The Hillbilly Kama Sutra. This new suite of 15 linoleum cut prints is Huck's first portfolio of prints since 1998's 2 Weeks in August: 14 Rural Absurdities. On April 12, 2012, a selection of prints from the new series were released in the St. Louis weekly publication The Riverfront Times. On May 4, 2012, Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri, hosted the debut exhibition of The Hillbilly Kama Sutra.
In early spring of 2014 Huck completed work on his second major woodcut triptych from "Booger Stew" entitled "The Tommy Peeperz". "The Tommy Peeperz" debuted in a show of The Outlaw Printmakers entitled "The Dirty Dozen" at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center on April 3, 2014.
An exhibition entitled "Tom Huck: Hopeless Americana" opened on October 17, 2015 at Gallery 210 at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Accompanying this 20 year retrospective was a catalogue that included essays by Richard Field, emeritus curator at the Yale University Gallery of Art. The exhibition included most of Huck's major works in print from 1995 to 2015, as well as sketchbooks and a small selection of studio ephemera.
On October 27, 2017 the exhibition "Booger Stew: The Monumental Triptychs of Tom Huck" opened at the old master print dealer/gallery C. G. Boerner in New York, New York. The show featured Huck's most recent work, a large scale chiaroscuro woodcut triptych entitled "Electric Baloneyland". Featured as well were his other large woodcuts "The Tommy Peeperz" as well as "The Transformation of Brandy Baghead". A selection of old master prints by Hogarth, Goya, and Durer were also shown in the exhibition.
An exhibition entitled "Rival Cuts: Process & Technique in Prints By Tom Hück and Albrecht Dürer" opened on February 9, 2019 at the Michael. C. Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. The exhibition featured Hück's chiaroscuro woodcut "Electric Baloneyland" and prints from "Two Weeks in August", alongside prints by Albrecht Dürer from the "Apocalypse" series.
The July/August 2019 issue of Penthouse magazine featured an interview with Hück. Interviewed by Seth Ferranti, the article covers Hück discussing the inspiration for many of his works, including his many art historical influences.
In December 2020 St. Louis art collectors Ted and Maryanne Ellison Simmons donated their entire collection of works by Tom Huck to the Saint Louis Art Museum. The Simmons collection of Huck's works dates to 1995 and includes blocks, prints, preparatory drawings, and sketchbooks. With the museum's previous holdings, this is the definitive archive for Huck's work.
Public works
Lambert International Airport in St. Louis, Missouri installed a large scale glass triptych by Huck in April 2012. Entitled “Vivere Est Volare”’ (To Live Is To Fly), the piece was the first public art project undertaken by Huck. The piece was produced in collaboration with stained glass manufacturer Franz Mayer & Co. in Munich, Germany. The 3 paneled piece is installed in Concourse C at Lambert Airport.
Playground by Tom Huck at Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis Missouri
In April 2015 Laumeier Sculpture Park in suburban St. Louis permanently installed 3 playground "spring toys" designed by Huck and fabricated based on his series of "Death Bug" prints. It is the first interactive public art project Huck had undertaken.
Commercial work
Aside from creating woodcuts, Huck has also designed logos, posters, and apparel for musicians and organizations. Huck has created the artwork on posters, t-shirts, and ephemera for bands such as Motorhead, The Roots, and A Perfect Circle among others. In 2002 he designed the cover of The Roots' album Phrenology,[3] and in 2009 he designed the poster for the band Motörhead and their show at The Pageant in St. Louis. Other clients of Huck's have included Pabst Blue Ribbon and Art the Vote, for which he designed a billboard ad during the 2008 presidential election. In early 2015, Huck began collaborating with the music merchandise company Global Merchandising, working on apparel and exclusive merchandise projects for Motorhead. The first of these special projects was a limited edition t-shirt design entitled "Motorhead America", based on an earlier unused tour backdrop Huck designed with input from band frontman Lemmy. Spring 2017 saw the first release from a planned 3 part, limited edition poster series "Motorhead: By Land, Air, and Sea". This series was available exclusively through the band's official website imotorhead.com.
Style and influences
Huck's work pushes the boundaries of technique and taste in his chosen medium, the woodcut. Huck draws his influences mainly from Northern Renaissance masters, such as Albrecht Dürer whom he cites as a "print hero".[4] Other influences include José Guadalupe Posada, Honoré Daumier, and Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes. Huck's work is also known for his delicate and intricate method of carving and use of cross-hatching in the print medium. It has been described as having "a real delicacy of touch" and "an extraordinary landscape of marks".[5]
Albrecht Dürer, sometimes spelled in English as Durer, was a German painter, printmaker, and theorist of the German Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Dürer established his reputation and influence across Europe in his twenties due to his high-quality woodcut prints. He was in contact with the major Italian artists of his time, including Raphael, Giovanni Bellini, and Leonardo da Vinci, and from 1512 was patronized by Emperor Maximilian I.
Hans Baldung, called Hans Baldung Grien,, was a painter, printer, engraver, draftsman, and stained glass artist, who was considered the most gifted student of Albrecht Dürer and whose art belongs to both German Renaissance and Mannerism.
Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed technique, rather than a photographic reproduction of a visual artwork which would be printed using an electronic machine ; however, there is some cross-over between traditional and digital printmaking, including risograph.
Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas that the artist cuts away carry no ink, while characters or images at surface level carry the ink to produce the print. The block is cut along the wood grain. The surface is covered with ink by rolling over the surface with an ink-covered roller (brayer), leaving ink upon the flat surface but not in the non-printing areas.
Chiaroscuro, in art, is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians for the use of contrasts of light to achieve a sense of volume in modelling three-dimensional objects and figures. Similar effects in cinema, and black and white and low-key photography, are also called chiaroscuro.
Linocut, also known as lino print, lino printing or linoleum art, is a printmaking technique, a variant of woodcut in which a sheet of linoleum is used for a relief surface. A design is cut into the linoleum surface with a sharp knife, V-shaped chisel or gouge, with the raised (uncarved) areas representing a reversal of the parts to show printed. The linoleum sheet is inked with a roller, and then impressed onto paper or fabric. The actual printing can be done by hand or with a printing press.
The German Renaissance, part of the Northern Renaissance, was a cultural and artistic movement that spread among German thinkers in the 15th and 16th centuries, which developed from the Italian Renaissance. Many areas of the arts and sciences were influenced, notably by the spread of Renaissance humanism to the various German states and principalities. There were many advances made in the fields of architecture, the arts, and the sciences. Germany produced two developments that were to dominate the 16th century all over Europe: printing and the Protestant Reformation.
Heinrich Aldegrever or Aldegraf was a German painter and engraver. He was one of the "Little Masters", the group of German artists making small old master prints in the generation after Albrecht Dürer.
Sebald Beham (1500–1550) was a German painter and printmaker, mainly known for his very small engravings. Born in Nuremberg, he spent the later part of his career in Frankfurt. He was one of the most important of the "Little Masters", the group of German artists making prints in the generation after Dürer.
An old master print is a work of art produced by a printing process within the Western tradition. The term remains current in the art trade, and there is no easy alternative in English to distinguish the works of "fine art" produced in printmaking from the vast range of decorative, utilitarian and popular prints that grew rapidly alongside the artistic print from the 15th century onwards. Fifteenth-century prints are sufficiently rare that they are classed as old master prints even if they are of crude or merely workmanlike artistic quality. A date of about 1830 is usually taken as marking the end of the period whose prints are covered by this term.
Daniel Hopfer was a German artist who is widely believed to have been the first to use etching in printmaking, at the end of the fifteenth century. He also worked in woodcut. Although his etchings were widely ignored by art historians for years, more recent scholarship is crediting him and his work with "single-handedly establishing the salability of etchings" and introducing the print publisher business model.
The Triumphal Arch is a 16th-century monumental woodcut print commissioned by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. The composite image was printed on 36 large sheets of paper from 195 separate wood blocks. At 295 × 357 centimetres (116 × 141 in), it is one of the largest prints ever produced and was intended to be pasted to walls in city halls or the palaces of princes. It is a part of a series of three huge prints created for Maximilian, the others being a Triumphal Procession which is led by a Large Triumphal Carriage ; only the Arch was completed in Maximilian's lifetime and distributed as propaganda, as he intended. Together, this series has been described by art historian Hyatt Mayor as "Maximilian's program of paper grandeur". They stand alongside two published biographical allegories in verse, the Theuerdank and Weisskunig, heavily illustrated with woodcuts.
The Apocalypse, properly Apocalypse with Pictures, is a series of fifteen woodcuts by Albrecht Dürer published in 1498 depicting various scenes from the Book of Revelation, which rapidly brought him fame across Europe. These woodcuts likely drew on theological advice, particularly from Johannes Pirckheimer, the father of Dürer's friend Willibald Pirckheimer.
The Little Masters, were a group of German printmakers who worked in the first half of the 16th century, primarily in engraving. They specialized in very small finely detailed prints, some no larger than a postage stamp. The leading members were Hans Sebald Beham, his brother Barthel, and George Pencz, all from Nuremberg, and Heinrich Aldegrever and Albrecht Altdorfer. Many of the Little Masters' subjects were mythological or Old Testament stories, often treated erotically, or genre scenes of peasant life. The size and subject matter of the prints shows that they were designed for a market of collectors who would keep them in albums, of which a number have survived.
Saint Michael Fighting the Dragon is a woodcut of 1498 by Albrecht Dürer, part of his Apocalypse series, illustrating the Book of Apocalypse or Revelation of St. John.
The Holy Family with the Dragonfly, also known as The Holy Family with the Mayfly, The Holy Family with the Locust, and The Holy Family with the Butterfly is an engraving by the German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) from approximately 1495. It is quite small but full of intricate detail. A very popular image, copied by other printmakers within five years of creation, it is found in most major print room collections, including the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the UK Royal Collection.
The Outlaws of Printmaking, also known as "The Outlaws" and "Outlaw Printmakers" are a collective of printmaking artists that exists internationally. The idea of "Outlaw Printmakers" formed from a show in New York at Big Cat Gallery in 2000. Tony Fitzpatrick, the owner of the Big Cat Press which is associated with the gallery, decided to call a show there "Outlaw Printmaking" to reflect attitudes of the printmakers involved in a non-academic approach to prints. As pointed out by Sean Starwars, the Southern Graphic Council print conference was happening at the same time as that show in NYC across the water in New Jersey. A handful of artists from the conference attended the show.). At that conference the core group now known as the Outlaw Printmakers formed, adopting the name from the show and continuing their own events, happenings and shows outside of the academic norm. The core members are Bill Fick, Tom Huck, The Hancock Brothers, Sean Star Wars, Dennis McNett and Cannonball Press. Many of the core artists associated with the movement cite the printmaker/artist Richard Mock as a primary influence. Mock's political and social narrative prints appeared in the New York Times op-ed pages for more than a decade in the 1980s and early 1990s. Later the group grew to include Carlos Hernandez, Drive By Press, Ryan O'Malley, Artemio Rodriguez, Kathryn Polk, Erica Walker, Derrick Riley, and Julia Curran.
The Large Triumphal Carriage or Great Triumphal Car is a large 16th-century woodcut print by Albrecht Dürer, commissioned by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. The work was originally intended to be the central part of a 54 metres (177 ft) long print of a Triumphal Procession or Triumph of Maximilian, depicting Maximilian and his court entourage in a procession. This section shows the emperor in his triumphal car, and was part of a tradition depicting imaginary "triumphs" or real processions, such as royal entries.
Roy Ward Ragle was a San Francisco artist known for his self-portraits executed in large woodcuts. Inspired by the Japanese tradition of Ukiyo-e, his prints were linear in character, finely detailed, but with imagery traced in a web of thin, coiled and looping lines, creating a woodcut that was often mistaken for an etching. Ragle’s persistent attempt of capturing his own features in his woodcuts was triggered by a diagnosis of Crohn’s disease in the early 1970s, a chronic illness that would mark his life and his art. The medications so affected and altered his features that his prints became a way of preserving and rescuing a sense of identity. As Kenneth Baker noted in Roy Ragle's obituary: "Mr. Ragle (...) had long depicted death as his companion in woodcuts and prints in other media, in a manner reminiscent of European dance of death imagery and to Mexican folk art tradition."
Sylvia Solochek Walters is an American artist and educator. She has produced drawings, paintings and collage works in her career, but is best known for complex woodcut prints created through the "reduction and stencil" process. Her work combines elements of realist, decorative and formalist art, flat and illusionistic space, and varied patterning and textures. She has largely focused on portraits, still lifes and domestic interiors, and collage-like combinations of personal symbolism—concerns that writers often align with early feminist art.
References
↑ Owing, Jes (January 5, 2006). "Tom Huck at the Sherry Leedy Contemporary Artr". St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
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