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Gordon Craig Woodcuts

DATES Sunday, January 23, 1927 through Monday, February 28, 1927
ORGANIZING DEPARTMENT American Art
COLLECTIONS American Art
There are currently no digitized images of this exhibition. If images are needed, contact archives.research@brooklynmuseum.org.
  • January 18, 1927 The Print Department of the Brooklyn Museum announces the public opening on January 23rd of an exhibition of woodcuts by Gordon Craig, the English engraver and stage designer. Craigs name to the general public immediately suggests the theatre. As the son of Dame Ellen Terry, environment may have accounted originally for this fact and the greater part of his work has been done in an effort to improve the standard of theatre programs and other publications and for his two magazines, "The Page", which was published between 1898 and 1901 and "The Mask", which began in 1908. These facts aside, however, the quality of his designs has made for them their place in the world of the graphic arts. The forthcoming exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum presents over one hundred examples of Craig's wood-engravings. In the Foreword to his book on woodcuts, Craig himself writes:-

    "To produce a play costs a great deal. But there is another reason than the cost which has prevented me from producing for you at least fifty plays.

    "If you had asked me to cut and engrave wood-blocks or etchings under someone's management, in someone else's house, I should have made no woodcuts or etchings at all. To me liberty is essential.

    "When you will allow me the liberty of my own house to produce plays for you in a playhouse of my own, I will with pleasure produce them as practically as I have done these designs - that is to say, by my own hand."

    The exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum will continue on view until March first.

    Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1916 - 1930. 1927, 008.
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