Warrington Colescott: Wisconsin’s Master Printmaker

The more time youspend at the Milwaukee Art Museum exhibit“Warrington Colescott: Cabaret, Comedy & Satire,” the more you will appreciateit. With approximately 100 prints filling the museum’s lower-level contemporarywing, this expansive retrospective honors a Wisconsinprintmaker who continues to actively and inventively pursue art at age 89. Theremarkable diversity of Colescott’s work, both in technique and theme, makesthe exhibit worth visiting multiple times before it closes Sept. 26.

On one level, theColescott retrospective reads as a pure testament to the artist’s skill andlegacy in printmaking. From his first prints in the 1950s, when Colescottsecured a Fulbright Fellowship in Londonto study the intaglio process, the artist created his own inimitable style.

Colescott beganincorporating scavenged letterpress plates into his prints with Triumph of St. Valentine (1963). His“Hollandale Tapes” series from the 1980s adds a spit bite aquatint, reliefrolls through stencils and a marbling technique to intaglio’s basic elements. Boo Boo in Silo Sixteen (1984)layers these various techniques overhis indisputable printmaking expertise.

Colescott enjoysusing unusual materials to enhance his prints, including the teal glitter of An Environmental President Meets Hole in theOzone (1992)and theprinted text and crayon featured in The Future: Recreation.His ingenuity is a study in itself.

In another context,Colescott’s retrospective can be seen as an advanced course in his chosenmedium. His series of 12 master prints from the 1970s humorously relates the“History of Printmaking,”ranging from Durer at 23, In Venice,In Love, His Bags Are Stolen to homages to Ben Franklin, Lautrec, Picassoand Rauschenberg.

Colescott’s finalimage in this series, The Last Printmaker,portrays an artist working in thecaverns below a big city after some unidentified world destruction. Colescottmay not be the last printmaker, but he remains one of the most unique. Howfortunate that he continues to offer delightful insights through inventiveprocesses and images.