Prints are traditionally a simple and straightforward art form, yet one sees the tendency, more and more, on the part of graphic artists to produce work that can compete with painting on its own level, and by so working in a manner dependent upon painting, to violate the inherent conventions of the medium. When this tendency is carried to its natural conclusion, we have, as has already happened in Europe, an artist who turns his oil painting over to an accomplished printer, who, in turn, reproduces the painting on copper, prints an edition for the artist, and has the latter sign it as original work. It is as though graphic art could come full circle from a reproductive medium to a creative one, then return through its own complexity to a reproductive one. Fortunately this is more a tendency than an accomplished fact, and in an exhibition such as this we can sense that as a form of artistic expression, the print will continue to show the essence of creativeness.
Kneeland McNulty, the Philadelphia Museum (1952)
