Etching Quotes

I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term -- meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching -- there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster. (Ansel Adams)

It seems to me the charm of etching is the glimmering through of the white paper even in the shadows so that almost everything sparkles or suggest sparkles.

Samuel Palmer

I open a paperclip and scratch it across the inside of my left wrist. Pitiful. If a suicide attempt is a cry for help, then what is this. A whimper, a peep? I draw little window cracks of blood, etching line after line until it stops hurting.

Laurie Halse Anderson

In its essence, any art that relies on words makes use of their ability to eat away - of their corrosive function - just as etching depends on the corrosive power of nitric acid.

Yukio Mishima

Therefore etching produces a different result from the ten drawings of the same character... [The etchings are] better, in that they are fresher, bolder, and freer..

Emil Nolde

After Herberholz had shown me all sorts of techniques, I suddenly got very interested in etching. I had a lot to say, I had a subject. Wash off the acid, put on the aquatint: a wonderful technique that you can use to get as many different shades and tones as you want. The 'doing' aspect of art becomes tremendously interesting when you start doing etchings; you get to be a real alchemist.

Otto Dix

After the war [1918] etching became Kirchner's favorite medium. He attributed this to its responsiveness. 'Etchings', he wrote, 'develop in the first states the most immediate hieroglyphs. Rich in lively handwriting and rich in variety of motifs, the etchings are like a diary of the painter.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Next, the stalled cars had their windows opaqued with a cheap commercial compound used for etching glass, and slogans were painted on their doors. Some were long: THIS VEHICLE IS A DANGER TO LIFE AND LIMB. Many were short: IT STINKS! But the commonest of all was the universally known catchphrase: STOP, YOU'RE KILLING ME!

John Brunner

Detroit's industrial ruins are picturesque, like crumbling Rome in an 18th-century etching.

P. J. O'Rourke

When most Italian artists of my own generation were afraid to be too 'modern,' too 'international' in their style, not 'national' or 'imperial' enough, I was still left in peace, perhaps because I demanded so little recognition. My privacy was thus my protection and, in the eyes of the Grand Inquisitors of Italian art, I remained a provincial professor of etching, at the Fine Art Academy in Bologna.

Giorgio Morandi

Daberlohn's diagnosis [about the etching she made as his portrait] holds encouragement for Charlotte.... Daberlohn (in his letter) 'In my opinion you are destined to create something above average.'
....'Above average.' She is elated by his letter and really feels quite proud... While beginning to paint the buttercup-strewn meadow where she happens to be sitting, she decides to make his prophecy come true and actually create something 'above average'. (Charlotte Salomon)

I live in a small world of gouache and brush and pen and ink. I'd like to explore the world of multiples - etching and prints.

Maira Kalman

Caption, plate 43 of Los Caprichos etching and aquatint, 1796-97; Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid; Robert Hughes: in Goya. Borzoi Book - Alfred Knopf, New York, 2003, p. 73.

Francisco Goya

What makes the Hohokam noteworthy is the development of irrigation works. The earliest... dates from some 2,000 years ago. ...They built dams that redirected the flow of water into irrigation canals, some of them... extending for more than twenty-five miles. ...They built flat-topped pyramids and ball courts, where they used rubber balls imported from Central America. The Hohokam may also have been the first to use the technique of etching with acid in their remarkable designs on marine shells.

Peter Farb

The emergence of new media (and therefore artistic) formats is certainly interesting. But etching information into copper plates is just as exciting. We think that the perpetual return of 'the new', to cite Walter Benjamin, is nothing to write home about - except perhaps for the slave-drivers in the fashion industry. We've never been interested in the new just in itself, but in the accidental occurrence. In the moment where things don't tally, where productive confusion arises. That's why in the final analysis, although we've laughed a lot with Stewart Home, we even reject the meta-criticism of innovation-fixation articulated in 'neoism'. The new sorts itself out when it lands in the museum. Finito.

Johannes Grenzfurthner

Goya was closely studying the Velazquez's portraits [in the Spanish royal palace [30] ], and he decided to etch them. In 1778 he completed eleven large etching plates. During the same year he delivered fourteen of the tapestry cartoons for the royal tapestry factory in Madrid, so that his energy must have been terrific. They show no sign of haste, and must have been undertaken as a pleasure. Goya may have received some vague promise of state support. The multiplication of these masterpieces was a patriotic duty, and Godoy did well to buy the plates. But this purchase did not take place until 1793, so that Goya's labour must have had little financial result in 1778.

Francisco Goya