• titled: lower center in image, in pencil
• signed: lower right in image, in pencil; numbered lower left in image, in pencil
• medium nine-color serigraph; printed at Meissner Editions, Hamburg, West Germany
• dimensions: image size: 27 3/4 x 19 3/4" (70.5 x 50.2 cm); sheet size: 31 1/8 x 23 1/8" (79.1 x 58,7 cm)
• edition: 150 prints, 5 archive proofs, 15 artist's proofs, 1 printer's proof; all on white German 100% rag paper
• date published: 1980

Personal Reflections, by Arthur Secunda

"Printemps" means springtime. Over the years, I've done a number of artworks related to the seasons in various mediums - paintings, collages, prints, sculpture, etc. The origin of these temporal titles comes from several sources: those great orchestral concertos by Vivaldi, as well as the idea that the seasons change. Therefore, the subject changes and has distinct symbols for each change, summer, for example, being sun, winter being snow, fall being multicolored falling leaves, spring being fertile green earth, and so forth. These signs are simple, distinguishable, easily communicable, and instantly accessible (if not expressed in a banal way), as information that may have deep, complex associations.

Printemps is a silkscreen that was part of a series. The first work in this group was Summer, based on a collage called As Far As Eye Can See, after a poem by Mervin Lane. This series of serigraphs represented the final period of my "geometric progression" opus - Lemon Twist, Protrusion Illusion, Opening Up, etc. Up to this time, I was fascinated by the way chromatic colors are toned upward or downward: the edge closest to the color next to it would take on the illusion of being lighter or darker than it actually was. It was and is common for people to cover up certain parts of those bands of color with their hands in order to justify for themselves that there really was no organic blend, that their eye created the blend in each band of color because of the precision of the color next to it. Even I, as creator, was often amazed, playing with this quirk of nature to see how far I could push it. If one were to squint and look at Printemps from a distance, the effect would be of a brilliant kind of blend in the center of the picture, visually distorting the flatness of the plane by protruding in the center (as well as widening the side contours).

These are technical feats, sort of virtuoso tricks. Rembrandt could paint a white highlight brush stroke on the nose of a personage and that nose would then give the illusion of three-dimensionality. John Singer Sargent was able to paint the look of velvet with one or two strokes highlighting the fold. These are means, not goals. A juggler juggling fourteen pins at the same time while patting his head is amazing, and often fascinates the interpreting artist as much as the onlooker. The great choreographer Sergei Diaghilev, when asked, "What is art?", replied, "Etonnez-moi!" (Amaze me!).

In any case, Printemps is a simple geometric study in horizontal tear lines. These white lines are literally cut out of a screen to resemble torn paper. A sort of musical or electrical-looking pattern is set up, slightly zigzaggy, the way I imagine the character of torn paper to be. The tears go from side to side. On the bottom of the picture, the horizontals travel in regular intervals up to the horizon. The variations start in the sky to represent the effect of clouds or softness (as opposed to stability on the earth).

The desired illusion is of the horizon being there, but not literally defined. Hence, there is no line describing the horizon, except for the highlight of the streak, the white - the absence of color - in other words, the approximation of a horizon. In an unusual reversal of what would normally be perceived in the distance, this non-existent horizon (the highlight) actually appears to move forward. The seductiveness of this work is that the horizon one unconsciously seeks and needs to feel comfortable with, which helps one to understand what a landscape is, is not there. Our mind puts it there. This brilliance emanating from the distance (the horizon) protrudes toward the viewer. In that respect, this print resembles Protrusion Illusion. (There's also a collage called Sunlit Landscape which is related to Printemps.)

I've done a number of collages and prints in which a dominant area carries the picture off in such a way that the viewer's brain creates the completion-illusion. This satisfies a visual hunger to question reality, which is particularly intriguing in the case of a set-up or illusory reality.

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