Prestige of the Insect by Stanley William Hayter

Prestige of the Insect by Stanley William Hayter

Prestige of the Insect

Stanley William Hayter

Title

Prestige of the Insect

 
Artist

Stanley William Hayter

  1901 - 1988 (biography)
Year
1942  
Technique
engraving, soft-ground etching and scorper 
Image Size
8 7/8 x 8 7/8" platemark 
Signature
pencil, lower right 
Edition Size
4 of 30  
Annotations
titled, editioned and dated "43" in pencil 
Reference
Black & Moorehead 149; Bronx Museum with Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition 2020-22: "Robert Blackburn & American Modern Printing", checklist no. 13 
Paper
cream Cranach wove 
State
iv/iv 
Publisher
artist 
Inventory ID
AF101 
Price
SOLD
Description

Hayter did his experimental image, "Prestige of the Insect", in 1942 after he had moved Atelier 17 to New York, shortly after his acclaimed "Cruelty of Insects". He used mostly soft-ground etching, impressing a woodgrain into the softground and fortifying it with burin engraving. With his scorper he gouged out shapes that "print" in relief as three dimensional white elements.

Published in an edition of 30 impressions Hayter also used the plate to create a "plaster print", a method that a number of the A-17 printmakers were experimenting with in New York. Hayter describes this technique in chapter 10 of his "New Ways of Gravure", pages 134-142.

P.M.S. Hacker notes about this image:"When an insect, for example a scorpion, is alarmed, it takes up a characteristic menacing stance which is referred to as 'the prestige of the insect'.