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Art
Criticism
Daniel Maidman here. Apart
from writing about technique
for International Artist, I do a
great deal of art criticism for
The Huffington Post. I’d like to
talk with you as an art critic
for a minute—it’s important
to consider work from this
perspective throughout the
learning process.
I am a huge fan of Schwartz’s
etching Bottles and Jars III.
In formal terms, the clean,
minimal space it occupies gives
it a modernist energy, while
the distribution of related but
distinct warm and cool colors
from left to right provides
it with a wonderful sense of
rhythm. This rhythm of color is
echoed by a rhythm of line—
thick horizontals and thin
verticals repeat at irregular
intervals throughout.
I also see this body of
work as a response to Giorgio
Morandi’s still lives. Schwartz
follows the same rules Morandi does: Bottles & Jars 18c, 2015, monotype, 17½ x 24½" (44 x 62 cm). This is the monotype used as a reference.
she creates a body of work through subtle
rearrangements of a limited set of containers.
Morandi’s largely opaque, matte-surfaced technique
bottles and cups and pitchers convey a sense
of solidity and mass. Light falls on them,
but it cannot pass through. There is a sense Printmaking as an art process ranges from took the first proof. This proof served both
of exclusion to Morandi’s work. His rules the basic to the extraordinarily advanced. as the black and key plate.
are a willful shutting out of a chaotic world, Schwartz’s and Burnet’s etching technique
an attempt to impose order and control by is a very sophisticated kind of printmaking. 2. Burnet prepared the plate for a process
reducing the elements under consideration The step-by-step presented here is not a in which he specializes: spit bite etching.
to a very reliable few. method the beginner can expect to follow Spit bite etching involves use of a brush to
Schwartz’s clear liquids and containers,
by contrast, transmit light. They activate without years of training and practice, but apply dilute acid to a prepared plate. The
white light by shattering it into brilliant it does point the way toward the potential technique has many of the characteristics of
color. There is a vibrating excitement to of this versatile, demanding technology. watercolor. The liquid on the copper pools
them, as if they were about to take flight. Bottles and Jars III is a color spit bite in beautiful and unexpected ways. Burnet
Morandi’s work retreats from the world, aquatint with drypoint and sugar lift done comments, “The acid I use is ferric chloride;
while Schwartz’s reaches toward it. Her clear on four copper plates. it bites with a much better, cleaner line than
jars and bottles imply daylight and scenery; nitric acid. It turns black as it bites, so with
we can almost but not quite see everything, 1. Schwartz showed Burnet a monotype spit biting you can see where you’re going
just by looking at this tiny slice of it. of a proposed composition. The monotype against the copper color.” Burnet watched
Neither Morandi nor Schwartz is right
or wrong—their opposed perspectives was used as a reference for color and Schwartz very carefully with a stopwatch as
are both simply material for the art to composition for the etching. Schwartz she applied the acid. He timed how long the
build upon. The genius of an artist animates traced the composition from the monotype acid sat on the plate and wiped it off when
his or her basic outlook, allowing us to onto a copper plate and then drew over the he thought the acid had “bitten” enough.
step into it for a moment through the traced lines with a drypoint needle. Burnet “He isn’t only watching the clock,” Schwartz
window of the art.

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