In a general sense, the term graphic arts includes all forms of artistic visual representation executed on a two-dimensional surface by such means as painting, drawing, or photography. More specifically, the term is a synonym for printmaking. In this application, the graphic arts include all works of art that begin with an original impression of any kind of imagery or design executed by the artist and intended to be reproduced by any one of a number of printing processes. The most important printing processes used by fine artists are \Tdrypoint\t \Tetching\t, lithography, photographic processes, silk-screen, and woodcut (see \Tlithograph\t; \Tphotoengraving\t; \Tsilk-screen printing\t; \Twoodcuts and wood engravings\t). These media include a wide variety of techniques used to achieve different effects. They include methods that stress tone and color, as in \Taquatint\t and mezzotint, but it is \Tdrawing\t that has been most basic to the graphic arts. Most woodcuts and etchings begin with the engraving of drawn images or designs by cutting, scraping, or gouging with a variety of tools into the surface of woods, metals, or other materials. In an \Tintaglio\t print the design cut into the surface is reproduced, whereas in the relief print the raised portion is printed. Engraving generally refers to all techniques that use the burin, or incising tool, to cut into the wood or metal surface, whereas etching is the use of a resined surface and acid to bite into the copper, zinc, or other metal plate to produce the image. Lithography and silk-screen printing reproduce images that are drawn or stenciled on a surface. Woodcut The woodcut is the oldest form of printmaking; it can be traced back to ancient Egypt, Babylonia, and China, where wooden stamps were used to make decorative patterns or symbols in wax or clay. In the 2d century AD paper was developed in China, and wood blocks were brought into use to create book illustrations, mostly Buddhist religious images. In the 6th century these religious images were introduced to Japan, where woodcuts became a highly developed artistic medium during the 17th century. Japanese woodcuts achieved their greatest refinements in the masterful, multicolored 18th- and 19th-century ukiyo-e prints that depict primarily landscapes and scenes of everyday life by such masters as \THiroshige\t, \THokusai\t, and \TUtamaro\t. Their ideas of symbolism, flat decorative patterns, and asymmetrical composition had great influence on 19th-century European art. In the West woodcuts were used extensively in Europe during the 14th century to print textiles. The woodcut was developed as a pictorial art in northern Europe at the end of the 14th century. In Germany, France, and Italy the process was used to make simple religious pictures for mass distribution. Early examples were flat and decorative and were executed by skilled craftsmen after the original designs by painters and sculptors. With the invention of the printing press in the mid-15th century, woodcuts began to be used more for \Tbook illustration\t. Among the first great European artists to use the woodcut were the German Renaissance masters Albrecht \TDurer\t and Hans \THolbein\t, the Younger. Durer's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (c.1497-98) and his Life of the Virgin (1509-11) and Holbein's Dance of Death (1523-26) are examples of their achievement, demonstrating their refined technique and combination of energy and solidity. During the same period, using a chiaroscuro technique--a woodcut technique that creates strong contrasts of light and shade by using several blocks, one of which prints deep shadows and the others, moderated shades of a single color--developed first by Hans \TBurgkmair\t and Jobst de Negker of Augsburg, Albrecht \TAltdorfer\t, Lucas \TCranach\t the Elder, and Hans \TBaldung-Grien\t also produced woodcuts. The first Italian chiaroscuro woodcut is credited to Ugo Da Carpi (c.1450-1525), who, like others of the time, worked from the designs of master painters such as Raphael. Woodcut declined as a fine art after the mid-16th century, when it was replaced by line engraving and etching. During the late 19th century, however, it had its greatest revival, chiefly in the works of Frenchmen Paul \TGauguin\t and Felix \TVallotton\t and the Norwegian artist Edvard \TMunch\t. Unlike most previous woodcuts--which had been reproductions of the drawings of the masters by craftsmen--these were executed by the artists themselves. The symbolist Gauguin, mainly influenced by Japanese woodcuts and the primitive art of the South Seas, produced many of his greatest woodcuts in the South Pacific, for example, his Offerings of Gratitude (c.1891-93). Munch produced psychologically powerful, visionary colored woodcuts of rhythmic line, such as The Kiss (one version, 1902). He had great influence on the German expressionists, who, like Munch, closely followed the tradition of the German medieval woodcut. Members of Die \TBrucke\t, such as Ernst \TKirchner\t and Emil \TNolde\t, produced a large number of highly emotive woodcuts, which greatly expanded the potentials of the medium. The German graphic artist Kathe \TKollwitz\t made black-and-white woodcuts depicting the lower classes in the German expressionist tradition. Related to the art of woodcut are Pablo \TPicasso\t's linocuts (using linoleum blocks) of the 1950s, the wood engravings of American Leonard \TBaskin\t, and the cellocuts (using plastic plates) developed by Boris Margo. New techniques and forms have kept woodcut a vital medium in contemporary art. Engraving and Etching The technique of engraving metal surfaces with pictorial designs dates back to classical antiquity and was practiced continually throughout the Middle Ages by such skilled craftsmen as goldsmiths and armorers. The engraved and enameled plaques of the Klosterneuburg (1181) by \TNicholas of Verdun\t are a prime example of the highly developed sculptural style of metalwork that had evolved in the Meuse Valley since the Carolingian period. The earliest datable engravings on paper are from about 1430 and show the influence of the Flemish master painters of the period. The German artist Martin \TSchongauer\t was the first printmaker, who was also a painter, to gain international acclaim for his finely detailed, late Gothic engravings, including Death of the Virgin (c.1471; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City) and Temptation of St. Anthony (c.1480-90; Metropolitan Museum of Art). Also of the same period was the \TMaster of the Housebook\t, who in engravings such as Holy Family (c.1480-90) pioneered the technique known as drypoint to achieve prints of a sketchy spontaneity, which prefigure the work of Rembrandt. The outstanding engravers of late-15th-century Italy were Antonio Pollaiuolo (see \TPollaiuolo\t family) and Andrea \TMantegna\t. Pollaiuolo's only surviving engraving, Battle of Ten Naked Men (c.1465-70; Metropolitan Museum of Art), exemplifies his achievement in the study of anatomy in movement. Mantegna's engraving Battle of the Sea Gods (c.1493) had great influence on the work of Albrecht Durer. In such engravings as Adam and Eve (1504; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), Durer used classical subject matter to depict the ideal human proportions in the Renaissance manner. The etchings that he produced between about 1515 and 1518 are among the earliest important examples of the art, also practiced with great refinement by Altdorfer. The greatest etcher of the 17th century, and perhaps the greatest in the entire history of art, was the Dutch master \TRembrandt\t van Rijn. His style of dramatic chiaroscuro--in rich, dark tones executed with a vigorous spontaneity--is exemplified in his almost 300 etchings of landscapes. Another important 17th-century graphic artist was the innovative French printmaker Jacques \TCallot\t, who developed the hard-varnish ground technique. Callot is particularly noted for his skillful use of numerous elements within a small space, for example, his series the Miseries of War (1633). During the 18th century outstanding etchings were produced by three Italian artists. A master of the decorative fresco, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (see \TTiepolo\t family) was one of two Venetians of the period to produce etchings of great technical skill. The other is \TCanaletto\t, a master draftsman who produced finely detailed, linear, and accurate scenes of Venetian architecture. The etcher and architect Giovanni Battista \TPiranesi\t spent most of his life in Rome, where he engraved scenes of both the modern and ancient city with grandeur and accuracy and made imaginative reconstructions of Roman monuments. Also during the 18th century, the English painter William \THogarth\t engraved a series of biting, satirical paintings--The Harlot's Progress (1732) and The Rake's Progress (1735). During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the great Spanish painter Francisco de \TGoya\t produced several series of powerful black-and-white etchings of grotesque figures, which satirized the contemporary social situation, titled Los caprichos (1796-98), The Disasters of War (1810-14), La tauromaquia (The Bullfight; 1815-16), and Los proverbios (c.1813-18). Goya's neobaroque style of great individual visionary strength was derived from those of Diego \TVelazquez\t and Rembrandt, using techniques learned from Tiepolo. Among the outstanding mid-19th-century etchers was the French artist Charles \TMeryon\t, whose works combined architectural settings of structural clarity and grotesque figures. His most famous series is the 22 etchings of the old section of Paris, Eaux-Fortes sur Paris (1850-54). More than 400 plates remain of the etchings of James McNeill \Twhistler\t, who was perhaps the most innovative of the graphic artists during the late 19th century. His delicate, summary impressions exemplify his technical mastery of the medium and his great contribution to modernist abstraction. James \TEnsor\t and Edvard Munch are among the many artists to use etching as part of their oeuvres during the early 20th century. The etchings of Paul \TKlee\t are also of particular importance. A major part of his multimedia work, Klee's etchings are rich in technique and texture and combine abstraction with fantastic images of great wit and originality. The graphic designs of M. C. \TEscher\t are especially notable for their creation of unusual perspectives and optical illusions and for their exploration of the theme of metamorphosis. Related to the history of etching is the inventive exploration of new intaglio techniques by Stanley William \THayter\t's Atelier 17 in pre-World War II Paris, in New York City during the 1940s, and in Paris during the 1950s and '60s. Lithography The earliest lithographic process was developed (1796-98) by the German playwright Aloys \TSenefelder\t, whose main objective was the inexpensive duplication of his works. His partners, Philipp and Johann Andre, introduced the technique in England, where linear works on the lithographic stone were done by William \TBlake\t, Henry \TFuseli\t, and Benjamin \TWest\t. The ability of lithography to reproduce a more expressive line was used to its best advantage in the 19th century by the French, first by Theodore \TGericault\t and Eugene \TDelacroix\t and later by Honore \TDaumier\t. Daumier produced about 4,000 lithographs; boldly personal caricatures of the lower and middle classes, they were influenced by Rembrandt and grew out of Daumier's early political cartoons. These caricatures were reproduced in Paris periodicals, Le Charivari and La Caricature. The celebrated posters of Henri de \TToulouse-Lautrec\t are among the finest examples of 19th-century French lithography. Lautrec's lithographs--like some of the finest works of Pierre \TBonnard\t, Edgar \TDegas\t, Edouard \TManet\t, and Edouard \TVuillard\t--are highly colored works, greatly influenced by Japanese prints. Also of note in the late 19th century are Odilon \TRedon\t's symbolist lithographs, such as his series dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe (1882). Early-20th-century accomplishments in lithography include those by the German expressionists Karl \TSchmidt-Rottluff\t, Emil Nolde, and Ernst Kirchner (all members of Die Brucke) and by Kathe Kollwitz. Related to these are the works by Edvard Munch and Austrian artist Oskar \TKokoschka\t. In the United States \TCurrier and Ives\t and Joseph \TPennell\t are outstanding in the area of 19th-century lithography, followed by such 20th-century artists as Arthur B. \TDavies\t and George \Tbellows\t. Beginning in the 1960s, the lithographic process was used intensively by such artists as Robert \TRauschenberg\t, Jasper \TJohns\t, and James \TRosenquist\t. Silk-Screen Printing The technique of silk-screen printing originated during the Middle Ages in the art of stencil printing of China and Japan, where it was practiced with great delicacy and intricacy. Until the 20th century, screen printing was a decorative and commercial medium, used to enhance fabrics, wallpaper, furnishings, and advertising. In the 1930s, however, it was seen as a legitimate means of artistic expression by American artists working for the Works Progress Administration (\TWPA\t). The art historian Carl Zigrosser coined the term serigraph to identify screen prints as fine art. From the 1960s, op artists Richard \TAnuszkiewicz\t and Victor \TVasarely\t used silk-screen printing to convey a surgical precision of form and color. With his background as a commercial artist Andy \TWarhol\t was able to extend the capabilities of silk screen, and both he and Rauschenberg used screen printing in combination with photographic processes to achieve significant works of art. Artists like David \THockney\t mix silk-screen with other graphic processes--including printing via \Tfacsimile\t--to achieve totally new effects. The monotype is made by drawing with ink or paint on a smooth surface, then pulling only one impression. With its variant, the monoprint--where alterations in the print are made by hand--the monotype is an old technique that aroused new interest in the 1990s. Barbara Cavaliere Bibliography: Aldersey-Williams, H., New American Design (1988); Blanchard, R.W., Graphic Design (1984); Carter, D.E., Evolution of Design (1985); Castleman, Riva, Prints of the Twentieth Century: A History (1976); Cleaver, James A., A History of Graphic Art (1963; repr. 1977); Dodt, L., Graphic Arts Production (1990); Eichenberg, Fritz, The Art of the Print: Masterpieces, History, and Techniques (1976); Fowble, E.M., Two Centuries of Prints in America, 1680-1880 (1988); Grieman, A., Hybrid Imagery: The Fusion of Technology and Graphic Design (1990); Griffiths, A., Prints and Printmaking (1981); Heller, S., and Chwast, S., Graphic Style: From Victorian to Post-Modern (1988); Hind, Arthur M., A History of Engraving and Etching from the 15th Century to 1914 (1923; repr. 1963) and An Introduction to the History of Woodcut, 2 vols. (1935; repr. 1963); Horn, M., Contemporary Graphic Artists, 2 vols. (1986); Mayor, A. Hyatt, Prints and People (1971); Meggs, P.B., History of Graphic Design (1983); Narazaki, Muneshige, The Japanese Print: Its Evolution and Essence, trans. by C. H. Mitchell (1966); Roger-Marx, Claude, Graphic Art of the Nineteenth Century (1962); Sotriffer, Kristan, Printmaking: History and Technique (1968); Watrous, J., A Century of American Printmaking, 1880-1980 (1984); Weber, William, A History of Lithography (1964); Zigrosser, Carl, The Book of Fine Prints (1956). See also: \Tblock printing\t; \Tprinting\t.