Dimensions: image: 372 x 471 mm
Copyright: © Vija Celmins | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Curator: Welcome. We’re looking at Vija Celmins' "Night Sky 3", currently residing in the Tate Collections. Editor: Immediately, I am struck by its hushed quality. The monochrome, the almost obsessive detail; it feels both expansive and intimate. Curator: Indeed. Starry skies are laden with symbolic weight, haven’t you noticed? Historically, they've represented navigation, the unknown, the divine... Editor: But Celmins seems to flatten that history. It’s the pure, formal arrangement of light and dark that commands attention. Look at the subtle gradations! Curator: Yet, consider the cultural memory embedded within a night sky. The fear, the wonder, the longing for what lies beyond – that's always present, isn’t it? Editor: Perhaps. But I see more of an investigation into representation itself. How do we translate something so vast onto a flat plane? Curator: An apt point. It appears Vija Celmins invites us to meditate on our enduring relationship with the cosmos. Editor: And on the very nature of seeing. Quite a powerful combination.
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Night Sky 3 is a one-colour aquatint print with burnishing and drypoint on medium weight, white Hahnemühle Copperplate paper that depicts a tonal image of a blanket of stars against a night sky. It was printed and published by Gemini G.E.L. (Graphic Editions Limited) in Los Angeles in an edition of sixty-five plus proof copies. The print held by ARTIST ROOMS is signed and dated by the artist at the bottom right corner, and inscribed ‘SP 5/9’ at the bottom left of the print, in pencil. The notation SP stands for Special Proof, a ‘proof specifically created for presentation purposes by the artist or publisher that equals the right to print impression or standard used for the edition. In some cases this is called a dedication proof (DP)’ (Glossary, Gemini G.E.L. Online Catalogue Raisonné, http://www.nga.gov/gemini/glossary.htm, accessed 22 June 2010). The star-filled composition of this print – as is the case with the majority of Vija Celmins’s drawings, prints and paintings – is based on a found astronomical photograph rather than direct observation of the night sky. The curator Susan Lambert has described the basic premise of aquatint, which is an intaglio technique whereby the print surface is sunk beneath the areas that are to remain blank:
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