Print is beauty bound – even in a digital age

Posted by  Jonathan Jones, On Art blog,  Monday 8 March 2010    guardian.co.uk  

The internet may be taking over from the printing press, just as Dürer's timeless engraving Melencolia I spelled the end for medieval scriptoria, but let us remember that print is beautiful.

Above illustration -  Loss of innocence ... Detail from Albrecht Dürer's Melencolia I (1514). Photograph: Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich

In the exhibition Michelangelo's Dream, currently at the Courtauld Gallery in London, the beauty of print is exemplified by Albrecht Dürer's timeless engraving Melencolia I. The curator was not content to use just any copy of this great print: that selected is one of the finest that exist, and in its microscopically refined use of black ink you can see how majestically artists were able to exploit what was still a new invention in the early-1500s to create beautiful objects.

A book, too, is a beautiful object – and I write with my own just back from the printers. For just as artists were quick to discover the aesthetic possibilities of printing, so were the makers of books. Some might say the advent of the printed book brought a devastating loss of beauty in the culture of the word: for centuries, medieval monasteries had created the spectacular visual treasures that are illuminated books. And yet, the printed book rapidly found its own standards of elegance and authority through the labours of great publishers such as the Aldine Press in Venice and Frobenius in Basel.

Read the rest at The Guardian.