DISSENT!

Prints are an ideal medium for oppositional expression. Because creating prints is inexpensive and expeditious, thousands of like images can be made promptly in response to an event or action. And because their production is uncomplicated, requiring only a printing press, matrix, and paper, prints can be produced inconspicuously and, if necessary, clandestinely.

DISSENT! presents a historical survey of over 40 printed images that express resistance to religious, political, and social systems and, in doing so, demonstrates the role of printmaking in the dissemination of dissonant opinions. The exhibition also examines the role that celebrated artists such as Edouard Manet, Pablo Picasso, Jenny Holzer, and Richard Serra have played in the promulgation of politically subversive prints. In their most politicized mode, prints have publicized acts of tyranny and repression and called for change: prints such as Francisco Goya’s Los Caprichos criticized the suppression of Enlightenment ideas in Spain at the turn of the 19th century while Serra’s Stop BS condemned the recent scandals at Abu Ghraib prison.

Organized by Susan Dackerman, Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints.

Support for the exhibition was provided by the Anthony and Celeste Meier Exhibitions Fund. An anonymous donor funded the accompanying brochure.