Mark Dion
Artist Interview – Neiman Center 25th Anniversary Catalogue
LNCPS: Why did you accept the invitation to make prints at the Neiman Center for Print Studies and did you accomplish what you had hoped to do in terms of the finished project?
Mark Dion: I have always been devoted to printmaking. I took printmaking classes when I studied at Hartford Art School and at School of Visual Arts. Not only was I delighted by the production of multiple images and the qualities of prints but I also really found pleasure in the social aspects of the process. At SVA my friends Gregg Bordowitz, Marina Zurkow and I took the screenprinting class with the artist Jeffery Lew, who was such a generous teacher and character. We worked hard but also hung out and had marvelous conversations. Sure, one could print alone, but doing it as a team is so much richer and satisfying and I truly love that about the process.
The prints I made at the Neiman Center where always driven by invitations from my mentor students who were working in the department and supported by Tomas Vu. Arlen Austin, Nathan Catlin and Martin Basher all wanted to collaborate on developing new prints. With pretty much all the prints I made, I was pushed technically and conceptually by the team at the print shop. Each print I made with Neiman Center exceeded my expectation and excelled in quality and technical virtuosity. As I said, I studied printmaking but I was pretty technically inept. I still suck as a printer which is why I treasure my association with Nathan Catlin who has already forgotten more about printmaking then I will ever know.
LNCPS: How do the prints you made at the Neiman Center relate to your larger body of work?
Mark Dion: The focus of my work is really the history of natural history. So, I am engaged in an investigation related to the history of science with regard to nature, through the lens of our current crisis of biodiversity. I am looking back at the history of ideas to try and figure out how we evolved our suicidal relationship with the planet. In the history of natural history and medicine there is such a strong collaboration between print marking and theory. Natural history illustration and engraving is such a remarkably important transition. This goes back way before the rigors of science were in place. Some of the prints I have made with the Neiman Center really are essential to my investigation of the culture of nature. We produced works together about classification, the evolution of collecting and the museum, and the culture of hunting. So, I don’t see the prints as tangential or secondary to my body of work- they are central to the practice.
LNCPS: Can you elaborate on your interest in the culture of nature and how that ties to your projects at the Neiman and contemporary critiques/issues related to nature and the environment?
Mark Dion: My first print with the Neiman Center produced with Arlen Austin and Martin Basher with help from Klara Hobza (all mentor fellows of mine) and it was a representation of one of the most pernicious ideas in the Western tradition - The Scala Naturae or The Great Chain of Being, a concept derived from Plato, Aristotle and other philosophers of the classical age and further developed during the Middle Ages. This view of life arises from stagnant hierarchical slave society and sees all living things (as well as things form the spirit world) as an unbroken chain from the lowest forms to the most noble. It is an idea with legs, lasting from the classical period all the way to the 19th century. We can attribute much of the early justification for racism and the ranking of peoples and other horrible things to this idea. I feel the ghost of this idea still haunts western culture and I have done a lot of work ridiculing the notion over the years. In this case we made a large chart, like the kind schools used in the last two centuries depicting the chain of being, but also updating to consumer culture. So the top of the hierarchy is not spirits, angels and archangels but objects. Most of these are also related to a notion of time.
I also made a marvelous screenprint with Nathan Catlin called “300 Million Years of Flight” which has proven one of my most commercially successful prints. It depicts organisms and technology which have mastered the air, all represented to scale. Nathan and I have also produced this work in a number of actual scale murals in highly luminescent glove paint in darkened gallery spaces.
The next project I produced with Nathan Catlin was a series of prints which focused on my long term consideration of the culture of hunting. I have spent quite some time thinking and making art work about hunting. I think hunting encodes so many interesting and hidden social constructions around our relationship to other animals. What hunting means is radically different from culture to culture and is caught in a web class, gender and ecological relationships. While I do not condemn hunting outright, I do have serious suspicion of any activities which marry pleasure with violence and death. There is so much more to say on this topic, I fear we don’t have the space, however I have written extensively on hunting, and my book “Concerning Hunting” with Dieter Buchhart from 2008 deals with the topic extensively.
“Cabinets, Cupboards and Lockers,” the last Nieman Center Project, is a group of four prints which depict how and why nature is collected and sorted. This group of interactive prints take the forms of cabinets, cupboard and lockers in which viewers must open the door to reveal collection methods in various historic periods: Renaissance collections- curiosities, Baroque- early scientific collections, 19th century- comparative collections and scientific field work equipment from the 20th century. These works are a playful investigation into how and why nature is collected, stored and organized.
LNCPS: Had you ever made prints before your residency at the Neiman Center? If not, why were you open to trying printmaking at that time?
Mark Dion: Yes, I made prints before but certainly I am not a gifted printer. In fact, my lithography class at the Hartford Art School was the lowest grade I ever received in university. Still, I have always been interested in making multiple works. It is satisfying when making prints that one can share them with friends and collaborators. I love the idea that my art can end up in the hands of the people who deserve it rather than only the folks who can afford it. I also use a percentage of my prints to support organizations that need the funds. Many of my prints go to non-profit organization auctions and benefits.
LNCPS: When you came to the Neiman Center did you have a project in mind? How would you describe your collaboration with the master printer?
Mark Dion: I have been super fortunate to be close to Tomas and the printmakers in the team. So, I may approach the shop with a very basic idea and Nathan and Tomas will challenge me with ideas of how to expand the project both the conceptually and technically. For example, when we had the first meeting about the Cabinets and Cupboards, I brought in a bit of advertising ephemera which was a card shaped like a medicine cabinet in which the doors were folded back to open, relieving the contents. I wanted to make a print like that. Before long Tomas and Nathan were talking about laser cutting, wood veneers, mounted lithographs and this being a series of cupboards. I love working this way and it is particularly true when you get to work with people you trust and respect. Of course, this added years to the production, but I like to visit the shop and hang out.
LNCPS: The Neiman Center has a pedagogical mission statement and its workforce consists mainly of graduate and undergraduate students. Did this aspect interest you when you decided to work at the Neiman Center? What was your experience like working with the students?
Mark Dion: I am committed to teaching, but I want to do it my way. My methods are very influenced by John Dewey’s pragmatism and commitment to education as an interactive process where students are encouraged to interact and experience. My mentor course is based on placing brilliant people, astonishing institutions and remarkable places in front of my mentor fellows. I want them to understand the world as an accessible resource for their art.
To me the print shop is exactly this kind of experience in working. The students can directly observe the methodologies, strategies and priorities of the artists they work with. Community is fostered and they also have Cary and Nathan to give them hands-on advice and assistance about new techniques and technologies.
LNCPS: For many artists working outside their studios – which is often a solitary space – can have its own set of challenges. How did you find the collaborative nature of printmaking at the Neiman Center?
Mark Dion: The only challenge is also one of the best aspects of working with the Neiman Center- namely Tomas always wants to scale up and make things more complex. For example, when we made the hunting banners, Tomas thought it was just too easy to do the edition on only paper. So, he pushed to make a second group on felt. It was also Tomas and Nathan who insisted on the beautiful complexity of the cabinet and cupboard edition. When I worked with Martin and Arlen, they pushed for the large size of the print. In each case, my work was made better by their suggestions. I can have the tendency to be a bit on the down and dirty side, so I appreciated the prodding. In the end my Neiman Center additions are some of my very best work largely because of the input from the team.
