Research Statement

This artifact serves a dual-purpose: to contextualize a forgotten printing machine, the mimeograph, and to uncover magazines made by the mimeograph and its contemporary printing technologies. Over two weeks were spent exploring the internal workings of the mimeograph as well as exactly how printing on it works. Since only a handful of people still know how the machine works, documentation and visual components are critical to the understanding of printing technology throughout the 20th century. This project seeks to display the primary workings of the machine; from replacing ink pads, to replacing handles, understanding how this machine function contributed to the section purpose of the project. The second sections resurfaced old New York School (NYS) magazines printed between 1961-1983. The magazines seemed to fall out of the mainstream art circle with copies rarely accessible anywhere but in archives.

By giving samples of NYS published material, access to information on several authors, poets, and publishers, readers can understand the connection between the mimeograph and the capabilities of poets to distribute their work. Utilizing archival sources, the artifact relates how their physical and contextual qualities place them in the scope of NYS and how the mimeograph facilitated their artistry. Each magazine derives its unique qualities from the mimeograph and the interaction between the technology and the material representation of the art unlocks new planes of meaning. The contextual analysis with the website then dives into the poetry and writings that connect the contributors to the NYS. By creating this artifact, the exploration of the NYS continues in a new light: an understanding of visual art through the lens of technology.

Our research has illuminated the scale of the influence of printing technology upon the aesthetics of literary magazines in the middle to late 20th century. An evident air of collaboration is present in each of the magazines we researched -- Locus Solus, “C” magazine, Umbra, Dodgems, and United Artists -- a collaboration bolstered and facilitated by their respective production technologies. Emory’s Rose library gave us access to entire issues of these magazines. This access was invaluable because it let us develop our own ideas about their physicality rather than relying on secondary-source accounts. Locus Solus, dubbed the “foreign wing” of the New York School (NYS) valued a clean aesthetic, and its use of offset printing--a more expensive and advanced technology than the mimeograph--allowed for higher resolution prints.

A product of European-influenced elegance, Locus Solus is a magazine intended for the highly intellectual and the avant-garde, and its polished look, a direct result of editors’ chosen method of production, completes the effect. The mimeograph defined the art as much as the art defined the capacity of the mimeograph; the size of the mimeograph paper influenced how artists arranged words on the page; it challenged artists to reconsider the process of creation; and the way ink bled through the mimeographed pages reflected the “quick-and-dirty” aesthetic of magazines like “C” and United Artists. Printed on legal-side mimeograph sheets and bound with staples, “C” magazine shirked the elegance of its predecessor Locus Solus. Moreover, the cloth-like materiality of the magazine augmented the experimental quality of its art. Umbra magazine artists wrote on typewriters, offset printers, and mimeographs. They made in bold, underlined, and varied the spacing between words to indicate emphasis. Moreover, using the advantages of the printing technologies, artists expanded the space between words, giving the reader time to meditate on its implications. Umbra spoke to harsh and raw emotions, and this effect imprinted this feeling on the reader. Dodgems utilized the ability of the Xerox to include a plethora of visual materials to produce an effect reminiscent of collage. Moreover, this ability to variate content and appearance was emblematic of the NYS. United Artists was strongly influenced by Bernadette Mayer. When she and her husband Lewis Warsh moved to rural Massachusetts from New York City, they created the magazine to remain emotionally connected to a community they’d grown physically further from. Bernadette held strong grievances against printing companies because of their over-glorification of visual artifacts. She used a mimeograph to imbue United Artists with a minimalistic aesthetic to emphasize the primacy of content over style.

The mimeograph also enabled authors to publish their work without a formal publishing company, democratizing access to consumers. This democratization invited prolific artists such as Berrigan imbue their ideologies into the literary water supply, and it resulted in the distribution of more “experimental” poetry. Moreover, the collaboration of prominent artists across magazines reflected the camaraderie of the New York School and the extent to which they remained constant influences on each other.

This artifact contributes to our historical understandings of both printing technology and the New York School. The examination of the mimeograph, the most accessible and efficient printing device of the mid-20th century, re-establishes the purpose and importance of this machine. It influenced both the ability of New York School artists to distribute their work and the aesthetic choices they made. Through written and visual communication, this artifact recreates the process of mimeographing, an important printing skill in the 1960s. We documented the process of reprinting visual artifacts and the labor and time required to repair and successfully operate a mimeograph.

Another contribution to the field of literature is to highlight New York School magazines that have faded from or that failed to enter the cultural cache. In the world of increasingly digital communication, the realm of physical art begins to diminish in both accessibility and awareness. It has become increasingly rare to be able to interact with and to see the very methods by which an artist has created his or her work, rather than merely viewing the finalized product. By reinstating the importance of printing technologies and discussing how they can affect the artist, viewers can develop a better understanding and appreciation for the thought processes and techniques that artists utilize to form their work. Uplifting artistic voices on the fray improves the diversity of the scholarship of this period and contributes a more honest analysis of its aesthetic fingerprint. Our research into the imprint the mimeograph left on the artistry of the mid-20th century can also offer valuable insights into how current media generation methods influence modern art.