Charline von Heyl on Jacob Samuel
Read an exclusive excerpt from the New Ground: Jacob Samuel and Contemporary Etching catalogue.
Charline von Heyl
Oct 24, 2023
There is no sign of artistic struggle in Charline von Heyl’s exuberant etchings, only the same energy and humor found in her paintings. Those works often feature a much broader color palette, but in her project with Jacob Samuel the artist managed to make black printing ink on bright-yellow gampi paper work just as well. It likely helped that her series of eight images was drawn in response to the wild life and dramatic early death of Harry Crosby, nephew of financier J. P. Morgan and a prescient early publisher of modernist literary masterworks. The biography that von Heyl mentions here was written by Geoffrey Wolff, originally published in 1976, and reissued in 2003.
—Esther Adler, Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints
Charline von Heyl. Four untitled etchings from the portfolio Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby. 2013
I was happy when Jacob emailed to ask if I would do some etchings with him, because it is such a joy to work with anybody who’s that good at something. I was nervous, too. Jacob had worked with Christopher [Wool], my husband, and I knew from Christopher about Jacob’s universe: you have to be very focused, obeying all the rules, and there’s no leeway. It’s not about stretching the medium; it’s about getting the most out of what it can give. It was my first time making etchings, so I had to ask Jacob lots of questions—I got really into it.
I knew I wanted to make a portfolio. At the time, I was obsessed with a biography of Harry Crosby my friend Jacqueline Humphries had given me. Crosby, with his wife, was the first to publish the work of James Joyce, and he died in a crazy murder-suicide pact in New York in 1929. Crosby had dreamed of killing himself like some weird, modern Icarus, by flying his plane into the sun. That was his idea of the perfect death. I thought I might use an image of a propeller with the sun, but since Crosby was immersed in dandy culture, a slipper came into play. I had come to Santa Monica and was in a little motel on the beach, and I had the idea of collecting stones from the ground on the way to the studio. I took a copper plate and rubbed two stones over it in a circular motion. Jacob looked at me like No, but I said, “Let’s just print it.” So we printed it, and, of course, it really wasn’t enough as an image. He didn’t think I could save the plate, and I took that as a challenge. I added the slipper with an etching needle—and it worked. I was very proud of it. Jacob loved it. It’s my favorite image in the series.
I was thinking about sun worship the whole time. From my hotel window, I could watch the surfers: they went out with their suits and boards in the mornings and sat like blackbirds on the water. I always thought surfing was this crazy active thing. I had no idea just how much patience it takes, waiting for the perfect wave. For me, that image is connected to the portfolio—the sun of Los Angeles and the black silhouettes in the water. Crosby’s obsession with flying into the sun seemed very similar to the surfers “worshiping” the sun in their idleness.
The rose is a symbol for Crosby’s wife, Caresse. I made those velvety lines with a large nail, scratching very slowly and brutally into the plate. The silk-scarf motif is another reference to dandyism: the movement of the fabric, the loop in the void. There is a whole series of Aztec and Inca sculptures that feature a face broken into two discordant halves. That motif is very pronounced in one image, reflecting Crosby’s somewhat disturbed persona. I like the way it looks so much like a modern sculpture.
I knew that Jacob didn’t want to layer colors, but he agreed to colored chine collé. I really love lemon yellow; I think it’s a completely mental color. It’s very sharp and intellectual, and it works well by itself. It’s actually disturbed by other colors. If you use a single color, it needs to be something with a luminosity that enhances what’s on top of it, that doesn’t put it down.
Charline von Heyl. Four untitled etchings from the portfolio Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby. 2013
Charline von Heyl with etching plates in Jacob Samuel’s printshop, Santa Monica, 2012
Things often look good simply because they are etchings. The way it’s pressed into the paper, the edge, the quality of the black—there’s a certain objectness to it, a sculptural aspect. It has an aura. I fell in love with etching through this project. On the one hand, it’s very precise. On the other hand, you’re able to really violate the plate. You can do all kinds of weird shit to it. You have to have a partner who is on your wavelength and who knows what you can do. He doesn’t say anything; he just puts a little something that you might like in your vicinity, and it saves your day. It was just the two of us, and we were focused on the project. There was a privacy and tenderness to it, you know? It was so serious, and at the same time it was lighthearted. It had this whole Santa Monica thing. There was something about it that was very intimate—that’s the word I was looking for.
As told to Starr Figura, Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints
Want to read more? Pick up a copy of New Ground: Jacob Samuel and Contemporary Etching.
The exhibition New Ground: Jacob Samuel and Contemporary Etching is on view at MoMA October 29, 2023–March 23, 2024.
