Julija Gracin
Linotype, the Machine Behind Black Art
The exhibition Linotype, the Machine Behind Black Art was inspired by the visual representation of the Linotype machine while it was placed 'out of sight' in the dislocated depot of the Nikola Tesla Technical Museum. It is about a machine that Thomas Alva Edison once declared the eighth wonder of the world. Pulling it out of oblivion at the exhibition, it is placed paradigmatically at the intersection of past and present time.
In its time, the Linotype machine revolutionized a segment of printing, an activity that for centuries was called a black art. That segment referred to the arrangement of letters into lines, which from 1440 to 1886, when the machine was presented as an invention of Ottmar Mertgenhaler, was done by hand, letter by letter, in the same way Gutenberg did it. Instead of stacking the lines, Linotype cast the finished lines letter by letter, speeding up the process six times. Immediately after that, it was introduced to all the major printing houses in the world, and after some time it was also found in printing houses in Croatia.
The exhibition is accompanied by photographs by art photographer Ante Brkan created in the Narodni list printing house in Zadar from 1950 to 1970, as well as graphic prints by artist Viktor Popović created on the basis of Brkan's photographs.
Ante Brkan's photographs are present at the exhibition as a rare cycle of recording work within a single printing house by an important art photographer.
Viktor Popović's graphic prints in screen printing technique with color obtained from the dust collected from the Linotype machine from the holdings of the Nikola Tesla Technical Museum are the punctum where the above-mentioned times intersect.
Linotype, the Machine Behind Black Art
The exhibition Linotype, the Machine Behind Black Art was inspired by the visual representation of the Linotype machine while it was placed 'out of sight' in the dislocated depot of the Nikola Tesla Technical Museum. It is about a machine that Thomas Alva Edison once declared the eighth wonder of the world. Pulling it out of oblivion at the exhibition, it is placed paradigmatically at the intersection of past and present time.
In its time, the Linotype machine revolutionized a segment of printing, an activity that for centuries was called a black art. That segment referred to the arrangement of letters into lines, which from 1440 to 1886, when the machine was presented as an invention of Ottmar Mertgenhaler, was done by hand, letter by letter, in the same way Gutenberg did it. Instead of stacking the lines, Linotype cast the finished lines letter by letter, speeding up the process six times. Immediately after that, it was introduced to all the major printing houses in the world, and after some time it was also found in printing houses in Croatia.
The exhibition is accompanied by photographs by art photographer Ante Brkan created in the Narodni list printing house in Zadar from 1950 to 1970, as well as graphic prints by artist Viktor Popović created on the basis of Brkan's photographs.
Ante Brkan's photographs are present at the exhibition as a rare cycle of recording work within a single printing house by an important art photographer.
Viktor Popović's graphic prints in screen printing technique with color obtained from the dust collected from the Linotype machine from the holdings of the Nikola Tesla Technical Museum are the punctum where the above-mentioned times intersect.