16 October 2025

Ghost:2568
Wish We Were Here


Ghost:2568

Capital Complex, a tent set up outside the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, could be mistaken for a tourist information booth, featuring a map of Bangkok. But in fact it’s an art installation by Tanat Teeradakorn, and the map shows sites that certainly aren’t promoted by the tourist board: the locations of violent clashes that took place during the crackdown on red-shirt protesters in 2010. It also features the text “TRUTH TODAY”, which was the English-language title of the TV discussion show ความจริงวันนี้, presented by several of the protest leaders at the time.

Capital Complex
Truth Today

Capital Complex is similar to Pisitakun Kuantalaeng’s 10 Year project, which also featured maps documenting the violence of 2010. It’s part of the city-wide Ghost:2568 exhibition, whose slogan this year is Wish We Were Here (หากเราได้อยู่ด้วยกัน).

Ghost:2568 runs from 15th October to 16th November. (2568 in the Buddhist Era calendar is the equivalent of 2025.) This year is the final Ghost event; the first, Ghost:2561, took place in 2018.

14 October 2025

Paper Monument


Paper Monument

This month at VS Gallery in Bangkok, Apiwat Apimukmongkon is staging a completely new exhibition every day, with each one lasting just a single day. The project is titled Everyday I Solo, and today’s incarnation is Paper Monument, marking the anniversary of the 14th October 1973 protest that led to the collapse of a military government.

Paper Monument

For Paper Monument, Apitwat wrote the names of seventy protesters who died in 1973, each on a different sheet of paper. He then scrunched up each sheet, and placed it on the gallery floor. The medium of paper is a deliberate contrast to more traditional stone momuments, as the fragility of paper highlights the precarious nature of Thai democracy and society’s fading memory of the victims.

Thainism

The daily exhibition for 18th October will be Thainism (ไทยนิยม), inspired by Mauricio Cattelan’s infamous work Comedian. (Cattelan taped a real banana to a gallery wall, provoking a debate about the limits of conceptual art.) Apitwat modifies Cattelan’s work to comment on the corrosive effects of nationalism.

Thainism is one of a handful of new ‘isms’ created by Thai artists. Pan Pan Narkprasert’s 2011 Gagasmicism exhibition was inspired by Lady Gaga. Noshpash Chaturongkagul’s exhibition Roboticlism From Unconscious Mind was held in 2016. Three young artists showed their work at the Neo Thaiism group exhibition in 2020. Earlier this year, Kant Kantawat held an exhibition showcasing his Cu(te)bism paintings.

12 October 2025

Media Arts and Design Festival 2025


Media Arts and Design Festival 2025

The Media Arts and Design Festival 2025 (บึงเบ๊ง) opened at Chiang Mai University Art Center on 10th October. An impressive multimedia exhibition, the MADs degree show runs until today.

Eternal Wounds
Eternal Wounds

The exhibition includes Eternal Wounds (เงา-อำนาจ-บาดแผล), an installation by Jiraphon Jomthonglang commenting on state violence. The installation features a drawing on a rock inspired by the famous Neal Ulevich photograph of the 1976 Thammasat University massacre. The description on the gallery label refers to the work’s English-language title: “Soldiers still stand above the people, their power inherited as a wound without end.”

A Fire 9 Kilometers Away

Buariyate Eamkamol’s short film A Fire 9 Kilometers Away (previously shown at Wildtype 2025) is also part of the exhibition. The film is a blend of documentary and fiction, and features a poem dedicated to Samaphan Srithep, one of the youngest victims of the crackdown on protesters in Bangkok in 2010. Projected as a diptych, the film makes ironic juxtapositions, showing military snipers on 10th April 2010 alongside footage of revellers firing water pistols during the April Songkran festival.

Red Is the Orangest Color

(Buriyate’s forthcoming short film Red Is the Orangest Color marks the fifteenth anniversary of the 2010 crackdown. The film’s title refers to red-shirt former Pheu Thai voters who now support the progressive ‘orange movement’ represented by the People’s Party. This trend is hardly surprising, as Pheu Thai broke their repeated pledges not to join forces with the pro-military Palang Pracharath.)

11 October 2025

The Bouquet and the Wreath



The Bouquet and the Wreath (ข้อมาลา), a retrospective exhibition covering Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s entire artistic career, opened at MAIIAM in Chiang Mai on 26th July. The exhibition runs until 25th May 2026, and a second phase (إكليل باقة الأزهار) will be shown in Dubai later this year.

The Class
Chant for Female Corpse

The show includes several of Araya’s contemplative videos filmed at a morgue. The Class 1–3 (ชั้นเรียน 1–3) are shown in an installation appropriately resembling a classroom, and the triptych Chant for Female Corpse (สวดเพื่อร่างตายหญิง) is installed inside a wooden hut. (The Class 1–3 were previously shown at Dialogues in 2011, and Chant for Female Corpse was shown during Galleries’ Night in 2014.)

Prostitute's Room
Prostitute's Room

The installation Prostitute’s Room (ห้องโสเภณี) is another highlight: a small, semi-enclosed space containing three bowls of the artist’s blood, some of which has spilled onto the gallery floor. The piece has not been exhibited for thirty years; when it was first shown in 1995, it featured bowls of the Araya’s menstrual blood.

The Same Old Karma

Many of Araya’s video works will be shown at another retrospective, The Same Old Karma (กรรมเก่าเดิม), at 100 Tonson Foundation in Bangkok. This exhibition, organised in conjunction with MAIIAM, runs from 16th October until 18th January 2026.

The first phase of the Tonson exhibition, from 16th October to 9th November, includes the videos Reading for Female Corpse, Reading Inaow for Female Corpse, Reading for Male and Female Corpses, Reading Inaow for Three Female Corpses, I’m Living, and A Walk. The second phase, from 13th November to 14th December, includes The Treachery of the Moon.

11 September 2025

The Ordinary


The Ordinary

Prapassorn Konmuang’s The Ordinary (คนธรรมดา) will be restaged on 19th September at Thammasat University. The play, a monologue about resistance to coups and authoritarianism, is directed by Thunratram Cheepnurat. The performance will take place at the Faculty of Liberal Arts, with advance tickets priced at ฿112. (Regular tickets cost ฿247.50, and 2475 is the Buddhist Era equivalent of 1932, the year that absolute monarchy was abolished.)

19th September


19th September is a significant date, being the fifth anniversary of a protest at Thammasat in 2020, one of the largest student-led demonstrations since the 2014 coup. The play’s revival is one of a series of events organised by the United Front of Thammasat and Demonstration, and the Democracy Restoration Group, collectively titled ทบทวน 5 ปี 19 กันยา 2563 (‘looking back 5 years since 19th September 2020’).

The date also marks another anniversary, as the coup against Thaksin Shinawatra took place on 19th September 2006. That date appears in the titles of two books published by Same Sky: รัฐประหาร 19 กันยา (‘19th Sept. coup’) and 19–19.

112


The ticket price for The Ordinary is also symbolic: ฿112 refers to the lèse-majesté law, which is article 112 of the Thai criminal code. Similarly, the catalogue for Wittawat Tongkeaw’s exhibition Re/Place cost ฿112, and two poetry books — เหมือนบอดใบ้ไพร่ฟ้ามาสุดทาง (‘we subjects, as if mute and blind, have found ourselves at the end of the line’) and ราษฎรที่รักทั้งหลาย (‘dear citizens’) — were also sold at that price.

There have been other subtle cultural references to 112 in recent years. Another play, Wilderness (รักดงดิบ), included a recipe stating that food should “dry in the sun for 112 hours”. Elevenfinger’s single Land of Compromise was released at 1:12pm. Vichart Somkaew’s documentary 112 News from Heaven features 112 headlines from a 112-day period, and 112 photographic portraits. The Evidences of Resistance [sic] (วัตถุพยานแห่งการต่อต้าน) exhibition was held in room 112 at Thammasat’s Museum of Anthropology.

29 August 2025

SWU Through Poster
Thailand Postlitical Fiction


SWU Through Poster

After its launch in Bangkok last year, and subsequent events in Khon Kaen and Phayao earlier this year, the Thailand Postlitical Fiction exhibition will take place at Srinakharinwiwot University from today until 2nd September. (The exhibition’s dates were originally advertised as 1st–5th September.) SWU Through Poster features poster designs for imaginary movies commenting on Thai politics, including some new submissions.

2553 Who Put That Bullet In Their Hand?

Marisa Nagaoka’s poster 2553 shows a red chess piece defeated by a yellow one, symbolising the massacre of red-shirt protesters in 2010. (2553 in the Buddhist Era calendar is equivalent to 2010.) Natcha Threekul’s poster Who Put That Bullet In Their Hand? superimposes a large bullet over a photograph of the 6th October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University. Both posters address the issue of who is culpable for the violence committed.

15 August 2025

Manga:
A New History of Japanese Comics


Manga

Frederik L. Schodt’s book Manga! Manga! first introduced Japanese manga comics to Western readers more than thirty years ago, and since then there have been several coffee-table books on the subject. But Eike Exner’s Manga: A New History of Japanese Comics, published this month, is the first complete narrative history of manga.

Based on archival research in Japan, Exner’s book is a revisionist study that deviates from the standard account of other manga historians, who have characterised manga as the culmination of a thousand-year history of inherently Japanese visual culture. Exner previously challenged this myth in Comics and the Origins of Manga, and his new work is a significant expansion of that earlier book’s scope.


As he writes in the introduction to Manga, “this book seeks to provide a coherent account of how comics were established in Japan, how comics have changed over the decades, and how an entire industry arose around Japanese comics and turned the country into the world’s largest exporter of comics.” The book also includes a manga chronology, detailed endnotes, and an extensive bibliography.

Exner’s book is likely to become the standard history of manga, though there are other useful books on the topic. Manga Design (revised as 100 Manga Artists), by Amano Masanao and Julius Wiedemann, profiles mangaka (manga artists). Schodt translated Toshio Ban’s The Osamu Tezuka Story, a biography of the most influential mangaka. Helen McCarthy’s The Art of Osamu Tezuka is a monograph on Tesuka’s manga and anime.

Face with Tears of Joy:
A Natural History of Emoji


Face with Tears of Joy

Keith Houston’s Face with Tears of Joy: A Natural History of Emoji, published last month, is the first comprehensive history of emoji. As its back cover claims, the book “tells the whole story of emoji for the first time.”

Shigetaka Kurita is credited as the inventor of emoji, as he designed a set of pictograms for the Japanese telecom firm Docomo in 1999. But, as Houston explains, Kurita had several predecessors: similar icons were created for a Sharp PDA in 1988, and for a Pioneer cellphone in 1997.

Face with Tears of Joy is not the first book to cover the history of emoji: The Story of Emoji, by Gavin Lucas, was published almost a decade earlier. (Houston’s book doesn’t mention Lucas at all.) With almost fifty pages of notes, Face with Tears of Joy is more detailed than The Story of Emoji, though The Story of Emoji is significant as it includes an interview with Kurita.

11 August 2025

5 ปี #ธรรมศาสตร์จะไม่ทน:
ย้อนรอยข้อเรียกร้องจาก ปฏิรูปสถาบันฯสู่ยกเลิก112
(‘5 years of #ThammasatWillNotTolerate’)



The exhibition 5 ปี #ธรรมศาสตร์จะไม่ทน: ย้อนรอยข้อเรียกร้องจาก ปฏิรูปสถาบันฯสู่ยกเลิก 112 (‘5 years of #ThammasatWillNotTolerate: tracing the demands for institutional reform and the abolition of section 112’) opened yesterday at the Social Complex Building on Thammasat University’s Rangsit campus. Organised by the Museum of Popular History, it features photographs, newspaper front pages, and other materials covering the recent student protest movement.

The exhibition (which closes on 19th August) features a copy of a speech read by Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul at a 12th December 2021 protest calling for the abolition of article 112 of the criminal code (the lèse-majesté law). The paper is stained with Panusaya’s blood, as she carved “112” into her arm at the demonstration. It has previously been on display at the Bangkok Art Book Fair in 2021, and at Thammasat in 2023.

30 July 2025

Poor Archive:
A Prologue to Parallel 2


Poor Archive

Komtouch Napattaloong’s No Exorcism Film will be screened at Noir Row Art Space in Udon Thani on 2nd August, on the opening day of the Poor Archive: A Prologue to Parallel 2 (อีกหนึ่งกิจกรรมพิเศษในวันเสาร์ที่ 2 สิงหาคมนี้) exhibition. In Komtouch’s experimental short film, a robotic voiceover narrates a dream in which a brutal warlord kills villagers with a sword because they disrespect him by not addressing him as their king.

No Exorcism Film

No Exorcism Film was previously shown at BEFF7, The 28th Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 28), Wildtype 2024, and in the online Short Film Marathon 28 (หนังสั้นมาราธอน 28). It will also be screened next week at the Phimailongweek (พิมายฬองวีค) arts festival in Phimai.

27 July 2025

Toxic Remains:
Parasites of a Betrayed Dream



Thasnai Sethaseree’s new exhibition Toxic Remains: Parasites of a Betrayed Dream (เศษพิษ: ปรสิตแห่งฝันทรยศ) opened at Gallery VER in Bangkok on 20th July and runs until 5th October (extended from the original closing date of 20th September). His previous exhibitions include Cold War, in 2022.

Parasites

The centrepiece of Toxic Remains is Parasites, a vast collage depicting the pixelated faces of fourteen former prime ministers — many of whom have military backgrounds — surrounded by parasitic worms. According to an introductory text on the gallery wall, these creatures symbolise “the enduring toxicity of militarism embedded in the national body.”

26 July 2025

Another Side by Another Side


Another Side by Another Side

Kant Kantawat, known as Mr Halfman, has his first solo exhibition at GalileOasis in Bangkok. Another Side by Another Side runs from until tomorrow, and features an art style that he describes as Cu(te)bism, a portmanteau of Cubism and ‘cute’.

Cu(te)bism is one of a handful of new ‘isms’ created by Thai artists. Pan Pan Narkprasert’s 2011 Gagasmicism exhibition was inspired by Lady Gaga. (Pan Pan is now Thailand’s leading drag queen, Pangina Heals.) Noshpash Chaturongkagul’s exhibition Roboticlism From Unconscious Mind was held in 2016. Three young artists showed their work at the Neo Thaiism group exhibition in 2020.

Local Myths:
The Intrinsic Aesthetic


Local Myths

For an arts fair at various locations around Thailand last month, 24 มิถุนาวันประชาชน (‘24th June, people’s day’), artist and musician Pisitakun Kuantalaeng designed a stencil of a board game that highlighted the various methods of suppression used against protesters and activists. A reproduction of the board game is currently on show at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, as part of the Local Myths: The Intrinsic Aesthetic (ความงามตามพื้นเพ) exhibition, which runs from 17th July to 10th October.

17 July 2025

Remnants of Fading Shadows


Remnants of Fading Shadows

Remnants of Fading Shadows, a retrospective exhibition of installations and video works by Wantanee Siripattananuntakul, opened at Silpakorn University Art Centre in Bangkok on 19th June, and runs until 31st August. It includes The Web of Time, which was previously shown at the Bangkok Art Biennale (บางกอก อาร์ต เบียนนาเล่) in 2022.

The exhibition also includes Freeze-TV, a 2015 video in which a speech by Prayut Chan-o-cha is played on a television placed next to the artist’s parrot, Beuys. The TV screen is covered with felt, though the sound of Prayut’s voice can be heard, and the piece was inspired by Felt TV (Felz-TV), a Fluxus performance by Joseph Beuys. (The parrot is named after the Fluxus artist.)


As the video progresses, the felt begins to peel away from the screen, partially revealing the news footage, and the parrot eventually breaks out of its cage and flies away, seemingly unable to bear the TV broadcast. Of course, the caged bird is a metaphor for the restrictions imposed by martial law. Tanwarin Sukkhapisit made the same point in her short film I’m Fine (สบายดีค่ะ), as she sat in a cage next to Democracy Monument.

Freeze-TV

Wantanee discussed the concept behind Freeze-TV in a 2023 interview with the Ground Control website. She explained that the video’s title came from the fact that TV was effectively frozen by the coup-makers: regular programming was suspended when the coup took place, and coup leaders always seize control of the airwaves, just as they take over the government. Although the video features Prayut’s voice, she noted that his name is not mentioned, so it represents the idea of a coup itself, rather than specifically referring to 2014, and therefore it could also represent a future Thai coup.

16 July 2025

One on One Series
Kisho Kurokawa:
Nakagin Capsule Tower


Nakagin Capsule Tower

The Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo, designed by architect Kisho Kurokawa and completed in 1972, was an icon of the Japanese Metabolism movement. The building was comprised of movable, connectable, and replaceable capsules, and it epitomised Metabolism’s focus on expandability, flexibility, and adaptability. In his new book on the tower, Evangelos Kotsioris calls it “one of the most discussed and written about modern buildings of the 20th century”.

Each capsule was a tiny, self-contained studio apartment, complete with a built-in entertainment console. A single porthole-style window provided natural light — though not fresh air, as the windows didn’t open. The concept was unique and original, and although no more capsule towers were built, Nakagin continues to influence current architectural trends such as capsule hotels and micro apartments.

Nakagin Capsule Towe Nakagin Capsule Towe

Sadly, exactly fifty years after its construction, the tower was demolished in 2022. By that point, it had fallen into disrepair — its capsules were never replaced, as had been originally envisioned. (When I visited the building in 2016, it was largely unoccupied.) The Museum of Modern Art in New York purchased one of the project’s 140 capsules, which went on display this month.

Kisho Kurokawa: Nakagin Capsule Tower, published next month, is the first English-language publication on the tower. It’s part of MoMA’s One on One Series, monographs on individual works of art from the museum’s permanent collection. (Project Japan by Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist, a comprehensive history of Metabolism, is also essential reading.)

05 July 2025

Affinities


Affinities

The group exhibition Affinities at Nova Contemporary in Bangkok closes today. The exhibition, which opened on 26th April, features twenty-eight artists, though the clear highlight is Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s video The Treachery of the Moon.

Araya filmed herself sitting on a bench with her pet dogs, watching a lakorn (soap opera) on TV. Just past the half-way point in the video, news footage of various episodes of Thai political violence — including the 2010 crackdown on the red-shirts, and the 2004 Tak Bai tragedy — are projected onto the artist and the TV screen behind her.

The Treachery of the Moon

The cycle of political violence in Thailand is as long-running and as repetitive as a soap opera, a point also made in Sanchai Chotirosseranee’s short film The Love Culprit. Stills from The Treachery of the Moon were first published in the Storytellers of the Town exhibition catalogue.

01 July 2025

LeMan


LeMan

Six members of staff working for the satirical Turkish magazine LeMan were detained by police in Istanbul yesterday, after a cartoon led to protests outside their offices. They are accused of violating article 216 of Turkey’s penal code, which covers insults against religion. Images of the cartoon were shared on social media, and a riot broke out; police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at around 300 demonstrators.

LeMan’s current issue (no. 1699), published on 26th July, includes a cartoon showing two men — one Muslim, the other Jewish — with angel’s wings. The men appear to represent civilian casualties on both sides of the Israel–Gaza war, and greet each other as bombs rain down around them. The Muslim character introduces himself as Muhammed, and the Jewish figure says his name is Musa. These are the Arabic versions of Mohammed and Moses — the most revered prophets in Islam and Judaism, respectively — though they are also common Arabic given names.

Islam forbids visual depictions of its prophets, though LeMan’s editor Tuncay Akgün told the AFP news agency: “This cartoon is not a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed... the name of a Muslim who was killed in the bombardments of Israel is fictionalised as Mohammed. More than 200 million people in the Islamic world are named Mohammed.”

Censorship in Turkey


LeMan was previously censored in 2016, when an issue was banned due to its cover illustration. In 2022, a Turkish singer was also charged with insulting religion, as was a Penguen cartoonist in 2011. Two cartoonists were charged with defamation after caricaturing former president Abdullah Gül in 2008.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has a long history of filing criminal charges against cartoonists and journalists, most recently in 2022. He has filed defamation charges against the newspaper Cumhuriyet (in 2004 and 2014), and the magazines Penguen (in 2014) and Nokta (in 2015). In 2006, he sued the artist Michael Dickinson over the collages Good Boy and Best in Show. In 2020, he filed charges against the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

In 2016, Erdoğan sued a German comedian who recited a poem mocking him. The poem was read out in solidarity in the German parliament, and The Spectator launched an anti-Erdoğan poetry competition that was won by Boris Johnson. Ironically, Erdoğan himself was imprisoned in 1999 for reciting a poem: in a 1997 speech, he had quoted lines from a poem by Ziya Gökalp — “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the believers our soldiers” — and was sentenced to ten months in jail as a result.

Mohammed Cartoons


A Danish newspaper caused worldwide controversy in 2005 when it published a dozen caricatures of Mohammed. In response, many liberal newspapers and magazines in other countries printed their own Mohammed cartoons in solidarity. (The twelve Danish cartoons were reprinted by Charlie Hebdo in 2020, and Cherian George’s book Red Lines covers the Mohammed cartoon debate in considerable detail.)

Mohammed cartoons have been censored in Bangladesh, India, and Palestine. In France, a dozen staff at Charlie Hebdo were killed by terrorists in 2015, and the magazine’s offices were firebombed in 2011, after it published a series of offensive Mohammed cartoons, beginning in 2006. Barely a week after the 2015 terrorist attack, Charlie Hebdo published yet another front-page Mohammed cartoon.

15 June 2025

It’s about Time:
Performing between the Past and Tomorrow
in Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s I a Pixel, We the People



Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s exhibition I a Pixel, We the People (ข้าพเจ้าคือพิกเซล, พวกเราคือประชาชน) will close later this month, and the artist took part in a Q&A session with Sam I-shan at BangkokCityCity Gallery yesterday. The event was titled It’s about Time: Performing between the Past and Tomorrow in Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s I a Pixel, We the People, named after an essay on Chulayarnnon’s work published by the gallery.

Chulayarnnon spoke about the two phases of his artistic career. His early short films were more personal, whereas his work became more overtly political following the Ratchaprasong crackdown in 2010: “it quite changed my life when the Thailand political crisis came, about 2010”. This aligns him with the “Post-Ratchaprasong art” movement identified by the journal Read (อ่าน; vol. 3, no. 2), and he made a similar comment in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored, explaining when he “turned to be interested in the political situation.”

In the Q&A, Chulayarnnon also discussed the consequences of the political climate for artists: “self-censorship is still existing: for me, sometimes I did that.” He contrasted the student protests of 2020 and 2021 — when Thai artists were more blunt in their political satire — with the current atmosphere: “for now, we need thought-provoking [art], but no need to be hardcore”. He also highlighted the threats that “hardcore” artists face: “I don’t want to be in jail, but I respect them.”

Sam I-shan’s essay booklet is twenty-four pages long, and has been published in a limited edition of twenty-four copies (each with a unique cover photos), reflecting the twenty-four-hour duration of Chulayarnnon’s video installation. The author identifies subtle political metaphors in the exhibition: she notes that the day-long running time “might parallel the cyclical nature of Thai politics,” and she argues that the piles of clothes in the gallery space “stand for all people disenfranchised by... Thailand’s political system, with some of these bodies literally absent, having been imprisoned, exiled, disappeared or killed.”

08 June 2025

Pain(t)ing



Today is the final day of the Pain(t)ing thesis exhibition at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, featuring work by students from the Poh-Chang Academy of Arts. The exhibition opened on 27th May.

No War but the Class War no. 4 Reuters

One of the highlights is Narissara Duangkhun’s No War but the Class War no. 4, a satirical commentary on contemporary Thai politics. The painting includes a depiction of a Reuters photograph taken thirty years ago during the notorious Tak Bai incident in 2004. Narissara’s work resembles that of Navin Rawanchaikul (albeit on a smaller scale), with its dense, brightly coloured collage of wide-ranging visual references. Her painting also features a slot machine displaying ‘112’, a reference to the lèse-majesté law, which is article 112 of the Thai criminal code.

20 May 2025

Screenprints:
A History


Screenprints

Screenprinting is a relatively recent technique, when compared to other forms of printmaking such as engraving, aquatints, monotypes, and lithography. Even the term ‘screenprint’ itself has not yet been standardised, as it’s used synonymously with ‘serigraph’ and ‘silkscreen’.

There have been several general histories of printmaking, including Six Centuries of Fine Prints (by Carl Zigrosser, who coined the term ‘serigraph’) and Prints (co-written by Richard S. Field, who curated the Silkscreen exhibition in 1971). Also, Fritz Eichenberg’s monumental The Art of the Print has chapters on screenprinting. But it was only this year that the first history of screenprinting as an artistic medium was published.

Screenprints: A History, by Gill Saunders, traces the origins of screenprinting to Japanese katagami and French pochoir stencilling techniques. The book also covers artists such as Andy Warhol, who produced Pop Art screenprints with Chris Prater, the printer who was “almost single-handedly responsible for the metamorphosis of screenprinting into a fine art.” Eduardo Paolozzi collaborated with Prater on a dozen screenprints titled As Is When, described by Saunders as “the medium’s first masterpiece.”

Screenprints is a comprehensive history of its subject. Published by Thames and Hudson, it’s also elegantly designed and typeset. Most, though not all, of its illustrations are from the Victoria and Albert Museum collection, and the book is the first in an annual V&A series covering the histories of individual printmaking techniques. Given the high standard set by this first book, the others — on linocuts, etchings, and woodcuts, forthcoming over the next three years — are now eagerly anticipated.