Prints

“Morse always returned to his first love, printmaking. It was slower than painting, more physical, and he could make corrections as he went. I think he liked the drama and the emotion possible in black and white etchings, and the bold color and line he could achieve in color woodblock and screenprints. He liked the fact that each hand-crafted print was unique in its own subtle way, and the sharp tools required to carve woodcuts gave him another means of expression. Found materials were an important component, the perfect piece of plywood or cast-off board that had an inherently pleasing pattern. Like any craftsman, Bart enjoyed the moment of suspense that occurred just before he could see what the press revealed! He would be satisfied with part of it and see the areas that still needed more work. Several of his prints were reworked even decades later when he went back to correct parts of the image.

Over the years, I have tried to collect one of each of his prints, and other than a few of the color woodblock prints from the ’60s, I think I have most of them. They represent a dialogue with all the important themes of Morse’s paintings: religion, history, family, nature, and above all landscape. As a body of artistic output, the prints stand alone on their own merit and many of them are masterpieces.” - Marc Morse

Morse worked in relief and intaglio printmaking methods throughout his career.

He originally planned to focus on printmaking during his Master of Fine Arts at the University of Washington and applied on the strength of the printmaking program. His wife Leslie recalls that they moved from Provo to Seattle before Bart had completed his undergraduate degree. He started a job at Boeing and took night classes, studying both painting and printmaking. The credits he earned were transferred to BYU enabling him to complete his bachelor’s degree. Leslie says ‘the experience proved valuable because Bart decided to change tack to focus on painting. He did not get along with the printmaking professor at all. But his love of printmaking continued his whole life.’

Morse’s son Aaron and daughter Magen studied printmaking with him as students at the University of Arizona and even helped pull prints. They said that he loved the physical nature of the process and the bold, graphic quality of prints.

The subject matter of his prints was landscape or history. His best-selling print was Laying the Capstone on the Salt Lake Temple (1975).  This print held special significance for Morse, it pays homage to the Mormon pioneers who settled in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847 and the grand vision of church leaders to build a new ‘Zion’. The print is a large reworking of commercial photographer, C.R. Savage’s photograph from 1892.  Copies of the photograph were sold throughout the Salt Lake Valley as souvenirs of the momentous occasion of the completion of the Salt Lake Temple, and Morse's grandmother, on the farm in Sandy, bought a copy.  The Temple ornamentation is rich in religious symbolism and its walls are built from quartz monzonite quarried from Little Cottonwood Canyon, near the farm where Morse spent his childhood. This print reflects Morse’s connection with his Mormon heritage, birthplace, and the aspirations of church leaders to create a thriving community.

Similarly, The Prophet’s Garden, Fall 1844 Nauvoo, Ill (1988) references Latter Day Saint founder Joseph Smith and is an evocative and atmospheric depiction of a garden near Nauvoo, Illinois in the autumn after the Martyrdom.  The Prophet’s Garden is a reworking of an earlier print entitled, ‘Organic Garden’ from the late 1960s which featured battling magpies flying over late-season tomato plants under trees that have already lost their leaves.   

Morenci Graveyard (1976) is a detail-rich copperplate etching with aquatint, the composition and details are beautifully rendered. The Mexican American graveyard is in a small company town in south-eastern Arizona, home to the largest copper mine in the United States. In an opinion piece published in the New York Times in 2017, Professor Kyle Longley wrote ‘Practically every man in Morenci worked for the mine, and every boy knew that his future lay in its depths.’ The exception to this was in 1966 when 9 young men were recruited to fight in the Vietnam War. Tragically only 3 returned home alive. Morse uses the power of composition to refer to these events. He places threatening military helicopters above the graveyard and the word ‘Peace’ is written into the steep and rocky hillside. On more than one occasion Morse reflected that his university studies and the year of his birth (1938) saved him from working at Kennecott Copper, the mine near his hometown, and active military service.  Although he did serve with the National Guard, he was ‘too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam.’ He seemed to identify with the Morenci cemetery, like looking down a different path for his own life and death.  

The artist’s daughter Magen also remembers that this print was personally meaningful to Morse and it is a great work of storytelling. He included small details like the initials and date (written backward) of his nephew Bryan Morse, who died in a drowning accident in 1979. The artist’s own initials and birth year appear in the center bottom of the print. 

Other works of storytelling include Columbus a large-scale linocut made in 1992, the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ 1492 arrival in America. The work was purchased by the University of Arizona Museum of Art in 2003 and versions of the work are also held in private collections. The work portrays the contentious views surrounding Columbus’ role in history – he is celebrated by some as an explorer and navigator and deplored by others for the violent and oppressive treatment of indigenous peoples. The work borrows images including Flammarion’s famous ‘Flat Earth’, a portrait of Queen Isabella with the face of Elizabeth II of England, codices showing the Old-World scourge of smallpox being inflicted on the New World, and a smooth-talking business executive with a magic handkerchief representing the Dean of the College of Fine Arts. His daughter Brooke and grandson Graham also make an appearance as reflecting migrants to the ‘new world’ of Australia. All these symbols are combined to highlight the tension, unequal exchange, and the many paradoxes in the legacy of the conquest of the Western Hemisphere.

Another large woodcut print is a reimagining of Morse’s pioneer ancestors in the hardscrabble country in and around Roosevelt, Utah.  The foreground people and their animals were derived from an old family photo taken near their homestead along Crow Creek.  There are individuals who are both pleasant and ominous.  To add to the drama of the photo, the entire family is placed within a large herd of bison at the base of the Henry Mountains in Southern Utah, one of the last explored and mapped regions of the United States.  

Perhaps the apotheosis of Morse’s printmaking career came in the late ’80s-’90s when he created several large-scale prints that drew inspiration from his work as an interpretive artist with the Passport in Time project.  The project took Morse to some of the premier rock art sites in the Southwest.  During those trips, he documented still-pristine Anasazi, Fremont, and Ancestral Puebloan petroglyphs and pictographs. These prints take some of the most impressive Native American petroglyphs and transform them into stunning pictographs alive with the colors of the desert southwest.  They are mysterious, religious, quotidian, and even playful as the figures seem to jump out of the frame telling stories of the “Ancient Ones.”

Like other American artists, Morse drew inspiration from two grand printmaking traditions – those of Western Europe and Japan.  He followed the traditional European method of color relief printing using oil-based inks and printing his blocks on a large press.

He admired the work of German Expressionists Max Beckmann and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and his early work uses simplified forms and flattening to capture figures and landscape with immediacy and spontaneity. Their influence can be seen in his early prints and the later black and white landscapes depicting Southern Arizona. Later, he closely studied another German artist – Gustave Baumann, a master craftsman credited as a leading figure in the American revival of color woodcuts. 

Morse taught printmaking at the University of Arizona and was instrumental in securing presses and other equipment. His students remember him always making sure that the print room was well stocked and that he took good care of the presses, ensuring that they were serviced regularly and even fixing them himself when they broke down. 

Up until the end of his life, Morse experimented with printing methods. He produced a few monoprints featuring southwest landscape, wintergreen transfers of favorite family photos, and printed directly from distressed surfaces such as corroded steel or scarred wood.

Energy and curiosity were two of Morse’s key strengths and these qualities allowed him to use printmaking to tell stories and share his love for the landscape.