Lithography

Lithography is a planographic process that prints from a flat surface, exploiting the mutual repulsion of grease and water so that ink adheres only to the drawn image.

Definition

A planographic printmaking process invented by Alois Senefelder in which an image is drawn with a greasy medium on a flat stone or plate; the surface is treated and dampened so that printing ink adheres only to the greasy image and is repelled by the wet blank areas.

Scope

This topic covers lithography from stone and plate: drawing with greasy crayon or tusche, chemically fixing the image, dampening so that ink adheres only to the greasy areas, and printing, together with color lithography (chromolithography) and the medium's importance for both fine-art prints and mass-produced imagery such as posters.

Core questions

• How does the chemical antagonism of grease and water make lithography work?
• How is the drawn image fixed and the stone prepared for printing?
• How did chromolithography enable inexpensive color imagery?
• Why did lithography suit both artists' prints and commercial posters?

Key concepts

• Planographic printing
• Grease and water repulsion
• Lithographic crayon and tusche
• Etching and gum-arabic processing
• Chromolithography
• Offset lithography

Key theories

Planographic grease-water principle

The basis of lithography: because the image is drawn in a greasy medium and the stone is kept damp, oil-based ink adheres only to the greasy marks and is repelled by the wet blank areas, all on a single flat plane.

Autographic freedom

The understanding that, because the artist draws directly and freely on the stone much as on paper, lithography preserves the spontaneity of the original drawing more directly than the cut or bitten matrices of relief and intaglio.

History

Lithography was invented around 1798 by Alois Senefelder. Its directness and capacity for long runs made it valuable for both artists and commerce; Honore Daumier used it for biting political caricature, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec exploited color lithography for his posters. Chromolithography spread color imagery widely in the nineteenth century, and offset lithography became the dominant commercial printing method of the twentieth.

Debates

Fine art versus commercial reproduction

Because lithography served both original artistic printmaking and large-scale commercial reproduction, its standing as a fine-art medium was sometimes questioned, raising the recurring problem of distinguishing artists' prints from reproductive ones.

Key figures

• Alois Senefelder
• Honore Daumier
• Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Seminal works

• griffiths1996
• twyman2001
• gascoigne2004

Frequently asked questions

Who invented lithography?

Lithography was invented around 1798 by Alois Senefelder, who discovered that an image drawn in a greasy medium on limestone could be inked and printed by exploiting the repulsion of grease and water.

Why is lithography called a planographic process?

Because the image and the blank areas lie on the same flat plane of the stone or plate; unlike relief or intaglio, nothing is raised or recessed, and printing depends on chemistry rather than relief.