La Cienega Area

More akin to rare book collecting or heraldry than the free-wheeling sphere of contemporary art, the world of Old Master prints bristles with arcane references and obscure nuggets of information--not to mention Biblical and mythological subject matter baffling to a culturally illiterate era.

For the patient late-20th-Century viewer, prime enjoyment lies in the descriptive vivacity of the printed line--as it reflects the artist’s imagination, the accretion of Northern and Italian art traditions and a victory over the built-in constraints of each medium.

An exhibit of mostly Germanic and Netherlandish 16th- and 17th-Century prints (all but one produced during lifetime of the artist) offers a generous sampling by Albrecht Duerer and Rembrandt van Rijn, as well as work by other significant artists who made their mark primarily or partially in printmaking, among them --Hendrik Goltzius, Jacob de Gheyn II and Adriaen van Ostade, Jan Both, Stefano della Bella and Canalettos.

German painter Albrecht Altdorfer’s 40 tiny woodcuts from about 1513 relating “The Fall and Redemption of Mankind” with a cast of minuscule figures seem light-years removed from Duerer’s melding of naturalistic detail and stylized decorativeness in his 1511 woodcut, “The Holy Family with Three Hares.”

The manic intensity of Duerer’s famous “The Four Riders of the Apocalypse” woodcut, the serenely Italianate flavor of his “Life of the Virgin” woodcut series and the tonal range, global view and emotional depth of his “Engraved Passion” series round out a picture of an artist whose work brilliantly synthesizes Gothic strenuousness with Renaissance harmonies.

Rembrandt’s greatness as a printmaker is partly due to the dramatic and emotional powers he displayed in his paintings and partly due to technical finesse: he achieved extraordinary effects by combining etching with drypoint, a tricky technique demanding delicately pressure-sensitive control over a needle pushing up ink-retaining “burrs” as it eats into the metal plate. “The Death of the Virgin” from 1639 is one of the most glorious and ethereal of the Dutch master’s “mixed-media” prints.

Perhaps the most unusual feature of the exhibit is Goltzius’ engraving set, “Christ, the Twelve Apostles and Paul.” The caricatures in these prints are actually pretty strange--St. James the Great, for example, rests his brow on one pinkie in what appears to be a parody of dissolute excess--but the news is the inclusion of a complete set of counterproofs. Printers made these reverse impressions by pressing a sheet of paper on a still-wet proof in order to be able to compare their work directly with the plate. (Mekler Gallery, 651 N. La Cienega Blvd., to Jan. 1.)