Arts: GRAPHICS: Bringing Stones to Manhattan

Bringing Stones to Manhattan

The foremost and most famous lithographic shop in all the world is Paris’ Imprimerie Mourlot Frères. Since Jules Mourlot bought it in 1914, the shop’s workroom has been the meeting place for artists from all over the world, including such satisfied customers as Chagall, Cocteau, Miró and above all Pablo Picasso. They flock to Mourlot, which today is run by Jules’s second son, Fernand, to take advantage of his superlative craftsmanship in the production of their original lithographs, posters and book illustrations, and for his advice on how to execute their drawings on lithographic stones.

Recognizing that “there are still good artists in Paris, but there are exciting ones in America—what you call new blood,” Mourlot has opened a shop in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. Heading the U.S. operation is Fernand’s son, Jacques Mourlot, 34. The new Atelier Mourlot, set up in a renovated 1830 stucco building, is equipped with 60 of Mourlot’s 20-and 30-year-old stones, three small hand proof presses, three large electric flatbed presses and three skilled French printers, each trained from adolescence in the Paris shop.

Even before the official opening, four U.S. artists had already begun work and others were learning to transcribe their designs onto stones from which Mourlot will run off proofs. Jack Levine and Paul Jenkins are old hands, having used Mourlot in Paris, but Newcomers Claes Oldenburg and Chryssa are just learning how to make lithographs. Says Levine: “It should make a tremendous difference for American artists because there is nothing like Mourlot in the U.S. We used to have people like them at the turn of the century, I think, but the old craftsmen have disappeared here.”