The Layered Intimacies of Nicole Eisenman’s Prints

In 2010, on the heels of an intense period of painting, the artist Nicole Eisenman wanted a change, something to shake up a practice that had become almost too familiar. She packed her paints into a trunk, washed the walls of her studio in a fresh coat of white, and got to the formidable work of starting from scratch—as a printmaker. Two decades into a fruitful art career, she was a beginner again. “It felt really freeing: suddenly a whole new set of problems and puzzles to play with,” Eisenman says. For months on end she dedicated herself to learning the craft. She didn’t paint for a year. 

The results of that intense burst of printmaking, and her work in the medium since, are now on glorious display at Print Center New York. “Nicole Eisenman: Prince,” running through May 13, includes more than 40 lithographs, etchings, monoprints, woodcuts, and other prints, some of which have rarely, if ever, been seen. 

For those familiar with Eisenman’s paintings and sculptures, which feature large, cartoon-like figures in situations that run from playful to almost sinister, often with queer and political themes—a body of work that has positioned her as one of the most important artists working today and earned her a MacArthur award—these prints are kindred spirits. Tonally, they are Nicole Eisenman all over. As in her other pieces, we see lots of people: alone, in groups, kissing, having a drink, hanging out. But there’s something different about these prints. They feel stripped down, peeled back, intimate. 

Where her oil paintings are bold and overt, with vibrant colors and detailed narratives, many of the prints are subdued, without much in the way of background detail. Still, what the New York–based Eisenman, 57, is able to communicate with the scrape of a knife’s edge astounds. In Untitled (Girl With a Tear), a woodcut from 2012, a sparsely carved, Picasso-like face uses but pink lines and negative space to convey a pain recognizable to just about anyone. There’s a whole ocean of feeling in that one languid teardrop.