In process and technique, printmaking is an art of physical contact. From woodcut and engraving to lithography and screenprinting, every print is the record of a contact event: the transfer of an image between surfaces, under pressure, followed by release. Contact reveals how the physical properties of print have their own poetics and politics and provides a new framework for understanding the intelligence and continuing relevance of printmaking today.

Published by Princeton University Press in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, this publication follows Roberts’s 2021 presentation of the 70th A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts.