.	Given a copperplate ...	.
		.	Endre Koronczi

Given a copperplate. A plate prepared for printing in the most traditional way, with close hatching. If we printed it the usual way, the result would be a nearly homogenous surface, the equivalent of grey - but this is not what happens here.

The picture is produced by inking and printing. Certain areas of the plate (according to the design) are inked and wiped, thus the plate will have inked and blank surfaces. The inked surfaces print a solid grey. The blank ones print white with a relief print surface suggestive of raised printing. This effect is caused by the ink that got smeared over, just enough to emphasize the raised effect.

Etching the plate too deep makes it possible to print several times with one inking; the regular geometrical shapes of the plates allow them to be rotated around their centres. Squares are rotated by 90, 180, 170 degrees, triangles by 120 or 240 degrees, pentagons by 72, 144, 216 or 288 degrees. A circular plate can be rotated at will.

The inked plate is then placed a number of times on the same surface, always rotated by the degree determined by the shape of the plate. By the second, the third... the umpteenth printing, the ink in the grooves has thinned out, the lines get lighter. There are surfaces with several layers of printing; where the inked areas overlap when the plate is rotated, the lines get darker. The more ink is printed on a surface, the darker it gets. There are deep black surfaces where only the protuberance of the ink shows the lines.

This system of lines arrived at by rotation might be regarded as a paraphrase of etching traditions, hinting at the cross-hatching arising from the intersection of lines of varying closeness.

The process is suitable for producing individual objects - it is a process of reproduction that lacks the absurdity of reproduction. A copperplate, characteristically, can be used for producing a quantity of similar objects, but the sense and significance of quantity is a quantity of variants and not a quantity of identical ones. A quantity of variants or, rather, the highest possible number of variants means the nearing of the whole. More in the numerical sense means, in this case, more in a wider sense, and the highest possible number means nearly the whole as well. But wholeness can be found in quantity. A quantity of nearly identical variants. They are different as different things differ, and they are much less different from other things.

So this is wholeness (or the nearing of it), this is the numerical infinity (or the nearing of it). Infinity is made up of ones; the elements of the whole are single pieces. Single pieces cannot, in themselves, represent the whole. Therefore these pieces must not be observed separately. To be able to judge the whole, one has to examine as much of the pictures as possible. Although these sheets might please our aesthetic sense when observed separately, they do not represent the quality of the whole.

As for quality, this creative process produces gems and by-products as well. The process does not aim at producing individual quality, but wholeness, the quality of the whole, which includes valuelessness too.

Therefore, it would be a mistake to examine the sheets separately, because only the whole of the series can be regarded as a work of art. Should one pick out a part of the series, it is necessary to point out that this is only a selection. The series approaches infinity in quantity but will never reach it; it is incomplete, it can never be completed. The number of prints produced using the same plate is terminated by nothing but indifference. The different shapes and the consequent degree of rotation of the four copperplates determine different geometrical characteristics, thus the prints produced using a given plate constitute a series with its own set of geometrical principles. These geometrical characteristics enhance each other, generating more and more sheets.

The freedom of painting is collided with the restrictions of the process of reproduction. Painting is free creation, while the process of graphical reproduction sets up a system of principles. Later, the system will, of course, affect the freedom of creation, since it is plain geometry that produces the object that conforms to the restrictions of the principles that, by being irreproducible, return to uniqueness.

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