ARTISTIC ENGRAVING: PRAISE OF THE TEST
 to steal means to experience, know the effect that a certain action produces on something. A generic test definition is to submit to something to certain situations to find out or to verify his qualities. Really this is the definition that better fits to the matter that concerns us, in this brief reflection about the character of the test in the ambience of the artistic engraving.
Nevertheless, the dictionary of the Real Academy gathers a specific meaning for the engraving tests:
“Prueba thrown by essay route, when there still has not put itself the inscription that says what the engraving represents. ”
In my modest opinion, this one meaning at present is somewhat desfasada, since he does not gather the real spirit of the meaning of the test of engraving today, although it reflects well the reality of the engraving till the end of the XIXth century (moment in which more advanced skills of graphic reproduction develop in series).
The engraving for centuries was the only form of reproduction in series of images (function that exercised later the photogravure, from the evolution of the photo). For years it has been the way used for the diffusion of images that, otherwise, would never have come to a big certain number of persons, overcoming the definitely local ambience. Namely it has had a utilitarian role, thanks to which many people could know the architectural marvels of the Egyptian or Greek civilization, or the paintings of the Renaissance or baroque teachers. This way there has come up to us, for example, the first relatively modern encyclopedia, of Diderot, and others that followed him, illustrated exclusively with engravings. Hence the habit of indicating, by means of a textual inscription, in the foot of the illustration, information about the represented because of it.
In the current engraving fundamentally relegated to the artistic ambience, this practice of character undoubtedly didactic, today it is usually replaced with the title of the work, in the same way that titles a picture or a sculpture. Of course it keeps on having an informative function, but in certain way it has lost the ancient didactic value.
I have to tint that here we refer in general terms, the history of the engraving is joined inexorably with the history of the graphic impression. As excellent exception one can quote the series of changes that Dalí realized of The Caprices of Goya, recorded in that the informative foot is supported.
P.E.
The tests of the state (sealed in the picture with the initials P.E., or P/E), it is those printings that the recording artist realizes to know the current state of his work in the counterfoil or iron. The author analyzes the obtained test, this allows him to take decisions directed to the progress of the final score of his work. It erases not wished lines, adds or intensifies others, that is to say, it realizes the correction of the iron. This type of tests allows also the search of the most expressive color, or the combination of these (in a pattern skill to the poupé), in the same one or in different irons, when the engraving is constructed by juxtaposition of several irons. This way we can think that, before the final edition, the engraving was stamped on different tones. 
Being rigorous we might say that you try the state they are those in that the counterfoil has kept on evolving, and those tests of author in which the artist takes the final decisions with regard to the color or the skill of printing (in window, to blood, etc.), although here diverse authors might arrange to meet and his diverse opinions on this matter, really what it imports for us is to know that the artist has an effective way of evaluation and correction of his work, before the “rutina is thrown ” of the final edition (where it recurs systematically, the plan of printing of the engraving).
When a recording artist embarks in the task of realizing an engraving, the tests (of author, of the state) they turn into an essential information vehicle about the real state of the work. In effect the artist has a fundamental guide for the development of his work. In view of the tests, the decision making turns into an analytical task. The tests reflect of pristine form the evolution suffered by the engraving from the first one up to the last test, providing with multiple facts the author who sees, this way, his facilitated work. These decisions to be taken shape a fan of possibilities on which the final score will depend:
Color, humectación of the role, quality and weight of the role, graduation of the pressure, interventions ad líbitum (colage, manual intervention of the artist at a later stage or beforehand, etc.).
In contrast to the final edition, where the printing is systematized, the area in which the tests develop is movable, it is the area for the experimentation, where risks can be assumed. It can be said that it is a heuristic context (of search) with a big protein foundation (of formal changes or of ideas) the ambience in which the tests develop. Occasionally, the test acquires an expressive quality that overcomes the final premeditation of being published. As it happens in another type of projects, sometimes there takes place a displacement of the final premeditation, and the test turns into the final score, coming out his origin as prototype, in the same way that some buildings that projected ephemeral (storms) last, due to his success, as soon as his initial assignment was finished. A well-known example is the tower Eiffel of Paris, constructed for a Universal exhibition, which has been assumed and integrated in the popular religious images, up to the point of acquiring an indissoluble union with the city in which it is located. Presently, on having spoken about Paris, there comes to one unfailingly the image of the tower Eiffel, turned already into an icon of big force associated to the city.
And on the contrary, frequently, the engraving does not become published, after happening for the phase of the tests, in the same way that many works do not spend of the phase proyectual. In fact, the conceptual art explores the creative process as work of art per, this one turns into the real spirit of the work, while the final score leaves his leading role. It is necessary to quote like analogy, those architectural projects that have turned into unavoidable modality in the art history and that, nevertheless, never became built.
The engraving tests are you work that they have their own idiosyncrasy.
The tests (that theoretically must not overcome in number ten per cent of the whole of the edition) receive, for everything shown previously, a special relevancy. In them there can be read the creative process of the artist, of equal way in which it is done by the previous sketches that are realized before the final picture.
In them he breathes unscathed the creative freedom of the artist. The artist's test can go so far as to express this freshness, the vital force that encourages it, his spirituality. |
Joan Miró 
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