This veteran graphicist’s recent works evince little more than an academic preoccupation with technical precocity in the refined manipulation of complex, experimental printmaking processes. As part of the exhibition one is deluged with brochures elaborately explaining the various multiple-relay transfers, novel emulsions, and chemical washes that have been employed to produce certain effects––effects, it might be observed, that could have been produced as persuasively and more simply in other media. In contrasting these exhibits with O’Hara’s evocative color woodcut Garden of Folly (circa 1940) one becomes aware of a general trend that has lately marked the decline of printmaking from a significant vehicle of powerful artistic statement to a mere virtuoso artisanship productive of decoratively composed essays in precious textures and cleverly contrived surfaces. There is a patently chic quality about this sort of thing that suggests a commercial orientation to the mantlepiece of the “modern apartment.”
—Palmer D. French
