Edgar Degas made over 300 monotypes — prints pulled from inked metal plates — and routinely broke the rules of the medium. A monotype is supposed to produce a single impression. Degas scoffed at this rule, pulling as many as four works from one plate, using the leftover ink or paint to produce a degraded or ghost image that he then enhanced with pastel. He called these second and third pulls cognates. Same plate, different pressure, different pastel combinations applied over the ghost image — four distinct works from one foundation.
Degas often used monoprints as a base for pastel drawings, adding layers of texture and color to create vibrant, impressionistic works. The base stayed constant. What changed was the color, the pressure, the hand moving across the surface.
The Orange Suite works from the same principle. One digital foundation — the same compositional architecture, the same symbolic elements, the same base image — four versions, each with a different central figure and a different color relationship. The Aquarian Moon. The pride flags. Jupiter 3. The classical busts. The oranges. All constant. What changes is who stands at the center and what colors surround them.
Same plate. Different pull.
The medium is digital rather than inked metal, the pastel is light rather than chalk, but the instinct is identical to what Degas was doing in Paris in the 1870s. The monotype tradition understood something important: the ghost image, the degraded version, the second pull — these are not lesser works. They are a different kind of truth pulled from the same source.
The base image is shown here first. Then the four pulls. The plate, and what it becomes. — Behan
