"Over the last half-millennium prints have found their way into every corner of the pictorial and plastic arts and in many ways can be understood as a binding medium in the history of Western art from the early modern period to the present. ....
We are in an age of cross disciplinary thinking, and in discussions of “the media” (of mediums), the replicated visual utterance sits right at the centre. This is in accord to the longstanding inclination of printed matter to be the most sensitive among the arts to respond broadly to its environment. ...
The history of the replicated image is one of engagement, not exclusivity, and most art historians in the academy, at least those concerned with the post-medieval era, now recognize an obligation to acknowledge the replicated image as a forceful dimension of their field. This is the case not just for European art, but also for that of South and East Asia, and Latin America as well."
adapted from Why Study Prints Now? by Peter Parshall
The following descriptions of the impact of print culture on contemporary society give an indication of the nature of print culture.
In The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962), Marshall McLuhan argued that the printing press led to the creation of democracy, capitalism, individualism, nationalism, dualism, rationalism, Protestantism, and a culture of scientific research.
In The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Volume 1 (1979), Eisenstein emphasises that "as an agent of change, printing altered methods of data collection, storage and retrieval systems and communications networks used by learned communities throughout Europe. It warrants special attention because it had special effects."
