Value of giclee prints

Some links with printing processes described -

Giclee
Silkscreen (serigraph)
offset lithography
handpulled lithography (stone)

I have been tempted but don't get glicees because of the high cost of printing them.

I'm totally in favor of having more than one buyer see my work, and in favor of having more than one sale made off of each painting (ka-ching!) but there must be a better way to do that than a glicee'.

For example, I would be fine with having a good old fashioned poster made, chock full of temporary stability and acidy goodness.

Glicee's simply aren't worth the cost - and I doubt they would increse much in value - even if I became well-known. Of course, these are the speculations of someone unfamiliar with the art market.

There are some places that will make acid free prints - but not glicee's (deviant art, cafe press) that I have been considering, but I am afraid to pay the fees. I'm also afraid of signing a contract with someone b/c of potential copyright complications.

I've never done giclee reproductions of paintings yet because I feel it sort of devalues the original in some way and is only the equivalent of a poster (just better quality/longer shelf life). Like Portal i am tempted because of the money!

One reason I haven't done it is because of the work i do on the computer that exists solely in that form, that i do sell as giclee limited editions - very small editions of up to 20 usually to keep them more unique. They involve a lot of work - as much as a painting, involving often hours of work and many layers and changes etc

To sell reproductions alongside work that is original (though giclee) is confusing, so i haven't done it..

I have wondered whether to go down the route of very small repro's - just 4/5inches as another option as a small earner.

On holiday in Devon the local galleries were full of giclee repro's (huge or open editions) and those horrible horrible repulsive prints onto 'canvas' that have that flat shiny finish and are supposed to look like oil paintings I feel they will never be worth anything in the future, other than the sort of value that old posters have nowadays.

I think that while they are honestly reproductions (maybe the artists name/title etc underneath in print) I don't find them objectionable but really dislike the ones that (like the 'canvas') try to pretend to be originals and lose all the quality of the original.

The cost of producing a giclee is now way overpriced as the printing companies decided it should be comparable with screenprinting although with screenprinting you have to print the entire edition at once. Giclees have been tested for longevity by various means and if they are the "fine art set of inks" they presumably last without UV exposure upwards on 60 years on a canvas substrate (depending on the quality of the gesso coating). It's basically high class, more technically sophisticated scanning and printing just like your little ole common printer sitting next to your computer, and with the quality of those printers now advancing the only difference is the number of jets and colors in the giclee printer. Giclee means "to spray" and someone came up with the idea to choose a French word for the process. Like screenprint or silkscreen becoming "serigraph," which is Greek for "silk writing."

Giclee is a commercial process and because the artist is obviously not involved in the process of making and pulling the print, they are worth what a fickle market will place on them. Limited edition print manufacturers (they are manufacturers) will typically take their cost (considerably below what Portal Star is likely being quoted) and mark it up four to five times the actual cost to wholesale which is keystoned (doubled) for the retail. Incidentally, giclee printers will give a considerable price break for printing the entire edition instead of storing it in a database. This is also a consideration for the buyer. Sure, the Certificate of Authenticity may say "disc destroyed." However, they data to produce the print can be stored on other digital media. The painting or drawing can be rescanned and more prints produced, albeit perhaps in another size. I can't imagine any consumer wanting to buy a giclee unless they are deaf, dumb and blind.

Incidentally, the purpose of reproducing in any commercial medium like serigraphy, off-set lithography, giclee and canvas transers (the lowest common denominator a la Kinkade) is for the publisher to make money. I know of many cases where the artist realizes they've sold themselves to the company store. However, just take a look at the general quality of the work. It's decorator art or art you might find created for a crossword puzzle. An artist does have to decide to be a fine artist or a commercial artist. As soon as he is published and distributed by one of these "fine art" publishers they have become commercial artists.

One of the most successful, Hiro Yagmagata (one of Ahnold Schwartzenegger's best friends and business associate) had stated he was remorseful about now being considered a "mall artists." His prints have recently taken a nosedive in value, in fact are now worth about what one paid for them and lower.

Vivien may be writing about another reproduction method called the "Repligraph." It is computer produced and can actually spray on the thick layers and textures of the original painting. There's also a hybrid of this process which some fine artists are employing but at least they hare making the print.

They have a lot of customers for this stuff:

"Send in the Clowns."

Caveat emptor.

no Lightwizard - that sounds pretty vile but this is even worse! you can buy canvas with a special coating that goes through a printer (any printer, doesn't even have to be the lightfast 'giclee' ones) and voila - an instant 'oil painting' flat. horrible and dead! they then mount these on stretchers and sell them.

I hadn't heard of the repligraph method, giving texture

The repligraph is being offered online -- some museums have actually let them copy old masters, mostly the impressionists.

You do have to have a printer which will accept thick material -- your usual common PC printer will not do. Some of the newer photoprinters could likely do it.

The worst is still the canvas transfer where a common photo-offset four color print is chemically lifted and mounted on canvas and it's usually the cheapest canvas they can buy, nearly as think as paper.

The photosensitive type of canvas which is exposed on an enlarger is an old process. Warhol used it extensively and then silkscreens colors over it. Generally he would get a negative print where the highlights are black like the Elvis and Marilyn Monroe prints. There is another process involving Cibachrome and photosenstitive canvas which is being used reservedly. There are commerical print manufacturers which also used Cibrachrome prints which are signed and numbered. Anyway to make a buck and further dilute the instrinsic value of graphic arts.

Thanks for all the replies, everybody.

G'light, I had wondered about Warhol's process, glad you explained it, as it did seem to be "hand's on".

Can anyone tell me more about silkscreening/screenprinting? As I understand it the artist masks out areas on a screen and then ink is shot through the unmasked areas, then many reproductions can be made via that process. But how would you make a copy of an original work, say an oil painting on canvas, by silkscreening - you can't, can you? Or is there some photomechanical process I don't understand?

ive seen these repligraph oils sold on the internet. You send them a photo, they convert it to a digital file that gives it a PHotoShop appearance then they spray the texture. In my estimation, its a scam .

Ive had giclees of my wildlife work and used to sell at the duckcarving and wildlife art shows. I dont do it any more cause (I beleive it was at a hint given by wiz over 2 years ago) The issue of color fastness has concerned me. I took one of my prints and stored it on a window ledge on the south side of our house with a piece of a zinc plate lying over 1/3 of the print. In Novemebr it will have been there a year and a half. well see if theres any noticeable fading.

I bought an old litho/etching press at a college art dept auction over 20 years ago and Ive outfitted it with a motor dricve on the star wheel. It is nice to run editions of aqcuatints every so often. i like the feel of them

There's really no fine art print or even original art that would hold up under than much ultraviolet. About the only ultraviolet art gets exposed to in excess is the flourescent lighting in commercial areas. Halogen lamps give off a small amount of UV but with glass faces that's virtually gone. It isn't the UV as much as the fidelity and integrity of the dyes. Early giclees were being printed using thinner vegetable dye inks which were unstable. These have easily all changed color by now. The fine art sets are more stable pigments used in professional paints. But nobody knows what happens to the medium that holds the pigment when put under pressure and squired in tiny ink "pixels" onto a substrate. A good quality canvas is the best substrate but one could also apply a gesso coating to an acid free paper and perhaps get better longevity.

Ossobucco's question about screenprinting is that there are many different way to create a "plate."

A artist doing his own would more like spray on, draw (with a touche pencil) or paint on the touche (resist). Where the screen remains clear, the ink will print. Stencil material that can be cut and adhered to the screen is also common.

The commercial print manufactures will have the original work of art photographed and digitally seperated into black and clear negatives of each color (the color being the clear part). This negative is place flat onto a photosensitive emulsion coasted screen and air pressure is applied to the back of the stretchers against a glass plate to give maximum contact. Then a UV light source such as flourescent lamps is directed onto the surface for a prescribed number of seconds. An arc lamp or high density discharge lamp is also not uncommon. The emulsion hardens where the screen is exposed and is still soft and water soluble where the black blocks out the light. Then it's simply a matter of washing off the screen with water leaving the open space, touching up any flaws and then proceeding with the printing operation. This is now done mostly not by hand but with high tech automated printing. It's a printing if you will.

Osso
Osso, I've asked Asherman to respond. He's working on a new printing process for his own paintings.

BBB

Thank you for that explanation of commercial silkscreening and how you could get a screen print of an original painting, Glight.

I can well understand the urge to have your images seen and enjoyed by a number of people. I have always enjoyed postcards for that reason, sort of a memory of a painting, not the real thing. When I have actually seen the painting, the post cards fall flat as pancakes. But, I have no gripes, really, with things like calendars. On posters, I remember my absolute joy at discovering posters up in the second floor of Campbell's bookstore in Westwood all those years ago; I felt my world widen instantly. So, I can sort of understand the wish to distribute giclees, if they weren't so overpriced and overvalued. I also understand the sense of devaluing the original by the commercialism.

On aquatints, Farmer, I am envious of you having that press!
I feel etchings made by the artist and printed by the artist are a delight, and can understand that sometimes the printing part is done by others. When I used to make etchings each print would ink up differently and be visibly different in some fashion from the others; they were all signed and numbered, as in 1/10, whatever.

Really not much I could add here. I've been toying with the idea of producing giclee prints that could be sold at prices that the non-art collecting crowd is willing to pay. I don't think these inexpensive knockoffs devalue the original, quite the contrary. The more people who are exposed to an image, the greater it's popularity and the value of the orginal should be enhanced.

I'd like to find an inexpensive press to experiment with monotypes. Paul Murray built his own press, and that might be a possibility. Folks interested in a purely "art site" might try: Wetcanvas.com

Monoprints seem to me to fall in another category than photomechanically produced repros. I have only done them the amazingly primitive way by hand, not even using a press. But, as the name implies, each print is a separate act by the artist, each set of steps resulting in a print that is different from any other, is that not true?

In art marketing there is a stigma with genunine collectors (those who actually know what they are doing) that the original has been copied and marketed like a boutique product. Sorry, Asherman, but in most cases it has the exact opposite effect. Famous and successful artists are only a handful in numbers (those who last in the commercial print business more than one decade), like Eyvind Earle the Disney animation background artist who went off on his own to publish through a slick black haired huckster publisher who he eventually sued.

He smartly began his own publishing company but right now the limited edition prints have devalued execpt for the most exceptional images which is also about a handful of titles. Out of hundreds of print editions only about twenty images are sought after and may bring as much as double the original retail. However, the "collectors" of these prints are dismayed when they find the expensive custom framing is worth virtually nothing and the cost of shipping is very expensive. Plus the fact that they are remarketing at a cost of between 50% and 20% in commission.

In summation, proliferating cheap copies (and they are still cheap by any standard as compared to a hand executed plate and hand pulled print) will more likely damage the instrinsic value of the artist's work than help with the value. I know commercial art galleries will tell a complete different story -- the salespeople there are mostly uneducated "art consultants" taking the job on a lark with a passing interest in real fine art.

However, if you were fortunate like Eyvind Earle, you can become a millionaire with this marketing scheme. He doesn't have to live with it -- he died (likely the lawsuit with his former publisher shaved some years off his life in stress).

Joan Earle is quite comfortable and is still running the company with an past employee who could only be described as an effete snob (thanks, Spiro).

Let me warn all -- art publishers are notoriously pushing out the envelope on ethics and are not different from any salesperson. They hard close an artist they really want to publish and makes all sorts of promises. Always let your attorney look at any contract. Aldo Luongo who I know well and is a successful mostly figurative painter who markets entirely repainted giclees rejected all exclusive contracts for publishing except for one. It was the same publisher as Eyvind Earle. The divorce wasn't pretty (well, mainly because the publisher caught the artist with his wife!)

Thanks for the info Lightwizard. I'm pretty productive, but sales haven't followed. Oh, well.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to complement Ossobusco and Stuh on their fine landscapes.

Ooops, I just edited it.

It requires changing one's motivation to painting for an audience. If people want Venice scenes ad nauseum, that's what these artist paint.

Kinkade has embarked on a new series of "plein air" paintings as everyone is up to here in cozy cottages with light bulps in the windows. They are certain plain. An unmarkedtable except for the name (although recent revelations about the crass commercialism of his entitity have wise up the ignorant -- well, some of them).