Value of giclee prints

The Wilhelm tests are for colorfastness, not for any molecular change in the pigments in the inks due to aging. I know the fine art sets of inks that meet the Wilhelm specifications will clog up the giclee printer's nozzles much faster than the old vegetable dye inks. There are still some problems with the process.

http://www.wilhelm-research.com/

The prints are extremely high resolution and are generally beautiful reporductions if a talented and trained technician is operating the equipment. There are some color balances that often need to be done in from the initial computer color seperation. I worked closely with Harvest, now in Santa Ana and Classic Editions in Costa Mesa on the production of giclee prints in the 1990's. I was impressed by the process but not satisfied that it was in any way a fine art graphic process. It's a very sophisticated and automated printing process. Although it is far superior to even the up to twelve color photo-offset, it does have a look that is easily identified.

Many art publishers have returned to serigraphy because of the ability to achieve textural surfaces from screenprinting techniques.

I'm afraid the Repligraph process is able to achieve layers and textures looks more and more like an attempt at fakery.

I'm not into the molecular process. Many of the great artists I repped years ago had used so many sprays /fixatives and used many fugitive colors. I try and keep it simple and use the best materials I can. I think I'm ahead of the curve.

Yes nozzles may clog. As long as you are keeping all clean and using the finest Legion Somerset you shouldn't have a problem. We try to keep our machines running and clean.

I sincerely hope all the giclee printers are observing the quality control and not cheating on the inks.

The debate here was not just on the longevity of the giclee but the intrinsic value. The printed giclee is a publication and should be treated as such. Like Border's bargain book section, there are many outlets online with cheap giclee prints at a fraction of their publication price. The marketing scene involves a publisher who tries to fix and control the price of a limited edition. They do a good job as they're is still a myriad of amateur collectors who will buy these reproductions as collectable prints. What they don't realize is that they print depreciates 60% to 80% the moment they take it out the gallery door.

A few museum curators have approved the process for their museum shops and they are sold as commercial reproductions. Any graphic process which is just a medium for copying originals of various degress of quality (!) is not a fine art process. The prints are not original print as many shark salesmpeople will try to convince people who inadvertantly walk into a mall gallery which looks ligitimate. I know, 'cause early on in this industry I worked for the largest of these chains. It's not something I would particularly like putting on a resume despite the fact that I was a director of the gallery on the West Coast which had the highest sales.

The highest sales did come from selling original paintings, prints such as Haring and Warhol which were created by the. After five years I became weary of selling what I had discerned as disposable art and left the company.

I'ts very refreshing to hear someone who shares to same convictions I do !

I went to the art and framing show a year ago and saw "art" (cheap giclees) on canvas, in stacks divided by size and catagory.

There was no respect or reverence for any of these pieces. They were just something for the wall.

Years ago I owned a private gallery in Chicago. I couldn't live up to the rules (60% to 70% for me as the others did) hanging fees , etc.. So now I publish and work directry with the artists. Maybe I'll succeed

I can see the giclee process as a method of producing imagery -- Rauschenberg is now using it over his ink transfer process. I can see it to reproduce masterpieces but museums have been reluctant to let any of them be scanned. The Repligraph company I believe has failed to find a viable market.
It's a great deal more expensive than the giclee process and so commercially would not work for publishers who typically mark up cost up to ten and more to retail. The markup for screenprints has shrunk in competition with the giclee and many artists and publishers shun the giclee process. Although some museum curators have endorsed the giclee method of reproduction they would be apalled at the junk art being produced. Signed and numbered? Really. Depends on who is signing and numbering the print, an artist with an internation reputation who is in museums, or some hack artist who paints decorative art for those who have no idea what constitutes a good painting or a bad painting. The result is the market is flooded with mediocre images of landscapes, flowers, figures (one particular artist includes swirling abstract colors which make no cohesive sense at all) and subject matter that was abandoned by serious artists over 60 years ago.

Vivien,
Just brainstorming a bit, when the digital image of your painting is created, perhaps one could throw little more light down from the top. This may create the brush stroke shadow which the brain can utilize to enhance the "brushmarks in 3D" upon the print. Texturizing in photoshop could control that once available.

To Lightwizard
I am a newbie here, and I am not sure I can post it here but I can't resist the temptation. I live in Orange County, CA, and plan to enter Giclee printing business. I need a mentor.

Lightwizard, or others knowlegable with Giclee, is it possible to communicate with you as you are local and seem so knowlegable in this area.

Chase
[email protected]

NKS, you might want to remove your phone number. This is the Internet, and anyone can read it and call you ....

I have stumbled on this thread today...

I have a few things to add even though the topic was hotter a month or so ago.

I am a multi-plate "photographic" etcher normally (printmaker that makes me)... I use a photographic process to expose the four (if I chose to do up to four colour images) colours onto metal plates, then etch as normal etching (occasionally adding more mezzotint if the spaces are opening up more).
I find the topic about printing and it's value always interesting and have read many things about it for this reason, ranging from the pedantic to the very lax. Basically, I never do more than 10 edition prints, due to it take a VERY long time to print one image sometimes. The last body of work that I printed in September was an extravaganza of frustration and being very anal - I managed to print the whole edition (which I don't normally do, I print them to demand). I have never been asked for a certificate of authenticity, which makes me wonder, but maybe I have never come across "real" collectors?

I wonder constantly about the issue of what to charge people for the work. The last time I had an exhibition, in August, it sold well, but in terms of the time spent on the work, I definitely undersold myself. But I wasn't sure that anyone would pay more than $800AUD for a unique state. They did, but I did want more for one of them.

I have seen people selling Giclee for approximately $600AUD and I questioned that price as well.

I do use canvas prints too - but I use it, usually, to get an image onto a canvas, usually photographic, and a bit abstract, or conceptual and i then work over the top with traditional methods.
I guess we all have different ways of working in the end.
(and yes those shiny canvas prints make my stomach turn too! They have that glittery, fairy dust look to them, blerk...)

I see screen printing as a commercial artist / graphic designers tool these days... no so much fine art.

One last thing...
I used to work occasionally with a printmaker that made reproductions (commissioned by a particular gallery) of major Australian Artists paintings, like Charles Blackman. He used a colligraph method and I believe we did approximately 100 prints of each image (plus the studio proofs and the gallery proofs, perhaps adding to 150). Sometimes we printed over 20 layers of ink onto each print to get the effect that was wanted.

I might start a new topic about print making and peoples opinions about it, but, a lot has been covered here. So we see.

You're talking about hands-on graphic work by the artist themselves. That's Kosher (right Jespah?)
The giclee process can be hands-on as mentioned before because Rauschenberg uses it now instead of his original acid transfer process he invented. Warhol used photography and screen printing to create one-of-a-kind artworks. He also produced limited editions where he did create the plates but his printing studio came up with the colorways (with his approval). However, what it is primarilly being used for is to reproduce (copy) original paintings in limited editions and the value is very questionable. Charge what the traffic will bear and, no, the traffic are not really art collectors who demand certificates of authenticity. They are nearly always offered as a sales gimmick to the novice. If one buys from a gallery whose owner, directer and the sales staff has a personal handshake with the artists or directly from the artist who is not represented by a "publisher" (a euphemism for an agent*), a certificate is not only not required, it doesn't in the end mean anything. Especially if the artist doesn't sign it. The signature on the work is the criteria of authenticity. If someone wants to fake an artwork, they will fake a certificate. I know customers who have purchased commercial limited editions off the Internet are adamant about getting a certificate which they almost always believe would help them resell the work in the future. Less than 1% of any of this work will appreciate -- maybe in a hundred years when it's considered an antique. That may change also with the proliferation of the manufactured art print. It may end up being 80's, 90's and early 21st Century junque.

*A sociopath has two obvious choices in life. Become a serial killer or an agent.

I think agents come into the catagory for me like debt collectors and parking police (what type of person thinks this is a good job??)
Thank you for your thoughts on the certificate.
I read something a few month ago (a French Canadian publication) that went on and on about them, almost to the point of them seemingly to be more important than the actual print.

It was popularized as a sales feature by a company I worked for at one time in the late 80's and 90's, in fact a chain of galleries in its heydey reached over 50 locations, Martin Lawrence Galleries. They got bogged down in stale inventory, custom framing hidden costs, marketing mistakes and over-expansion and went bankrupt (two years after I left the company because they were stealing commissions). They are now owned by Chalk and Vermillion (Erte's publisher who they are still publishing even though he's dead) who was their primary creditor and they still operate about eight galleries. A certificate of tirage stating how many are in the edition, where it was printed, et al is actually required by law. I know one major gallery in Orange County who rarely offers or issues Certificates of Authenticity. They do deal almost entirely in the reproduction limited editions and are in financial trouble at this time. When the economy is poor, people take a second look at what value they are receiving for their money (too bad they aren't savvy to it in the first place or they wouldn't pay the exorbidant price for copies of originals by artists that have a dubious position in the art world).

The giclee is a touchy subject as to how the print is stored. It's on a disk or some other computer program which is suppose to be destroyed in some way. But it's so easy to recreate the program -- not like physically destroying plates or screens in the case of a serigraph. Actually, the print can be rescanned and fakes produced quite easily. There's been so many scandals with faking the most popular mall artists like Hiro Yamagata, it's caveat emptor for the buyer. Kinkade is merely a joke -- the Pet Rock of the art industry. He is, I understand, now doing Repligraphs as well as the cheaply made poster transfers. People who buy this stuff are ignorant of art -- they can't even be called novice collectors but perhaps they could be called fake collectors. The salespeople in the primarilly mall galleries are sharks -- if they have "viewing rooms" (a euphemism for closing room), they will tell a customer anything to close a sale including that it's an investment. The sales staff has to be quite careful on how they address that because the FBI wised up in the late 80's with the Dali scandal and the new art laws forbid selling art as a secured investment. It's the most speculative of all investments and if someone approaches it with little knowledge of art, they are the sucker born every minute.

sorry to seem dumb, but when you say "mall galleries" what exactly do you mean? To you actually mean a gallery in a mall or just one of those galleries that sell reproductions of work?

Galleries in malls at least in the US seldom sell anything else but those reproductions but Martin Lawrence has embarked into selling Picasso, Chagall, Magritte and now I understand Dali prints. There were a lot of those that were reproductions so the buyer is responsible for doing their own research before buying.

ahhh, I see.

And a fine mess this is -

Link to LA Times article by J. Michael Kennedy, and photos


January 18, 2007
Not a pretty picture
By J. Michael Kennedy, Times Staff Writer

THEY met in Paris in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. He was a struggling painter with a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village; she was a ballerina who lived in Marin County and danced in San Francisco.

They married and had two daughters. He became successful enough to make a living with brush and easel. They moved to a tiny farm in Petaluma, where she taught ballet and he painted pricey Irish landscapes and Paris street scenes.

His name was John O'Brien, and cancer took him two years ago at age 53.

Her name is Martha O'Brien, and she was left with a mountain of debt in the aftermath of what law enforcement authorities contend was a widespread fraud. She often wakes up wondering how she will keep her home on the crumbs a ballet teacher makes.

In Martha's view, everything probably would have been different if a woman hadn't come to see John six years ago and persuaded him that there was a fortune to be made in selling high-end prints of his work. As Martha put it, the woman practically guaranteed that "everyone would live happily ever after."

The woman was Kristine Eubanks, and she ran a printing business in Los Angeles. According to O'Brien, Eubanks proposed to take advantage of a new technology called giclee (pronounced zhee-CLAY), which reproduces art without the telltale dots of color printing. Originals and copies are difficult to tell apart without close examination.

The term derives from the French verb gicler, which means "to squirt" or "to spray." It's most commonly used to describe a high-resolution digital process employed in the reproduction of fine art.

John O'Brien was enthusiastic. Martha recalled that Eubanks said she would produce and market high-quality limited edition prints of her husband's work, which he would sign, and perhaps bring in six figures a year. In the spring of 2000, he began shipping his work south to Eubanks' print shop.

For a while, it all seemed to be working. The checks arrived on a regular basis, a much-needed steady income.

Then, less than two years later, John began to think that something was amiss. He thought he had signed and numbered each of the prints produced by Eubanks, but nagging little incidents began to make him wonder, Martha said.

A friend called to say he'd seen one of O'Brien's works for sale on EBay, the huge auction website. But it wasn't one he'd signed, numbered and embellished, Martha said. To O'Brien's dismay, cheap knockoffs were finding their way into the art market. Then, according to Martha, he heard that his prints were being sold on Princess Cruise Lines.

In Martha's retelling, John was quickly losing control of his work. He decided to buy a giclee printing press and have a personal hand in everything, right down to the marketing of his paintings and prints. Essentially, O'Brien was getting rid of Eubanks and starting over.

"Then he started getting sick," Martha said.

What followed was two years of treatment for melanoma ?- the chemotherapy, the crashing headaches, the withering health. In October 2004, John died at his Petaluma home. He left behind what should have been a source of income for years to come: the ability to reproduce more than 100 original oil paintings.

But as Martha would discover, she didn't have much. More unauthorized copies surfaced, she said, and sales languished because the market was flooded with reproductions of her husband's work. As time went on, it became clear to her that there would be little, if any, money coming in from the art left behind.

"John's worst nightmare has happened," she said. "We're completely broke."

Then, four months ago, the phone rang. Bob Lauson was on the other end.

Lauson is a lawyer whose office is in the same Manhattan Beach complex where the TV show "CSI: Miami" is filmed. He asked Martha if she knew Kristine Eubanks. And he asked if she knew that hundreds of John O'Brien giclees were being sold on Princess Cruise Lines.

The answer to the first question was yes; the answer to the second was no.

He told Martha that he had been retained by another artist who had done business with Eubanks. There was, he alleged, a larger criminal game afoot.



CHARLENE Mitchell was the one who had called Lauson. She lives with her retired husband, Pat, in a well-kept, unpretentious house just outside the mountain town of Lake Arrowhead. On days when she paints, Mitchell sets up her easel in the sunny living room.

She specializes in animals, gardens and beach settings. She is particularly noted for her horse-racing art, which takes longer to produce because of the complexity of depicting so many animals in motion.

For years, she simply sold what she painted in galleries or to people who commissioned her work. But she, like O'Brien and so many other artists, was realizing that there was money to be made in the giclee technique. In 2003, while looking through a copy of Art Business News ?- a popular trade publication ?- Mitchell came across an ad for giclee copying in Van Nuys. One of the owners of the print shop was Eubanks.

Mitchell said she found Eubanks nice enough, and, more to the point, she liked the woman's ideas about making money. Mitchell said the pitch she heard was much the same one given to O'Brien ?- all she had to do was paint and Eubanks would make the copies and market them. And as Mitchell was quick to point out: "Artists are notoriously naive, and I'm no different from the rest. We wanted to mass-produce these things."

But not only was Eubanks reproducing art, she was also beginning a television show called "Fine Art Treasures Gallery" on the Dish Network and DirectTV satellite services.

And because Mitchell was well-known within certain circles ?- her art has been on display in Las Vegas' Caesars Palace, for instance ?- she became one of the artists whose original work Eubanks auctioned on her show, along with Picassos, Chagalls and Dalis.

Mitchell, 68, said some weeks she received $10,000 from the televised auctions.

But she too began to hear rumblings that prints were being sold without her knowledge, including aboard the Princess line. And then, she recalled, she got a call from a man who said he'd become so enamored of her work while on a Princess cruise that he wanted her to do a portrait of his fiancee and her daughters.

The trouble was, Mitchell said she told the man, she didn't know her prints were being sold on board the cruise ships. Yes, the man replied, many were being auctioned off.

The giclees were being sold on the television auction show as well, attorney Lauson said. But Mitchell said no money for those was ever paid to her. Further, she said, Eubanks' pleasant disposition became less so in the face of more questioning about money.

But it wasn't only the artists who say they were discovering the difficulties involved in doing business with Eubanks. So were the customers.

Ron Kyle, a then-out-of-work computer technician, discovered the auction program while channel surfing one night. He thought the prints were being sold at a bargain and could be resold for profit. He used a credit card to buy five prints ?- two Picassos, two Icarts and a Chagall ?- for $9,533.76, though he said they were touted as being worth a little less than $200,000.

It didn't take Kyle long to surmise that his purchases were fake. For one, he couldn't find a trace of the art dealer in Britain who supposedly signed the certificates of authenticity that came with the pieces. For another, he said, the Chagall was signed on the wrong side of the print.

Kyle tried unsuccessfully to get his money back. He has filed suit against "Fine Arts Treasures Gallery" and Eubanks' firm of the same name in an attempt to recoup his losses. Lauson also sued Eubanks on behalf of O'Brien and Mitchell. The cases are making their way through the courts. Among other things, a hearing will be held Monday on a motion for a default judgment against Eubanks in the Mitchell case.

Longtime art collectors Tom and Mary Ann Cogliano of Santa Rosa, Calif., said they spent more than $50,000 for six pieces on Eubanks' show. They donated one of the prints, ostensibly by Salvador Dali, to a charity fundraiser, only to have an appraiser declare it phony. Tom checked, and told law enforcement authorities that the rest of the prints were bogus as well.

For him, the worst part was not the money.

"It made me look foolish, especially with these folks who are my friends ?- and here I am with a fake piece of art," he said. "You'd have to give me a check for a million bucks to go through that kind of embarrassment again."

Indeed, so many people complained to the Better Business Bureau about Fine Art Treasures Gallery that the consumer agency gave it an F rating.



IN September, a team of investigators from the FBI, the IRS and the Los Angeles Police Department seized 15 bank accounts connected to Eubanks and the art auction show. A source close to the investigation said several million dollars was frozen.

Eubanks was arrested and held without bail. She was already on probation after pleading no contest to using the credit cards of a dead business partner to rack up $144,000 in charges. Tuppence McIntyre, the prosecutor who handled the case, said Eubanks was given probation after agreeing to repay the money. She did so, but one stipulation for staying out of jail was that her record remain spotless.

The arrest in the art fraud case was enough to revoke the probation. In December, Eubanks was moved to the California Institute for Women in Corona, where she began serving a three-year sentence in the credit card case.

Meanwhile, Princess Cruise Lines spokeswoman Julie Benson said via e-mail that Princess bought the prints "in good faith, believing them to be properly authorized."

"If these allegations are true," she wrote, "Princess was victimized, as were the artists in question." She added that the company would "accept any art returned by dissatisfied customers."

In a legal document submitted in response to a suit filed by Mitchell, Princess lawyer Brooke Oliver said the cruise line may not have made any money at all because of costs associated with framing, shipping, storage and insurance. And she contended that distribution of the fakes "has enhanced plaintiff's prestige and reputation and the value of her artwork."

Calvin J. Goodman, Los Angeles-based author of the widely used Art Market Handbook, described the investigation as "a very important case." He wondered how Princess was selling the paintings so cheaply without taking note that something might be amiss.

"Shouldn't they have been suspicious that the price of the art was so low?" he asked. "They should have known at once."

Christopher Calarco, a Los Angeles-based FBI agent specializing in art crime, said that the case is continuing and that there is more evidence that investigators cannot yet discuss. He said charges against Eubanks have been unnecessary so far, because she is already in prison. Her lawyer, Donald C. Randolph, said there would be no comment about the allegations.

Investigators said they are hoping they can expand their inquiry to encompass similar alleged scams while spreading the word that buyers should use caution when purchasing art. But even with the warnings, Calarco worries that buyers could go for years not knowing they have fakes on the wall.

He also described art scams as a "target-rich environment" that's growing worldwide because of television and the Internet.

"This is a kind of hidden crime with people who have no idea they are victims," Calarco said. "I couldn't even hazard a guess as to the number of victims."



LAST month, Martha O'Brien was preparing her ballet students for the traditional Christmas performance of "The Nutcracker" in Petaluma. She recently had to take out a loan to cover some basic expenses, but she remains resolute that she can fix this problem and that her husband's paintings will again be worth something.

"It's his whole lifetime of work that has been damaged," she said. "I've got to clean it up."

*

[email protected]

Terrible - but it isn't limited to giclee prints - I went to an artists talk a few years ago, her background was in fabric design and she'd started designing greeting cards and stationery and similar stuff (very original and very attractive) and was horrified to find that an unscrupulous company was selling a wide range of goods in the US without letting her know or paying her a penny. They only had the right to produce specified items in the UK under her contract.

Hi, and welcome to a2k, Asheville Local. I'll read your link. And thanks for kickstarting this old thread (still a useful one for me to refer to).

I just now gave it a quick skim and agree with the author..

Hi, I do not know if you still monitor these boards. Sorayama (the Japanese artist ---www.sorayama.net ) is in need of information that perhaps you know. It is regarding an art fraud case as reported in the LA Times and seems to have things in common with your posts. Do you know when and what court/county Earle had his lawsuit ? Do you know if Luongo also had this type of litigation or how to contact him. It is for presentation to the federal judges regarding problems with same publisher. Sorayama's agent---