Hey everyone… hope your week is going great… been gearing up in the studio… I am currently working on a commission piece…. and will be making more canvas’s this weekend…I know its a little time consuming but for me it increases the originality…….recently all the canvas’s I use are had made by me… which means that I start with a piece of cloth… build the frame and then gesso the cloth to get to the finished canvas… for me it really adds to the overall concept of every piece being an original… but it got me thinking about some recent art that I saw in a gallery here in vegas….there was some hype about this particular painter so I went to check it out and was really disappointed to find out it was a print… the artist had touched it with his brush, but nonetheless a print…… Today it seems that many painters, as well as the galleries that represent them, are turning to giclée prints.
Well, a giclée print is little different from the poster you hung on your college dorm wall. Sure, it’s more (much more) expensive and made with archival inks. But it’s still just a printed reproduction. They are not the same as monotypes, limited lithographic prints and the like, all of which are made through a printmaking process. Wikipedia says that “
Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting.” I don’t care if the giclée is hand-embellished, numbered and printed on canvas – to me, it’s an expensive poster.The point is this. If you’re thinking of buying something that will have monetary value down the road, it’s not going to be giclée prints. Those college dorm wall posters you had are worthless. The only value they have is emotional and personal. That poster that you had of Van Gogh’s sunflowers was a nice decorative piece but it’s now worth about five bucks, new.I just looked up Van Gogh sunflower prints on eBay. The poster’s buy-it-now price is $5. A giclée version on canvas, framed, is $69.95. Both of these are described as “rare” in the text. But compare these with one of the original sunflower paintings, which sold in 1987 for around $39,000,000 and is today estimated to be worth about $89,000,000.If you can’t buy the original, you’re better off buying an inexpensive offset print, not a giclée. Giclées cheat the uninformed public, which is one reason why I don’t do them.In fact, I don’t sell prints of any kind…I am committed to ensuring that each and every piece I create is all original… And wouldn’t you rather have the original, anyway? As a student, you can study it in a way you’d never be able to study a print. As a buyer, you’ve got an investment that a print will never be.I know the counter-arguments. If you have one painting that you could have sold a hundred times, wouldn’t it make sense to make prints? Sounds good financially, but some say it devalues the original. I have collectors buy paintings precisely because I don’t make prints of them. Some artists will say prints increase the value of the original. I don’t think Van Gogh’s original sunflower painting has a huge pricetag because of all those prints hanging up on dorm walls.Have a great week everyone…talk to you soon……….peace
……………….james
This painting was sold in 2008 and is part of the permanent collection of famous magicians/entertainers Siegfried and Roy… Oil, gold leaf… and yes…….all original…
