Well, I’m going to sound crotchety and say that I think it’s a bunch of ‘hooey’. A giclee is a reproduction and no manner of adding brushstrokes, glitter, puff paint, etc. is going to increase it’s value because the ‘artist touched it.’ That ‘painter of light’ (who will not be named) did the same thing with his giclees and people drooled over his work like they were receiving a totally hand-painted original. I feel it is pushing the reproduction envelope a little too far…

Diane

Funny! I was looking at a bike recently and the sticker proudly proclaimed “Designed in the USA.” In much smaller font and in a different location was a sticker that read “Made in Taiwan.” Sounds like the same bait and switch!

My friends who are artists could make some money on these but they choose not to. They feel like it takes sales from artists who are making real art not just overpriced posters.

I suspect that in some cases “hand touched” might be as simple as the artist touched the print to confirm it didn’t look bad, and signed it. This is where artists can really step over the line from selling reproductions into scamming people. Sad really, when you know people who have bought them without understanding what they are buying.

On top of that, when I’ve seen high priced signed limited edition prints at auction, they often sell for peanuts compared to what they’ve sold for out of the “gallery” (frame shop) “as an investment.” It’s really too bad when people don’t get educated about what they are purchasing with their hard-earned cash.

But… if they really like the reproduction enough…

There’s a guy who posts regularly on the gouache forum who sells his original paintings and “prints” of the paintings on his website – not “reproductions”, not “giclees”, not “inkjets”, not even “hand touched”, but “prints” with no further description or explanation.

”prints” with no further description or explanation.

This is an all-to-common description used! I see it at all the art fairs down here, except for the ones that specify in the rules that reproductions must be CLEARLY labeled as such…

One Printmaker that displays down here, Dave Bruner, Has BIG signs all over his booth that say

These are PRINTS not REPRODUCTIONS!

Kind of funny, really. It actually leads to a lot of conversations from people who don’t understand the difference.

Oh- if you really want to get him going, ask if he uses a Xerox machine

-Andrew

Damien, if you sell the block before you etch or cut it, then you can advertise that it is a variable edition, with unique meaning for each owner. Just imagine what the print would have been!

I find these discussions frustrating as we have had some of the people from other forums (painting ones) that use the term “prints” not reproductions get into arguments on this site and they seemed extremely unethical – didn’t care that the buyer was duped. I don’t think there is any way to change these types (or galleries I have been in that sell the repros). That’s why I think a movement to change the word we use for printmaking is the only way to go. This was done with glicee (inkjet) and seriograph (silk screen) to make them more palatable, so why not change terminology to distinguish a hand-pulled print from a computer generated one or a reproduction?

Other professions have changed terms – MRI is really nmr (nuclear magnetic resonance) and they changed that to get the word nuclear out so as not to scare folks. BOTOX is botulism.