"Limited" to 80,000!
I read your article with interest Miguel, as I have listened and watched for years as gallery owners, art salespeople, and even the 'artists' either intentionally or unintentionally misled art purchasers as to the 'legitimacy' (and real value) of their print purchases. I've seen 'Limited Edition Lithos' (whoops, offset litho) with over 80,000 in the run; the signature, title, and numbering done digitally by inserting a pencil into a holder on a plotter that has been fed the artist's scanned handwriting and a set of numbers. You and I recognize this print as nothing more than a poster with a signature, yet why would anyone (or 80,000 other people) pay more than $3-5 dollars for it? In a word, marketing.

As a master printer (screenprinting) who works with artists to create printruns of their work, I know from 20 years' experience that each artist works differently, and the level of their involvement in the final print ranges from handing over the artwork and waiting for a phone call (this is a bit exagerated!) to getting involved in all aspects of the production process, hands dripping with ink. As a printer and lover of the immediate creative process, I would rather see them involved fully, but as a business person, I'll print whatever is put in front of me. I do issue a 'Print Documentation' certificate much as you have described. This does three things:

1) Lets the everyone, including the final artwork purchaser know when, where, and how the printing was done, by who, and identifies the process, with further details about the art conversion methods used ( hand inked, cut, digital scans, camera work, etc.)stock, edition numbering, etc.
2) Gives the artist or gallery a selling tool - This is a nicely designed certificate which becomes the provenence for the print through its life, and allows the seller, and then the purchaser to talk knowingly about their new print.
3) Provides a contact reference for both myself as printer ( I get artists who see the work in a gallery phoning) and the artist - If someone purchases the work, many times they have no way to contact the artist if they like it and want to purchase more.

This allows artists to cultivate direct clients, and many of the most successful artists I know understand that purchasers WANT to know the artist, seeing as they just bought a piece of their heart, (or is that art?) But what does this certificate and information about the print add up to? In a word, marketing! What's most interesting is the certificates I looked at as examples when I created mine were mostly from offset Limited Editions. They were window dressing/packaging. In Canada, there were a whole slew of artists doing hyper realistic nature acrylics (Bateman, Brenders, Doolittle, etc.)and in the 80's were getting $400-800 per print. They were well printed using 4 color process offset onto cover weight 'acid free' paper (not 100% rag, and definately light weight as it had to run through the press rollers)The artist's involvement consisted of handing over the original, appearing for a photo-op looking at the film or the proof sheets coming off the press, and showing up at gallery openings. Oh yeah, back in those days, the artist painstakingly signed and numbered each print by hand! (All 2000-50000 of them!)

Who Certifies the Certifiers?
Now, my point here is that each of these prints had very nice 'Certificates of Authenticity' that gave out most of the same info as mine do now. So why would anyone pay $500 for a $5 poster with a signature? In a word, marketing. I guess my point is this. The primary and secondary markets for offset and now giclée prints are driven almost exclusively by galleries with frame shops. Are they galleries, or are they frame shops? This is an important question, because from my viewpoint, if you are selling framing to a mass market, you are really selling something that matches the couch or window trim. That's your job, not art education. That just gets in the way of the sale. The contents of the frame are secondary. The buyers of much of this type of art know they want it to match the wallcovering, they want a 'pretty picture' and they want a deal. So the gallery offers convenient flip files or order books full of published images that are for the most part reasonably priced, compared to originals. And they take advantage of the urban myth of the skyrocketing value of 'sold out editions' on the secondary market to justify inflated purchase prices on existing or new works. Kind of like the stock market for art shmucks.

Does the average frameshop customer know the difference between and offset litho and a true litho? No. Do they know the difference between acid free and 100% rag? No. Can they tell a reproduction from an original? No. Do they know 'silkscreen' from screenprint, from serigraph? No. Do they care to take the time to learn any of the above? No. The worst problem facing legitimate printmaking artists trying to break this cycle of ignorance is that the owners of the galleries/frameshops don't want to know either. It just clouds the issue and gets in the way of the sale. They only want to know the selling features of the 'products'.

I think it is a bit unrealistic for printmaking artists to expect that somehow this situation will be changed anytime soon, because it requires time and education and desire to learn about new things, all sadly lacking among the great unwashed masses who just want a pretty picture to hang over the mantle.

The Historical Context is Disconcerting, To Say the Least
One more thing before I finish this inchoherent rant ( I was up til 4:30 playing music at a New Years Eve party here, so forgive me if I ramble a bit) we can all decry the proliferation of offset and giclée reproduction art, but the main reason it happens is because there are more and more people producing original paintings, but they don't have the time or inclination to learn a 'traditional' printmaking method. In other words, they just want to paint! They want exact reproductions, and process color offset and giclée give them that. They want to make multiples of their work to sell to more than one person, which was always one of the main motivating factors behind Dürer or Rembrandt's prints. Etching was the one of the leading commercial printing methods of those times. (Hell, it was probably the only one!) I'm sure the monks who worked their whole lives copying manuscripts by hand had something to say about 'printing'.

Tora, Tora, Tora!
If it seems unfair to a true printmaking artists in a select printmaking discipline that these interlopers invade the artprinting domain and sell mass quantities of their art to unsuspecting purchasers, then go on the attack! Giclee, or as the French like to say, 'ejaculate' -Nothing but high- end ink jet printing on nice paper with a fancy foreign name. If your prints are better than giclée, then say so in your marketing. -Do your inks outlast theirs? -Is your texture and feel better? -Did you put more of yourself into the print? -Hand done quality compared to machine made? -Would any self respecting artist put out work that can only be guaranteed for a few years?

How about Offset Limited Edition? -You mean like magazines, posters, and business cards? -Will the process color fade in a few years and go out of balance? -Will the print look washed out and yellow in 20 years? -Were there 4,000 in the run compared to 40 in yours? -Why are there 2 signatures - Oh, it's only a reproduction! -The paperstock is made from trees, not cotton. -Again, hand made compared to machine produced. I know many artists in my area who produce their own 'limited edition offset runs' - they know about screenprinting, but wouldn't consider trying it because they don't want to learn the process and design their prints for the media. They whine about how their Ltd. Edition print sales are slow, or their profit margins on the prints are so low after paying the printing costs, then wholesaling to a distributor who then puts them in a gallery, and they only end up with $10 or $20 per print, and a stack of unsold editions in their garage.

The Kid
I like to tell them about 'the kid'. He was a 15 year old native Indian from Quadra Island who mowed lawns and worked at the small museum at Cape Mudge, in his people's village. Saved up his money, and showed up one day with his parents and a four-color design of a Kwaglith Sun figure he had done which he wanted to turn into a silkscreen print. We helped him with the color seps, and he hung out and helped print the job. It turned out pretty good, he signed and numbered them, got his print documentation certificates, and headed back home. All that summer, he worked in the small museum as a guide, and at the end of the tour, he would bring the people to the gift shop. After looking at native artifacts and art pieces during the museum tour, someone would invariably ask if he did any artwork. He shyly pointed out his art print, sitting amongst the offset art cards and posters and reproduction prints by all sorts of well known artists. He sold the whole run out in less than two months, at $80 a crack. In two words...good marketing!

Bye for now, Andy MacDougall

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