World Printmakers
Newsletter, No. 20 April, 2003

Revolution in the Kitchen
The intro to the World Printmakers cover story this month, "The Shift to Digital Print in Future Art," talks about "the cozy and cosseted world of fine-art prints…" You know the scene: copper plates, nitric acid, fine line work, velvety aquatints, exquisite papers, rich embossing, limited editions, the 500-year tradition, the finer things in life… I confess that this is the trip we signed on for three years ago when we started WorldPrintmakers.com. Since then things have changed, however. Digital imagery has reared its binary head and printmaking's cozy kitchen will never be the same again.

Most of the digital discussion in printmaking circles until now has centered around a question which seems to me to be beside the point: "Is it printmaking?" Digital art may or may not be "printmaking," but the fact is that artists are producing it, galleries and museums are hanging it on their walls and people are buying it. It may or not be "printmaking" but, semantics aside, it is certainly beginning to occupy printmaking's traditional spaces.

New Realities
The entire printmaking community worldwide-artists, collectors, galleries, museums, art schools and foundations-are now obliged to deal with new realities, new techniques, new marketing strategies and new controversies. It is as if someone had altered the genetic makeup of contemporary art. In this new age of infinite digital reproducibility has the "limited edition" outlived its usefulness? How will art buyers regard the new digital work? What value will they place on it? Will they be able to distinguish between "digital originals" and "digital reproductions," or is that even a meaningful distinction any more?

Some people are suggesting that the digital revolution will "democratize" contemporary art by increasing accessibility of artworks and lowering their prices. But this is not yet clear. Digital prints are not cheap to produce, and the novelty factor seems to be driving prices up instead of down. I saw some 30x40 cm. giclée reproductions of paintings in a local (Granada) gallery the other day priced at 800 euros (just over $800), quite a fancy pricetag for what is essentially a glorified photocopy! Similar-sized limited-edition original etchings were less expensive.

More Opinions?!
What would be useful at this juncture, I think, more than opinions (as we all know, everyone has one…) are facts, numbers, first-hand information. Are significant artists doing digital work? If so, how many? Who are they? Since when? What are the opinions of gallery owners? Which museums are incorporating digital work into their collections? What acquisition criteria are they following? Finally, based on the answers to these questions and others, where do we go from here?

Happily, thanks to the academic work of a bright, tenacious Indian girl student at the Winchester (U.K.) School of Art, we now have some answers to these fundamental questions. Mamata B. Herland devoted the year 2002 to researching and writing her dissertation: "The Shift to Digital Print in Future Art." She went to hundreds of primary sources and asked the right questions, and she has been kind enough to share her results with World Printmakers. We will be publishing them in a three-part series starting this month. Mamata´s paper will doubtless not resolve all the issues she raises, but at least it will permit us to address them with some solid facts in our hands, and for that we owe her a debt of gratitude. Besides being a formidable researcher and writer, Mamata Herland is also an artist to be reckoned with. Her article is illustrated with her own fascinating digital prints.

Perhaps You'd Noticed
The world is in a mess. Andy MacDougall expressed it quite eloquently the other day in an e-mail from Squeegeeville: "You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the US of arrogance, and Germany doesn't want to go to war." In the meantime, we are all obliged to contribute our grain of sand to the solution. The World Printmakers peace initiative, the Printmakers' Peace, is still active, and still accepting contributions. It's not too late to make your statement there.

Meanwhile, count your blessings.

Kind regards from Mike & Maureen Booth
Editors and Publishers
World Printmakers

P.S. Please permit me a couple of brief footnotes. The first is regarding World Printmakers' archival procedures. I would like to remind you that no article or interview published on World Printmakers is ever lost. When it no longer appears on the homepage or in the "What's New?" section, it passes to the "Articles/Interviews" section, where it remains permanently accessible.

If you work in the media, we'd like to refer you to the World Printmakers Virtual Press Room, where you will find news releases, photograph, background material, etc., all designed to help editors and journalists in covering the activities of the world's premier fine-art printmaking site.

See you next month.

Count your blessings!

Mike & Maureen Booth
Editors & Publishers
World Printmakers
The Worldwide Showcase for
Contemporary Fine-Art Printmakers
URL: http://www.worldprintmakers.com
Email: miguel@worldprintmakers.com