Using Art Prints
At some point in any new undertaking there comes the time when you must make a sharp, decisive step. If you have been reading the seed catalogues and the garden pages all winter, the crucial hour arrives for setting out the seedlings. If you have been studying a better approach to the green, there is a perfect moment in the first spring sun to get outside for a few practice shots with the niblick. And if you have been able to start observing at your local museum and reading the many art print books in your city library, perhaps you want to shake off the theory for a practice plunge into the world of buying. So it is for practical purposes, above all, that we start our forays with the study of prints. While it is obvious that anything that comes from a printing press can legitimately be termed a print, my view is a great deal more specialized.
Perhaps we might classify our subject in this article as Fine Prints- usually the work of distinguished artists who use the medium of the print, sometimes exclusively but more frequently as another mode of expression in addition to pencil, brush, or chisel. The passion for printmaking has run among great artists and draftsmen since man first chipped a relief on a wood block. Rembrandt . . . Diirer ... the Japanese and the Chinese . . . Botticelli . . . Bruegel . . . Rubens . . . Picasso . . . Klee . . . Braque . . . and hundreds more have created memorable prints. Moreover, there are many distinguished printmakers turning out brilliant contemporary work. It is a fertile field for the collector and one where a modest price often commands a gem of a purchase. While it is sometimes considered that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, I believe it is most important to know at least something about how a work of art is produced. The information has two contributions to make: (1) it will help you select better art prints because you will know at least a few of the finer points of the printmaker's art; (2) it will also help you see why certain types of prints are more valuable, over and above the consideration of the artist in question and the number of prints in a particular edition. Before starting off on our look at printmaking, it would be well to touch briefly on the matter of editions. You will usually find the more valuable prints signed by the artist, particularly in work of the 20th century. In addition, he usually makes a notation of the number of prints in the particular edition and what number print in the edition you hold in your hand. The marking is usually handled in this way: 23/75 Jacques Villon. Often you will find the year in which the print was struck off. The number 23 is the number of the print you are looking at; the number 75 represents the total number of prints in the edition. Because the law of supply and demand operates as inexorably in art as in copper or wheat, the smaller the number of prints in an edition, the greater value each of the individual prints will have. While some artists are known to strike off as many as 300 art prints, the more customary edition offers from 50 to 100. Usually an artist will destroy a plate after printing the number allotted to an edition, or he will so deface it that it cannot be used to turn out additional unauthorized art prints. |