Go to any number of art fairs and art galleries, and you will find prints for sale among the paintings and sculptures. They are prints, because they were printed by some means, but after that it may not be clear at all how they should be described, and we quickly get into fighting words. Are they "original" or "fine art" prints -- defined by the Print Council of America as an image drawn or etched or engraved on some surface by the artist, who prints a limited number of the pieces by hand (or personally supervises someone else doing it), then signs and numbers the individual prints and defaces the printing plate -- or reproductions (a photograph of a unique painted image that is used to create copies)?
Many art galleries refuse to sell reproductions, and quite a few fair and festival sponsors either won't allow them or require them to be kept in a bin, unframed, labeled as a reproduction with information on how it was produced. For instance, in its rules for artists, the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair in Mich. only permits "original, handcrafted work" and disallows "commercial reproductions." The Cherry Creek Arts Festival in Denver, Co. takes the hard-line approach ("Absolutely no reproductions are allowed"), and the Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival in Florida prohibits any and all reproductions, including note cards and catalogues, as well as giclées, only permitting "scanned images of the artist's original work that have been significantly manipulated or enhanced into the final piece." Similarly, the Rittenhouse Square Fine Arts Association in Philadelphia doesn't allow reproductions in its annual show, because "people would rather own originals," said the association's executive director. "Money spent for reproductions takes away from what people might spend on originals."
Maybe, but in the current economy many people are feeling less able to afford original art, "but they still like art and want to buy something," said the vice president of the Vero Beach Art Club, which has held an annual Under the Oaks art festival in March since 1952. That festival had been an originals-only event but began allowing reproductions a few years back, "because we want people to be happy." Similarly, the Wickford Art Festival in Rhode Island changed its policies in 2008 to allow reproductions, "because of the way the economy has been going," said Francie Christophersen, who chairs the festival. The rules could be changed again to disallow any and all reproductions, "but that probably won't happen."
Not only buyers but artists have been pressuring fairs and festivals to change their policies to permit reproductions. "In these difficult times," watercolor artist Barbara Groenteman of Naples, Fla., said, "it makes sense to let artists bring things that actually sell." She noted that the sale of reproductions comprises two-thirds of her income. For Greg Stones, a painter in Greenville, R.I., "about a third of my income comes from prints, and it's creeping up toward half. Without prints, I wouldn't be able to make a living as an artist." The situation is not quite as make-or-break for Sandy Askey-Adams, a watercolor painter and pastel artist in Churchville, Penn., but she noted that selling "less expensive reproductions for buyers who can't afford originals has created a secondary market" for her work.
At these shows, most of the reproductions are digital prints, often called "giclées," in which the photographic image is scanned into a computer that produces copies using high-end ink jet printers. The process to produce a giclée is somewhat more expensive than the older style poster reproduction (called an offset lithograph), and the inks that are used contain actual color pigments rather than dye, which adds to their brilliance and longevity. Even more significant is the fact that these digital prints are often printed onto higher quality surfaces, such as handmade and watercolor papers or even canvas, which gives the final product the look and textural feel of original art. A giclée of a watercolor can look identical to the original. Because of the process and the result, digital prints are priced much closer to the originals than the older offsets.
However, the similarities have shaded into deception from time to time. Artists at the Rittenhouse Square show, the Wickford Art Festival and the Massachusetts-based Paradise City Arts Festival have been asked to take down their booths and leave when they have made claims that their giclées are originals. "We have people going around from booth to booth, with magnifying glasses, checking what's on the walls, because the average person can't tell the difference," the vice-president of the Vero Beach Art Club said. One may see with a magnifier the closely spaced dots of color that form the image in a reproduction, whereas a fine art print or a painting is composed of continuous lines of color. At times, artists embellish their giclée prints by painting on top of them, obscuring the dots, and then describe the finished pieces as originals (perhaps in a mixed-media category), all of which adds more confusion.
The most overt example of alleged deception has involved Park West Gallery of Southfield, Mich., which provides artwork that is auctioned on cruise ships (as part of their entertainment programming), and has been the subject of a series of lawsuits for allegedly selling fakes and other works with over-inflated valuations. Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Norwegian, Carnival, Disney, Holland America, Regent and Oceania lines all have held on-board auctions that have netted Park West up to $300 million annually, selling works by such artists as Salvador Dali, Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso and Peter Max.
Negotiating the changes in fair and festival policy has taken into account the potential for confusion. The Sarasota Masters Art Festival in Naples, Fla. permits reproductions, but they must be placed in bins that are no larger than 4'x4' and conspicuously labeled "Reproduction." Additionally, all digital reproduction prints must be identified as a giclée, with an explanation of the technical process attached to the back of each piece. Paradise City Arts Festival does not permit giclées to be framed or hung on booth walls, and the Market Square Art Fair in Knoxville, Tenn. ("We believe it is important to offer the public the chance of buy reproductions, hoping that they will move on to original work when possible") requires all reproductions to be labeled "reproductions" rather than "print," "offset lithography" or "giclée." (Presumably, just the foreign-ness of the word "giclée" could be a point of confusion.) Getting even more specific, the Rising Run Festival of Arts and Crafts in Indiana requires all reproductions to be "properly signed and numbered," and the Sausalito Art Festival in California demands that reproduction "[e]ditions may not exceed 450."
A growing number of fair and festival sponsors have added the category of "digital art" as a realm of original art. The Ann Arbor Street Art Fair defines this as artwork "in which the original image, or the manipulation of other source material, was executed by the artist using the computer. Work must be editions, signed and numbered, on archival papers, inks and emulsions." The original image may be a painting by the artist that is PhotoShopped in some way that makes it different than the painting, but it is not stated how much "manipulation" is required to keep the final product from being a reproduction. One can foresee fair sponsors debating questions of art and technology far into the future.
The section of this post regarding Park West Gallery has been updated to clarify the nature of the referenced series of lawsuits against that gallery.
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I give you and the readers now a demonstrable example of a "public valuation" of Dali's Divine Comedy.
To explain:
This value determination was published in the German television on 24.11.2008 for millions of viewers!
At this value determination were two people involved:
Dr ....... National Graphic Arts Collection in Munich.
Dr ....... sworn expert in Germany.
This means that it was not a Sotheby's or another auction house involved!
This means that not a Mr. Hunter, Mr. Ewell, Mr.Hochman, Mr. Descharnes, Mrs.Theresa Franks, Park West Gallery, Les Heures Claires was involved.
Both of these persons have the print graphic product, Field page 198, Purgatory Canto 7 / ML Band 2, page 107, Nr.1079, wood-block-signature and hand-signed signature evaluated.
The public valuation stating, that one of such work a value between euro 4,000 - euro 5,000 has!
I now take this sum as the valuation basis, so I put to you "thefineartblog" the following question:
Really was the price the park west Gallery in the year 2007 too high or not?
Perhaps worth mentioning is this:
Shortly after this TV show, I had contact with the transmitter, this was per postal and per email to 07. Jan. 2008.
Rainer Schickedanz
I give you and the readers now a demonstrable example of a "public valuation" of Dali's Divine Comedy.
To explain:
This value determination was published in the German television on 24.11.2008 for millions of viewers!
At this value determination were two people involved:
Dr ....... National Graphic Arts Collection in Munich.
Dr ....... sworn expert in Germany.
This means that it was not a Sotheby's or another auction house involved!
This means that not a Mr. Hunter, Mr. Ewell, Mr.Hochman, Mr. Descharnes, Mrs.Theresa Franks, Park West Gallery, Les Heures Claires was involved.
The public valuation stating, that one of such work a value between euro 4,000 - euro 5,000 has!
I now take this sum as the valuation basis, so I put to you "thefineartblog" the following question:
Really was the price the park west Gallery in the year 2007 too high or not?
Perhaps worth mentioning is this:
Shortly after this TV show, I had contact with the transmitter, this was per postal and per email to 07. Jan. 2008.
Instead of buying Art with appreciation potential, the two lawyers spent $98,000 for 11 Dali Prints while on the Cruise, and subsequently spent an additional $422,601., for 100 more Dali Prints, with a market value of about 90% less.
If the two lawyers, who happen to be married to each other, had spent just 10 minutes of Internet due diligence, after all she is a lawyer, they would have learned that a Salvador Dali Divine Comedy Set of 100 Prints only achieved a total of $16,800., at Sothebys public auction on 10/28/05.
Furthermore, this same Set of 100 Prints, has never sold for more than $20,000., ever at any public auction, clearly in conflict to the alleged $510,000., appraisal.
Read more about this at The Fine Art Blog: Dali Park West Libel Case Dismissed Against UK Couple Who Spent $500,000., on Worthless Dalis
http://blog.thefineartblog.com/2010/01/dali-park-west-libel-case-dismissed.html
“Park West Gallery's lone Dali expert Bernard Ewell dead wrong—AGAINâ€.
Is based on speculation!
The fact is and remains, the above-mentioned lady has "lied" since the beginning of campaign against the family Albaretto!
The fact is that the relationship between Dali and the family Albaretto was so closely that Salvador Dali had the "sponsorship" by Cristiana Albaretto (now Cristiana Albaretto Cristini) taken over!
And here it doesn't matter whether a photo says anything or not!
It does not matter whether a paparazzi-clan has thousands of photos or a Christian family has hundreds of photos!
Nearly it seems in such a way so, that Theresa Franks was godfather of these devils, since she is with their confused campaign again and again the Christian ethics „ thou shalt not lie" roughly disregarded!
Mr. Daniel Grant,
to understand that Theresa Franks FAR has played since a long time a false game with her readers, should also know this:
in the forum of Fine Art Registry, under the heading "Park West Auctions" two written reports, which can be substantiated by documents.
Now a part of this excerpt:
Freiburg-Kornhaus-Germany, Les Heures Claires / Albaretto.
The fact ist that the disclosure of the alleged falsification of prints in the case of Freiburg-Kornhaus-Deutschland Les Heures Claires / Albaretto is wrong!
For this I have received several official letters.
The fact is that the German prosecutors had to return the seized from Ernst Schöller prints in the case of Freiburg-Kornhaus-Germany Les Heures Claires / Albaretto with available from 23.11.2005 to the owners!
David Phillips, now I have doubts about the creditability of Fine Art Registry!
Because now it is known that the German prosecutor has returned the seized from Ernst Schöller prints to the owners, and thus not excluded that Park West has acquired some of these returned prints, so I ask the question why Fine Art Registry these prints from Park West called the fakes!
This includes the press reports that Robert Descharnes had this issue as it may indicate the Fine Art Registry report, LA RAZON, Sunday 12 November 2004
their readers suggest!
The German public prosecutor had decided that the preliminary investigations by Ernst Schöller not in this case could provide evidence of forgery, as his entire scientific research is extremely buggy!
These courts observe whether allegations of any kind are allowed or not!
What attracted my notice at Fine Art Registry – Theresa Franks, the fact that they worked to a large extent the so-called wrongdoing by an employer on its website, which, however, has to do with the actual question of art by Salvador Dali nothing!
The fact is that the German prosecutor noted that Albaretto for their circumstance of the investigation (based on Ernst Schöller) in Germany, the German treasury is to compensate!
Fact is, therefore, that all contrary reports in the above case are false!!!
To me it almost seems that in the U.S. is sleeping giant, is lulled by untruth, starting from a Web page is only since the short on the market!
Mr. Daniel Grant, readers:
The fact is that Theresa Franks me and mine reports within a few hours completely "erased" from this forum!
Mr. Daniel Grant, readers:
Isn't it so that Theresa Franks FAR acts thus against better knowledge!
Mr. Daniel Grant, readers:
Isn't it so that Theresa Franks FAR on purpose "misleading"?
That's why should people internalize this:
You must give the devil not a hearing.
He will always seek to drive us to despair, after he has led us to evil!
And what was with the duplication? Again, there are many different opinions!
Manual handpress or manual machine, this with the machine would be however industrial, right?
But it is not so, that an artist with his originality of the creator without the use of designated criteria of others or those of conventional printing techniques "to create originals" be able.
But I come back to Salvador Dali.
Dali offset graphic 'Biblia Sacra Rizzoli ":
How?
Salvador Dali himself has rated the importance of this issue in his graphic oeuvre very high!
Salvador Dali has added in 1978 an edition of the Biblia Rizzoli with a dedication and handed to the Spanish king during his visit to the Dali Museum in Figueras. About it there are documents from the former media reports from Spain.
How?
Theresa Franks FAR has publicly allege since circa 2008 that these leaves are simple posters and this people, who have had purchased these prints, would have been deceived.
This raises the question of which is deception going on here?
I know three books from the years 1984, 1988 and 2003, which describing these sheets in their manufacturing technology.
In one of these is described as follows:
It is further reported that the Rizzoli master printer with the artist Salvador Dali have had collaborated closely! It will describe that through the use of all special typographic possibilities, that a variety of up to 15 mats and glossy impasto (pastosen) and transparent colors was applied. And this is heightened in part, complemented with gold and bronze!
The author writes: Dali exhausted all graphic tricks and created somewhat completely „outstanding“.
Incidentally, the above book author has received in his home country, the Honorary Cross for Science and Art. Further, he has including books on Picasso, Ernst Fuchs and, of course, about Salvador Dali written.
Theresa Franks FAR noted in a video that halftone dots are present on the Biblia Sacra and Rizzoli and has therefore referred to these papers as posters.