Print Snobbery

Like many people I love art, going to exhibitions at the Tate, the National Gallery, visiting Paris or Florence to see the Louvre and Uffizi. I studied History of Art at university, and when I thought about art the painterly masterstrokes of Titian or Whistler sprang to my mind, bronzes by Rodin, the rose-window of Notre Dame, I did not think about prints. I later went on to work at Christie's and my latent and unwitting art snobbery continued unabated. I worked in a picture department and spent many a happy hour in the bowels of the building getting my hands on nineteenth century canvases, pitying the poor fools who worked in the Prints Department and never got so much as a whiff of crusty craquelure.

In fact I would never have become enlightened about the value of prints by myself; I guess it's just not a medium that your average art-lover associates with fine art; the only printing that had ever crossed my intellectual path was Andy and his repetitive soup cans etc. It wasn't until I paid my first visit to Coriander Studio (a west London printmaking studio where CCA artists create their silkscreens) that the veil started to lift from my eyes. I suppose I had just assumed that prints were mainly just reproductions of paintings. I did realise that prints could be created as original artworks in their own right; but I didn't understand the reasons for which an artist might choose to do this, didn't understand the versatilty and opprtunity to experiment that printmaking offered artists. If i had thought about it at all, I suppose I would have concluded that artists that chose to express themselves through print must have chosen that medium because their skills as a painter or sculptor were second rate. Ouch! I cringe to remember.

Ok, so not only are prints (whether that be silkscreen, lithographs or etchings) every bit as valid as painting, sculpure, photography or video installation as an artform, they are also the most accessible and democratic artform: flying in the face of the current trend of art for the super-rich. Artists choose to make prints for two reasons: 1) They are able to achieve effects through printmaking that they cannot achieve in any other medium, and 2) Prints enable their artistic vision to reach a greater number of people . Prints are often dismissed because people believe that the artist may have had little to do with the process of making the print; we imagine that the production process is all machine or computer-based; prints just being churned out from a glorified photocopier. The reality couldn't be more different. The artist is involved at every step of the printmaking process: he creates the design, chooses the colours, oversees the printing, decides on any surface augmentation and signs-off on each print at every stage.

The process of creating a silkscreen print is more intricate than many realise. For every colour in a finished silkscreen (this is regularly up to 40 colours) a separate stencil must be created. So a stencil is made that masks out every area of the design except those that will be, for example,  red. This stencil is attached to a screen of stretched silk or synthetic fibre, and the red paint squeezed through onto paper below. Pushing the paint through the screen is done by hand and is repeated for every copy in the editon. The process is then repeated for every colour in the design, and gradually as the layers of coloured paint build up on the paper the final image is revealed. Once the design is complete the print is often finished by the hand apllication of glazes, diamond dust, gold leaf etc. The skill of the printmaker is that the viewer will not be able to see any difference between any copy in an edition. The irony is of course, that this is the very reason that we tend to value prints less than paintings in the first place. There are also methods such as monoprinting and monotyping that use print technology but result in a print that is unique.

The other reason that people tend to dismiss prints is misunderstanding over edition sizes and authenticity. The rules are very simple: an authentic print will be signed and numbered by the artist, it will also have a certificate of authenticity. When it comes to the numbers of times an image has been reproduced the rules are simple too. Always buy a print that is from a limited edition; this ensures that once that edition of 150 (or whatever the number may be) has been completed, the original stencils (or etching plate etc,) will be dedtroyed, thereby guaranteeing that no more prints can be produced. Naturally, the smaller the edition size the more rare and desireable  the prints will be, and therefore, the more valuable (price is obviously also dependent on who the artist is). It is standard practice to create a number of prints in excess of the edition number; these may be artist proofs (APs-which are given to the artist), studio proofs (SPs) or HCs (hors commerce copies-for display only). These extra pieces do not effect the value of the edition, and you should ne be concerned about finding the letters AP, SP, or HC on your print in place of normal edition numbers. 

I hope that this has shed some light on common misapprehensions about prints. Keep you eye on our blog for further advice.

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