FAQ's
What is Fine Art?
Fine art is:
"..creation of beautiful objects: artistic work that is meant to be appreciated for its own sake, rather than to serve some useful function" according to the Encarta Dictionary
"..pure art: any art form that is considered to have purely aesthetic value, e.g. painting, sculpture, architecture, drawing, or engraving" according to the Encarta Dictionary
"..creative art, especially visual art whose products are to be appreciated primarily or solely for their imaginative, aesthetic or intellectual content" according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
"a visual art considered to have been created primarily for aesthetic purposes and judged for its beauty and meaningfulness, specifically, painting, sculpture, drawing, watercolor, graphics, and architecture." according to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary
A Digital Fine Art print is defined by meeting the same standards as any other fine art medium, and it is produced using archival quality surfaces and inks. It is designed to last a lifetime.
Archival inks and papers are museum-quality materials, which are designed for longevity and beauty. Papers are acid-free, preventing yellowing and distortion of color.
What is Contemporary vs. Transitional vs. Traditional?
Contemporary Design usually features very clean lines. Avoids excessive ornamentation.
Traditional Design emphasizes finely crafted details and beautifully patterned fabrics.
Transitional Design is a blend of traditional and contemporary styles.
What is a Giclée Print?
Giclée (pronounced "jhee-clay") is a French word meaning "spurting ink". A giclée is a high resolution digital print and is a recognized fine art print category like lithographs and serigraphs.
Giclée is considered the world's best technique for reproducing original works of art and for printing digitally created art and fine art photography.
A giclée is often produced on canvas or a high quality rag paper like watercolor paper with an archival ink. Giclée art is very stable, and resistant to fading and color shifts. Estimates of longevity for giclée prints is usually around 100 years with proper care.
The Process : Giclée prints are created typically using professional 8-Color to 12-Color ink-jet printers. Among the manufacturers of these printers are vanguards such as Epson, MacDermid Colorspan, & Hewlett-Packard. These modern technology printers are capable of producing incredibly detailed prints for both the fine art and photographic markets. Giclée prints are sometimes mistakenly referred to as Iris prints, which are 4-Color ink-jet prints from a printer pioneered in the late 1970s by Iris Graphics
The Advantages : Giclée prints are advantageous to artists who do not find it feasible to mass produce their work, but want to reproduce their art as needed, or on-demand. Once an image is digitally archived, additional reproductions can be made with minimal effort and reasonable cost. The prohibitive up-front cost of mass production for an edition is eliminated. Archived files will not deteriorate in quality as negatives and film inherently do. Another tremendous advantage of giclée printing is that digital images can be reproduced to almost any size and onto various media, giving the artist the ability to customize prints for a specific client
Canvas prints (Giclées) do not need to be framed with protective glass so the image can be seen clearly without bothersome glares. Canvas prints (Giclée) are tougher and far more durable than paper prints.
How does a Giclée differ from a traditional print?
Giclée printmaking derives its quality from its seemingly "dotless" imaging technology which contrasts with traditional fine art prints which typically relies on printing screen pattern dots to reproduce full-range color. Because traditional printing dot patterns are detectable to the unaided eye, it is less desirable than Giclée fine art prints for fine art reproduction. Traditional offset prints are typically restricted to papers that widely vary from what the original artwork was created on - especially when reproducing oil on canvas. The Giclée process enables reproduction on virtually unlimited types of media.
I have heard that reproductions fade over time, what about Giclée?
Museum-quality Giclée reproductions are recognized as "the next best thing" to owning the original and can be found in the world's finest museums and art galleries. Based on independent research and testing, there are various image permanence ratings for each combination of ink and media used in Giclée printmaking. Wilhelm Imaging Research's image permanence ratings have been provided to the public about expected display-life for various ink and media combinations used in Giclée printmaking today. Our Giclée reproductions offer an image stability rating of 100 years due to the archival-grade pigment inks and acid-free media we use. We use the Giclée Printing Process to ensure a print with brilliant, exquisite color and razor sharp detail, specifically designed to meet the rigorous and precise criteria of fine art collectors and connoisseurs of museum quality, limited edition prints.
Giclée prints have been shown at numerous major museums and galleries around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum (NY), the Museum of Modern Art NY), Chelsea Galleries (NY), the Los Angeles Musuem of Contemporary Art, the Los Angeles County Museum, the National Museum of Art (Washington D.C.) and the British Museum (London). Recent auctions of giclée prints have fetched $10,800 for Annie Leibovitz, $9,600 for Chuck Close, and $22,800 for Wolfgang Tillmans (April 23/24 2004, Photographs, New York, Phillips de Pury & Company.)
What is a Limited Edition?
A limited edition is a series of identical prints produced in limited quantities. Edition sizes typically range between 100 and 950 prints and are usually individually numbered and signed by the artist. An edition number that reads 110/350, for example, means print number 110 from an edition size of 350 prints.
Will the value of a limited edition increase like other collector's items?
By their nature of being limited in number, demand for certain limited edition prints can be greater than the number of reproductions produced for the edition. Once an edition is sold out, which means that the print is no longer available but may still be available from an authorized dealer, the prints are considered to be on the Secondary Market. This means that the print can be bought and sold by any dealer or individual, often above issue price, depending on supply and demand.