I’ve been at this about five years, only about five shows a year, invited back at State Street Ann Arbor every year. Looking to find my sweet spot, I check out fairs through my region.
Several fairs I have considered attending have a reproduction “edition” rule which states that “all reproductions must be numbered and signed.” This rule appears to apply to all 2D art.
I absolutely agree with this idea in media where printing is a variable or laborious process, such as wet-developed photography, intaglio, block printing, etc. For these media, signed, numbered editions are quite sensible ways to provide art to the collector. It’s fair to say the print IS THE ART SOLD.
But in oil painting, prints are a sideline for lower-budget buyers or where the original is in a private collection. Most of use “giclée,” in which a digital file is preserved, with NO limit to the number of “perfect” copies. The idea of a “limited edition” for such items is PURE MARKETING HOKUM, disingenuous, not to mention completely outmoded. Nobody’s going to pay a penny more because I didn’t print enough copies.
I have spent a lot of money (for me) on getting these reproductions of my paintings made. (See photo) Each costs me $60 and up. I only order one or two of these at a time. As you can see, the fact of and nature of each print is clearly printed on the canvas where it turns over on the back of the stretcher. I’ll NEVER make anywhere near 250 prints (let alone 500) of any one of my paintings. The market doesn’t exist. I sometimes order a couple of prints in smaller-than-original sizes from the same digital file. Is each different size another edition?
To add a signature over the signature embedded in the print would be silly. It would also be difficult, given the coated finish of these repros. To add a number would be simply disingenuous.
Anyway, I have written to fair organizers saying I'd like to enter their show and asking for clarification of this rule. I’ve explained what I do as above. What did I hear back?
NOT A PEEP!
So, friends, what do I do? What do you think?
Replies
I had to laugh when I read your initial post. Marketing is in large... HOKUM. I have a degree in it. The Franklin and Danbury Mints, and Disney have perfected the concept.
Wendy, Larry, I enjoy your comments. But the point isn’t whether hokum makes the world go round. I wrote some for Oldsmobile. Remember them? The question is whether an art fair – especially one run by a museum – should require me to engage in this particular type. It's a museum-run art fair that started me on this. I don't expect marketing types to blush about anything but I expect better of a museum. (OK, OK I know they're good marketers too... generally.)
David,
You can't change a system from the outside.
Apply get accepted, question respectfully.... but don't blame. Blame won't get you very far. Make good points.... and maybe one day you will change the system.
Frankly I find that most artists do not have the capability to market. Is their art lesser? No, it many cases it is superior. Artistic DNA fights this and it is However if you can't sell yourself and your artwork you are not going to be successful financially. Each artist has to maneuver this minefield, but some battles are not ones I am keen to fight, but instead I find them to be small obstacles.
Wendy, I agree with your points. I've been marketing-art-writing guy. I know I'm my own worst marketing client. But my question was to find out what other artists do about this question and then decide if I'm willing to break the rules. Because I'd have to do that in order to, as you say, get accepted and question respectfully while my prints sit there breaking their rules right in front of them.
I'm not inclined to think that, somehow, they'll answer a question at the show they won't bother to answer in a respectful letter. After all, I don't apply to shows to change their rules, only to get my art seen and maybe sold. This is all about choosing a show. If they want me to pay their fees, they can answer my questions or JUST SAY IT'S OKAY. That WOULD be better marketing.
What I'm hearing so far inclines me to walk away from this microfight and, regretfully, give up on some of these shows that could be so good if they wouldn't shoot themselves in MY foot.
Thank you all for your thoughtful input.
I agree with you David.
I would desire for a museum to be above all this. Whether or not they are is in question.
I don't like numbering my prints. To me, the value of the finished product should not be predicated upon it's limited supply.
Among the best at manipulating a market, based upon this, is the diamond industry.
I number because it is what is expected of me. It is what some of the buyers want. I do keep records and adhere to the editions. I don't agree with it. So we are of the same mindset on that. I do it though.
Interestingly, I've encountered photogs at shows who told me, for that show they put numbers on the pieces, because the show wanted it, but they don't normally do nor keep records or keep to it.
If I like a particular sculpture enough to buy it. I pay the price I feel it is worth to me. Whether there are 1,000 copies or if this is the only one, makes no difference to me.
I have from others, as well as made my own, pool cues. Some believe that to be art. Some are quite valuable, due to the maker being deceased. Personally I only care about the workmanship and the hit. A friend of mine made a cue and sold it for $140. He passed away. not too long afterward it was sold for $8,500. Marketing because of demise and limited supply. UGH!!!!! A Nasty part of life.
Our capitalist nation is built on marketing. The consumer has, long past the point of purchasing based upon research, knowledge, quality etc. They are guided by marketing. Even when electing a president (oopes, now I'm going to get flamed).
Marketing can be the single most important and expensive cost in getting a product to the public.
I can create a product whereby one drop turns water into gasoline. However I will still be broke and the public will not use it without a reasonable way of marketing it.
This is unfortunate but a fact.
I wish this we're not true. I don't like it. It is very strong in the art world.
If I were to draw a wild picture with a lady having both her eyes on one side of her face, no one would buy it. Now market it with Picasso's name and it would fetch millions.
David, I don't see the logic behind wet-processed photographs needing to be numbered in editions, nor do I agree that numbering giclées represents them fraudulously. These arguments might never be solved, anyway, and considering your experience based upon what I viewed on your website, you are familiar with both sides of the argument. Your position opposes mine, and I've been both a tray processing photog, a maker of giclée photographs both on regular paper and on paper that I gild with 23k gold leaf as well as a maker of giclée repros for my wife's drawings and paintings.
Numbering and signing isn't all that's required of editions. These days painters are required to also issue a Certificate of Authenticity with each print reproduction unit. We could also view this practice as disingenuous, but it isn't. The details in the CoA mention everything about the artwork and the edition, etc. As sort of a guarantee that it is an authentic reproduction of the artist's original work. This isn't hokum, it's the facts. Even photographers print using the same machines as I do; those wide-format pigment ink printers from Canon and Epson, mostly.
It seems to me that by requiring photographers to sign and number editions, their process appears more to be one of reproduction rather than original print. Certainly, it's so easy to mass produce these giclées, but it's highly unlikely. And you know the reason why, because there's no market for that many! So it would be delusional thinking to dream of selling 10,000 copies or more or whatever constitutes fraud or whatever in your book.
I'm not selling our repros as original art, I'm selling them as repros of original art. The show system requires me to sign and number them. But I'm not about to do this for photographs, especially the one's I produce on hand-gilded paper. But I'm not going to do it for the normal black and whites or color photographic images I giclée print, either, unless I decide to issue a limited edition portfolio or something like that. Then I'll have to consider how I can maintain honesty and integrity to my collectors. I'm always going to go that route, anyway. I need these people to survive. So I'm not going hood-wink my way to the bank and stardom.
The shows have all latched onto this idea of numbering and signing. This is a newer concept, actually, not outmoded at all. It's now rampant where it used to barely exist!
By the way, you are a fine painter, but I'm especially intrigued by your Society for Creative Anachronism illustrations (almost illuminated manuscripts) as well as that awesome GOTHIC SPEAKER CABINET. WOOHOO!
Do you use karat gold leaf, or shell gold to illuminate these SCA pages?
My suggestion about getting answers from show organizers is to call them on the phone and speak with them.
Just to clarify: I believe that numbering MY giclées (I specified for oil paintings) would be disingenuous. I also said that in photos and print-oriented media the Print IS the Art. I would think that includes your special printing process on hand-gilded!!! paper.
My reference to outmoded edition policy goes back to the early-to-mid-20c when offset printing had not achieved anything like today’s quality. The artist would stand over the press and destroy defective prints, and then have the plates destroyed before witnesses when they could no longer print properly. We no longer have the need for that.
As for how far back photo print editions go, I could have sworn I saw a signed, numbered Ansel Adams in my eye doctor's office last year.
I have no problem with CoAs if somebody wants them. I never called that Hokum. That would be fine for a person like me who might never print more than five copies of any one painting. What I object to is being told my repros have be in editions. Signing and numbering is a consequence and a dressing-up in a costume that my work does not require nor should it be required to.
It follows that I agree with you in that you alone should have the right to decide what amounts to an “edition." It's the artist's decision that gives an edition any status at all, so the art fair should leave it to us. That's my entire point, aside from the fact that even a museum sponsoring an art fair wouldn't condescend to answer my question.
BTW, thank you for taking the time to check out my site and for your kind comments. I used what one supplier called "shell gold," basically gouache with fine bits of some yellow metal. They ARE intended to be illuminations, given as award scrolls to deserving people.
Second BTW: I too am a photographer as you may have noticed on my site.
CoA's are actually required by law. But who's checking, huh?
You did not see an Ansel Adams print that he numbered on the front so that it is seen. He didn't ever do that. He only numbered prints that were issued in his portfolios, also. But he numbered them on the back of the mounted prints. He dry mounted his prints that he issued in portfolio limited editions and signed them either in pen pencil directly below each image in small writing. Each portfolio had printed edition information accompanying it and each mount was numbered on the back to correspond with the number in the edition.
If you want to investigate this further, contact the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, AZ.
I used to teach photography, and I had a friend who was a photography collector and who would let me show parts of his collection to my students. He had a complete AA portfolio that I would show, plus Edward Weston and Paul strand and others.
I visited the Camera Obscura Gallery run by Hal Gould (R.I.P.) and he had so much photography in there it was absolutely amazing. Kertész, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Weston, etc. All the greats. These folks seldom if ever signed their prints on the front and certainly didn't number them. Why and why not? They didn't make very many of them. They were interested in developing new work. Ansel Adams represented the more commercial side of fine art photography and helped popularize the medium. But he didn't number his exhibition prints, at least not on the front of them like photogs seem to be doing these days at all these art fairs.
I agree with you completely that the art fairs should leave these edition decisions to us. Some might not want to issue editions, like me. I have no reason to mass produce an edition of photographs. The only reason we did editions for my wife's artworks is so that we could exhibit them at the art fairs. But the rule is ridiculous for photographers, really. It doesn't add value to them from my perspective, either. It's just that shows are looking at what other shows are doing and writing the rules into their rules no matter if it's right or wrong.
If you want to exhibit repros of your paintings, it might be in your best interest to number and sign.
Thanks for this information. As I said, I "could have sworn..." but perhaps what I saw was only a signature. It was dim in there and some time ago. Pencil, I thought, but I've never had much luck with pencil on photo emulsion.
I'm green with envy at your good fortune.
I've never heard of a law about CoAs. State? Federal? As I said, it seems reasonable to me, but I had not heard of it recently enough to recall it. Please inform me further.
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