Handwork vs. Footwork
A printmaker goes into his studio, lovingly prepares a copper plate by hand and, using a series of etching techniques which have come down over 500 years from artists like Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt and Goya, creates an etched image in the metal. He then inks that plate and uses a manual etching press to transfer the image to a carefully selected paper. He repeats the process as many times as the plate permits a perfect image (25, 50,75?), or simple decides to limit the edition in order to enhance its value as a scarce and exclusive art object.

At the same time in a nearby printshop an art publishing company is scanning a color slide of a painting and preparing the color separations using industrial photomechanical techniques to reproduce the image. Their print run is in the thousands.

There are expert art sales people out there, both on and off Internet, who would have us believe that what is being produced in both cases are "limited-edition prints." Something here is gravely amiss, I submit.

The Yardstick
Photomechanical reproductions of oil paintings or watercolors, with print runs in the thousands, virtual photocopies, are neither "prints" nor "limited editions" when measured by the only yardstick that can be reasonably applied in these cases: that of the fine-art, limited-edition tradition.

Tricks of the Trade
Art publishers know this, of course. They're not stupid; they're businessmen. It's just much more profitable for them to twist the terminology enough to permit them to convert their virtually worthless reproduction into "limited-edition prints" and to charge them as such. Strictly speaking, they're not actually lying. Those reproductions are "prints" insofar as they come off a printing press. And the editions are undeniably signed and numbered and "limited" to some number in the hundreds or thousands.

That signature and edition number, it should be pointed out, are valueless in and of themselves. It's not the signature that makes a print valuable. What makes it worth money is the guarantee of a truly limited edition that the signature represents. That signature and edition number signify the artist's personal promise that those numbers represent the true edition and the only edition of that work of art. That promise is sacred, or should be.

The practice of calling reproductions "prints" may not even be illicit in strictly legal terms. But on ethical grounds it's shabby at best. At worst it's cynical and unscrupulous. It perverts the marketplace and does untold damage to printmakers whose laborious and authentic artwork is constantly and deliberately confused with industrial imitations which are little more than junk when compared with hand-pulled limited-edition fine-art prints.

What Can We Do?
First of all we can protest. That's the least we can do. We can protest in the media, we can protest directly to the sources. Write to the companies who utilize these questionable techniques to sell copies as prints. Politely express your point of view on the subject. They're businesses, they're sensitive to consumer reactions. They have to be. If they receive enough negative feedback they might be inclined to change their policies and start playing fair with printmakers and collectors. If they don't there's always time to scale up the protest. (Be forewarned: we are not above resorting to that great American guerrilla tactic: the bumper sticker!)

What Artists Can Do
If you're a printmaker what you can do is to give your clients a complete and truthful documentation on every print you sell, in the form of a Certificate of Authenticity, along with a full explanation of exactly what they're buying:

• What were the techniques employed? ·
• When was it done?
• What was the total number of prints edited and the number of the print in question?
• What is the image size and the size of the paper?
• What kind of paper was used for the edition, and what weight?
• Where was the print edited, in what workshop?
• What's the name of the master printer who did the work?

Include all of this, and any other information which may be relevant. Your clients will be reassured by this little bit of extra effort on your part. Would you like to include a brief couple of pages on printmaking in general and your techniques in particular? Better yet! This might also be a good opportunity to explain the difference between a print and a reproduction!

In these comments we have used etchings as the example, but all the same arguments hold true for the other graphic-art media: screen printing, lithography and linocuts. Nor do digital prints have to present an exception, if they are original digital files created in the computer and the resulting images treated as limited-edition fine-art prints.

What Clients Can Do
If you are a print collector, what you can do is insist upon all the information you feel may be necessary before you put your money down for a print. Don't settle for less. The only way to clear up the "misunderstandings" in the world of the fine-art-print is through information, the more the better.

The World Printmakers Full Disclosure Campaign
From here on out at World Printmakers we're going to call it Full Disclosure, and our New Year's resolution is to make a campaign of it in 2001. We think it's a good and just cause for the new Millenium.

Care to join us?

Read Andy MacDougall's thoughtful reply to this article, Food for Thought.