From time to time, I run into questions about digital art prints, which is a subject I don't know a whole lot about. But like many of my clients, it's something I'm curious about, so I sought out an expert on the subject. There are a lot to choose from here in Chicago with Anchor Press and many other specialists, but I was introduced to James Kay by another local art consultant and immediately I was struck by his sheer and infectious passion for the technique as well as the history of art printing. Since that time he's become my digital print guru – he's the first one I consult on print-related questions or quandaries. So I was understandably very excited when he agreed to allow me to conduct a short interview with him as a digit print artrepreneur.
The first thing James explained to me is that within the printing world, there are hand-pulled, limited edition man-made prints, and then there are digital prints. “I don't think one is intrinsically superior over the other – they are just very different disciplines and each has its own purpose. For hand-pulled prints, the uniqueness, the embossing, the subtleties of each print are part of the artwork itself. For digital printing, it's about exact replication of the original work. There are a lot of amazing print shops that do hand-pulled work and I am very impressed with that art form but my knowledge, passion and experience is really focused on digital printing.”
James' experience with printing goes back to his early teen years. His grandfather and two uncles were in the prepress business (actually the first ones to do electronic color separation here in Chicago) and starting in the early 80's, he would work with them after school and on weekends.
“Printing was a very blue color job at the time,” he recalled. “It was a union business like being a carpenter or an electrician. Typically you would find a press owner and go through an apprenticeship.”
His informal apprenticeship to the family printing business led him to a job at Leo Burnett, where he worked for several years printing ads and inserts and managing a lot of Leo's printing technology. All the while, he found himself wondering why there weren't more people using commercial printing equipment for fine art. He heard about Black Box Collotype from time to time, but for the most part, it seemed that the worlds of fine art and commercial printing (like those of art and entrepreneurship) just didn't have much overlap with one another.
Leo was always on the leading edge with their printing equipment and it gave James a firsthand opportunity to watch the technology evolve – from new overhead cameras to ink jet printing and to his first exposure in the early 90's to a commercial machine for fine art printing – the Iris Ink jet Printer.
It was in 2005 at the Graph Expo when James saw both HP and Cannon demoing 12 color, pigment-based fine art printers that he realized the time had arrived. An entrepreneur could finally build a compact, digital fine art printing studio... if they had the funds for it. So he started saving up to invest in the equipment and open his own shop, which he did in 2008.
What about Giclees? How did that come to be a dirty French word, I asked? He chucked and reminded me that the word isn't really French at all. The word was invented by a Los Angeles printmaker who was making prints from his garage. These often low quality prints flooded the market and had the enduring effect of prejudicing a lot of the art community against Giclees. But really it's just a word for digital multiples, for utilizing current technology.
This idea of artwork being created by a machine has also been a bit of a prejudice in some circles, he noted. Some people hold firm to the idea that artwork made by a machine is simply not artwork.
“Multiples have a long history and they have come a long way as far as acceptance in the art world,” he mused. “In 1908 – 1914 Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele hired currency printers to create ultra high-quality multiples and this was a major turning point in art printing history. Since then Frank Bourdas, for example, started a digital atelier and prints works that have hung in the Louvre. Fernand Mourlot is another commercial lithographic printer – even some of the exhibition posters he printed can sell for thousands of dollars. And artists like Dubuffet, Picasso, Matisse all explored lithography and printing at times.”
When asked about collecting art and art prints, James replied much the way I do, “if you're looking at collecting for value, I'm not the expert you need to talk to. There are certainly some collectors who collect prints but for myself, the value in the prints I make tends to be my enjoyment of the image. In that sense, prints make collecting more accessible. It's easier and more affordable to have artworks you enjoy looking at. And yes, if you choose carefully, there are prints that can increase in value significantly. There are also, of course, prints like those by Nagel, whose mass, uncontrolled editions have ended up devaluing themselves.”
What then are some things to consider as a collector or as an artist when exploring multiples? “As a collector or an artist, you're always concerned with the original, which can be damaged or lost. If you want to be able to look at the artwork even after you've sold it or if you want to keep the original in a temperature-controlled storage vault, then a digital print can solve that problem. It gives a sort of serial immortality to an artwork.”
He went on to explain that, “even though the technology may be superior from one printer to another, the experience of the printer always trumps the technology. It's still easy for someone with a million-dollar piece of equipment to produce a lower quality result than someone using a twenty thousand dollar piece of equipment. This includes color experience – how well does the printer stay true to the original? With digital printing, you're looking for an exact, indistinguishable facsimile. Look for any fading or weird pixelation, especially in areas of contrast.”
Regarding cost, James explained that there is a bit of an asymptotic relationship with printing. For X amount of dollars, you may be able to produce a print that is about 95% indistinguishable. To get to 97% the cost may double. To get to 99% it may double again – getting increasingly expensive as you lean toward that impossible point of absolute perfection.”
As a final consideration, James suggested “limiting the edition. I haven't come across any clear equation for determining how many prints an artist should run or how these should be priced against the original, but it's something that warrants consideration.”
Dedicated artrepreneur that he is, James rides out the challenging market and continues to produce extraordinary digital prints for a wide range of artists. For more information about James and aoth Transmission Atelier and Factory Imaging, check out the websites here:
http://transmissionatelier.com/home/about/
http://www.factoryimaging.com/
