The Digital Printmaker's Dilemma

To open editions or to limit editions? That is the question. And it is one that Barney Davey thoughtfully addresses in his blog posting today: What Is The Secondary Art Market? I think he's spot on, not only regarding his assessment of the growing acceptance in the marketplace of open editioned digital prints, but also regarding pricing. Over the past year, I've certainly seen a dramatic downward trend in giclee print prices online.

Original digital art prints, for example, in the 17x22 inch range and once selling for $200-$300 are now being offered at below $100. Many of these images being sold by print-on-demand online galleries attempting to aggregate as much content as they can in one place to get the biggest bang for their buck. Thus feeding the notion that digital art prints, no matter their perceived quality, are disposable art objects, to be enjoyed for the moment, but not collected.

My only concern with this trend is that not all digital printmaking processes are equal. I have yet to purchase an image from a print-on-demand gallery, but one has to wonder if the image one gets from a 3rd party volume printer, with whom the artist has had little contact, is of the same quality the artist might have wished it to be.

At this point, I'm content to continue to print my own work and distribute it myself - and to charge a little more for it, rather than give up control over what the final print looks like.

In terms of price, I consider my original work to be in a sales category somewhere between offset lithographic art reproductions and traditionally printed, limited edition fine art originals. Which, I think, fits nicely within the criteria Mr. Davey has set out in his post today.

Certainly we are in the midst of a global sea change in the way art in general is valued and perceived, how it's created, who is creating it, and how it is being distributed. In the coming months, I'll be addressing some of these issues in my "The Business of Art" blog category. Stay tuned :-).

Comments

[Barney Davey]

Hi Peter,
Thank you for mentioning my blog post on the secondary market. And, thank you for the poignant thoughts you have added to the conversation. We can all pretend things are the same, or we can face they are different and never going back to where they were. Somehow, I believe those truly committed to making a career at something, such as professional artist, will find a way to make do. There is no question some big opportunities are gone or diminished, but I see more opportunities now than before. The big fat pipes of distribution are getting smaller as new much smaller, even micro ones, come into play. As I have said before, it was never a walk in the park in the good old days to garner great success. That is one thing that remains the same.