Identify and Buy Fine Art Prints VERTU FINE ART
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How to Identify and Buy Fine Art Prints VERTU FINE ART CONTENTS How to Identify and Buy Prints........................................................................................... 3 Prints: A Little History......................................................................................................... 4 The Artists Who Influenced the Making of Fine Art Prints.................................................. 6 How to Buy Prints............................................................................................................. 12 How to Identify Prints....................................................................................................... 14 The Experience of Buying a Fine Art Print......................................................................... 20 Cover: Alex Katz, Late Summer Flowers, 2013, 38 color silkscreen Above: Marilyn Minter, Gold Tip, 2009, C-print, 40 X 60 in., Edition of 5 2 VERTU FINE ART How to Identify and Buy Prints Print artists have been pushing the envelope for in love with a fine art print and take it home. We believe hundreds of years. The prints they produce, and the that the more our clients know about what to look for in a techniques they use, reflect our culture, politics and our fine art print, the more they will appreciate what we have to social and technical evolution. Discovering the work of new oer. print artists and rediscovering the work of established Understanding the history of the art print, the skill, the artists has been one of the most exciting aspects of our processes and mechanics by which a print is created, can work at Vertu. enhance the experience of owning a print. We’ve come a Our clients, seasoned collectors and first-time art long way from the days when only kings and queens and buyers, share our enthusiasm. We want our clients to have high ranking clergymen were able to own fine art. the best experience possible when they visit our gallery, fall Left: The Chinese Diamond Stra, the oldest known dated printed book in the world Above: Elder Subhti addresses the Buddha. Detail from the Dunhuangblock print 3 VERTU FINE ART Prints: A Little History Above: The Bois Protat is considered year of Xiantong [11 May 868].” words were carved onto the same the oldest surviving woodcut in the The oldest woodcut in the Western block. Artists created multiple blocks, Western world. World was found in France. The Bois which, when printed and bound Protat, a crucifixion scene, dates back together, became block books. For hundreds of years, artists have to the late fourteenth century. Because each block had to be carved been carving, etching, engraving and Before the printing press was by hand, the artists who carved and transferring their designs onto cloth, invented, in the mid-15th century, and sold them would often only create papyrus and other surfaces. Paper printing shops took over the limited editions that they knew they was first produced in China, in 105 manufacture of books, pictures and would be able to sell. AD, which sped up the process of Most people, except the communicating through upper classes and the clergy, pictures and words, and gave print artists a wider audience. were not literate, and the The earliest dated pictures alongside the words woodcut, The Diamond Sutra had mass appeal. One of the Scroll, in which the Buddha few remaining books from the teaches how to attain era of the block book, is the enlightenment, was Apocalpysis Sancti Johannis, discovered in Turkestan. The created in Germany in 1470. Diamond Sutra is the oldest It’s a version of the Book of known dated printed book in Revelation, St. John’s idea of the world. A note at the end the Apocalypse and the war of the text reads, “Reverently between good and evil. The made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on format looks much like a behalf of his two parents on the The Apocalpysis Sancti Johannis reads like a comic book modern day comic book or with cells going from left to right. 15th of the 4th moon of the 9th graphic novel. 4 VERTU FINE ART White Collar by Giacomo Patri, completed in 1938 after three Yakusha-e (prints of actor) by Torii Kiyotada from the famous years of work. series "18 famous Kabuki plays played by Ichikawa's family" printed in 1895. Linoleum was first used as flooring in the 1860s and began to be used by artists, in the early 1900s, to create had previously been developed in China or Korea. Print linocuts. Linoleum is easier to carve than wood. One of technology gave artists options they hadn’t had before. the best examples of linocut work is Giacomo Patri’s They could make their work more available, and were in wordless novel, White Collar. It chronicled the eect of more demand to illustrate books, newspapers and the 1929 stock market crash on working class Americans posters for commercial use. and called for workers to stand together and unionize. As printing technology improved, and literacy began Picasso also used linocuts to create works in multiple to take hold, books were published in large quantities colors. and made available to the general public. Along with the In Japan, which was pretty much secluded from usual religious books, books with more secular themes Western influence until the mid-1800s, print artists were were illustrated and printed. making Ukiyo-e (Floating World) prints, which depicted The Industrial Revolution also gave rise to a working landscapes, theatre and other pleasures of Japanese life, class that could aord to decorate their walls, not just while ignoring the mundane, everyday events. When with the “Home Sweet Home” cross-stitch done by Aunt Westerners began traveling to Japan, Western influence Mary, but with paintings and prints created by fine began to slowly take hold, influencing a whole new artists. generation of print artists. The printing press, invented by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany around 1450, was faster than any press that 5 VERTU FINE ART The Artists Who Influenced the Making of Fine Art Prints Honore Daumier, Gargantuan, 1931 In the late 1800s, print artists had book of Charles Perrallt’s Mother Goose Tales become part of popular culture through their is still reprinted, from the French, in many works in books, newspapers and advertising languages today. prints. Honore Daumier spent six months in jail for the lithograph, Gargantua, which mocked Gustave Dore, 1864,In the wood Little Red Riding Louis-Phillipe’s excesses while the majority Hood met the old Father Wolf. of the French population struggled to make ends meet. One the bright side, Daumier’s popularity soared and his career took o. One of the greatest book illustrators of all time was Gustave Dore, whose illustrated 6 VERTU FINE ART Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Aubrey Beardsley A Comedy lithographs, of the Montmartre night of Sighs, 1894, lithograph and clubs of Paris, were often letterpress commissioned by club owners to be used as advertisements. He was greatly influenced by the Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints. In 1989, Lautrec’s lithograph, Moulin Rouge also painting and printing at the sold for £143,250. Today it would turn of the nineteenth century. probably sell for more than The deaths of his mother and £500,000. fifteen-year-old sister had a Influenced by both the profound influence on his work. A woodcuts of Japan and the art of version of his iconic painting, The Toulouse-Lautrec, British artist, Scream, oil on wood, sold at Aubrey Beardsley, created some of auction for a record $119.9 the most influential works of the Art million. It was one of four that Nouveau era. Beardsley died at age Munch had painted. Munch’s 25, so finding an original drawing or woodcuts and lithographs also lithograph is a collector’s dream. A reflect his pensive, thoughtful pen and ink drawing, The Climax, style and have had a profound sold at auction in 2011 for $213,300. impact, not just on other artists, In Norway, Edvard Munch was but on our culture. Henri de Toulouse Lautrec. Divan Japosais,1892, Edvard Munch, Melancholy, Woodcut,1898 Lithograph printed in four colors on wove paper 7 VERTU FINE ART Pablo Picasso Jacqueline in a Black Hat,1962. Color linocut on Arches cream wove paper with Arches watermark. Picasso was one of the most inventive and prolific produced lithographs, aquatints and etchings that are printmakers of the twentieth century. In the fifties and sought after by collectors today. Authenticating a Picasso sixties, he worked with master printer Hidalgo Arnera, in lithograph is an art in itself, so buying his work from a Arnera’s studio in the south of France, to create elegant reputable gallery or auction house is critical. multi-layered linocuts. Besides his paintings, Picasso also 8 VERTU FINE ART Rene Magritte, Advertisment for "Norine", 1925 Salvador Dali, Ivanhoe/Four Piece Suite, 1978 Another surrealist who influenced pop culture, and whose larger-than-life persona is as well-known as his work, is Salvador Dali. Dali worked in almost every media, including film. Dali produced more than 1500 paintings in his lifetime. He also created numerous drawings, illustrations, sculptures, short films, books and lithographs. Dali’s Bullfight #3 lithograph sold at auction a few years ago for more than $80,000 and there are legendary stories about his work being found in grandma’s basement or at thrift shops. Best known as a painter, Belgian banknotes as well as works by There are many collectors around the artist Renee Magritte, whose work Picasso and other artists. Magritte world who focus only on Dali art influenced pop, minimalist and worked as a draftsman in a wallpaper prints, and some are truly expert at conceptual artists, was a great print factory and designed posters and authenticating his work, but it’s still artist. So great, in fact, that after World advertisements until 1926, when he best deal to with a museum or trusted War ll, when times were tough in began to work in the surrealist style gallery if you’re thinking about Europe, he made a living forging he’s best known for.