Grays School of Art - May 2019.
This is a response to having two artworks destroyed by China Customs in April 2019.
The works were destined for a Print Triennial in Guanlan; they were both unique and although they were collages and I could in theory remake them, the replacements would obviously not be the same as the ones disposed of in China. They would be re-productions.
You are presented here with similar choices to the customs officials in China.
Behind the shredder are two sets of reproductions of the original artworks.
Some are photocopies and have no intrinsic value.
Some are Giclee prints and although printed on relatively expensive Japanese Awagami paper using high quality inks; these also have no intrinsic value - over and above the cost of the paper, although many artists and their galleries sell them under the moniker ‘limited edition’ for relatively large sums of money.
Both, however, are re-productions of the original images. Neither are ‘limited edition’ prints. They are both generated from Jpeg files and could in theory be printed in their millions. Any limit would be an entirely arbitrary one; I could simply decide to print only 10 copies for instance. The only limitation on the number available for sale would be an invented one on my part and any prospective buyers would have to take my word that I wouldn’t produce any further copies once those 10 had been sold.
I may sign a document to say so. That document will probably be Giclee printed, although describing it thus will not, as I’ve previously described, give that declaration any more weight or value than a photocopied version.
“Giclee.” The very word sounds like art-speak, slightly exotic and laden with artistry. It is, in fact taken from the French verb, gicler; to spurt or spray. Quite apt, when we’re talking about modes of re-production, although it merely describes how the ink is applied during inkjet printing.
Contrary to this, ‘limited edition’ Fine Art prints are generally hand produced by the artist or in collaboration with his printer and printed from a substrate that will over time, as each copy is taken, degenerate. Take an etching plate for example. The friction from inking, wiping, polishing and the physical wear from taking prints under high pressure through an etching press all cause increasing degeneration of the image. That’s why an early print from a Rembrandt etching plate is worth substantially more than a re-print a century later from the same plate; as each subsequent print is pulled, the plate loses some of its’ fidelity. The more prints taken, the greater the loss of delicate mark making and tone.
(The American artist Chuck Close made a seminal series of portrait etchings and mezzotints exploiting this gradual disappearance of visual information during the 1970’s)
The edition number, the number of prints capable of being printed and still retaining the artists’ intention is not arbitrary. It’s dictated by the print medium.
So, you decide.
Destroy the cheap photocopies and spare or steal the Giclee prints; I’ll even sign them if you want, but they’ll still be worth no more than the cost of the paper and archival inks. Or shred both the Giclees and the photocopies – as I’ve explained their inherent worth is exactly the same; nothing.
Which is exactly what China Customs officials though about the artworks they destroyed at Guanlan in April.
The destroyed artworks in this case, however, were not limited edition pieces of work; they were collages, unique in the same fashion as a painting or drawing is unique. They were not the seamless, clean, easily constructed Photoshop montages of the magazine and colour supplement, which artist John Stezaker describes as being in opposition to collage. The ex-collages evidenced the haptic nature of the physical cut, the visible (dis)join(t)ing of layer, edge and glue smear. Collages are objects more than anything. None of these crucial elements survive the flattening, reproductive processes of scanning and digital printing; the sense of the artist’s hand is nullified and made impotent.
The vital energy of Hannah Hochs cutting collage critiques of the Weimar Republic or John Stezakers quiet reflections on our relationship with the photographic image as symbol of modern culture both reveal the hand generated immediacy which collage revels in. Not only in the potential speed of application, but also in it’s ability to utilise printed ephemera such as magazines and newspapers to comment on and dissect current social and artistic concerns.
Yesterday’s news is not necessarily restricted to wrapping fish and chips.