News Archives | Nov 2008


Painting Polemic - Is it Original?

I was interested to read David Baines's articles in this week's Vancouver Sun about controversy over artworks being sold as originals that are suspected to be painted over giclees. Giclee, which means "sprayed" in French, is a coined term which refers to a method of printing -- ink-jet printing of a very high resolution, often with archival inks, which has become very popular in the art world.

Many artists, myself included, use ink-jet printing to reproduce their work. I create digital photomontage prints of my imagery, some of whiche I print on an ink-jet printer. I obtain wonderful, rich colours and the specific textures I am looking for. These prints I create are considered "original prints" and I identify them as ink-jet (giclee) prints. Most of my prints are editioned (printed in specific quantities), signed and numbered.

Some painters photograph their finished artwork and then create a print from the photograph. These prints are considered "reproductions" because they are copies of an original painting. They should be identified as such to the prospective buyer.

The controversy surrounding the large artworks on display in Vancouver and Whistler galleries that Baines reports on centres on misrepresentation of how the artwork was made. If an artwork is being sold as an "original painting" it would need to be not only original in subject matter, conceived by the artist, but also entirely painted by hand. Baines contends that these artworks are actually photographs printed by a giclee printer and then painted over. This is a serious misrepresentation of how the artwork has been created. The artwork may be beautiful and captivating and original in subject matter. But it must be identified as "oil on inkjet print", "oil on giclee", "giclee overpainted with oil" or even "giclee hand-embellished by the artist" or another descriptive term. There is no prescribed, uniform way of describing these artworks. "Mixed media" I think is so vague as to be misleading because it does not reflect the true nature of the production of the artwork.

The other suspect artwork Baines reports on is a watercolour, purportedly painted by hand by the artist, who won a prestigious prize from the American Watercolor Society. Again, the issue is whether or not it was painted entirely by hand or is, in fact, a giclee that was over-painted with watercolour. Many artists have created beautiful artworks this way but again, they must be identified as such. The parameters of the AWS competition clearly stated that such works would not be acceptable.

But there is another issue with this watercolor and that is plagiarism. Even if the artist had entirely painted her artwork by hand -- and there are many exceptional artists who paint extremely life-like subject matter -- her composition, as depicted in the newspaper article, clearly plagiarizes photographs of an old man and a painted, weathered wall, that are available for purchase from a stock photography site, Shutterstock. This copying amounts to copyright violation. If the artist was so intrigued by the photos that she wished to paint them, she would need to first obtain permission from the photographer to use their photos in this way. If permission was granted, then the final artwork should acknowledge the original source with a sub-title such as "Painting of an original photograph by so-and-so."

There are many ways that artists are using new technologies to create evocative, thought-provoking and skillfully realized artworks. But their production methods must be accurately and truthfully stated in order to preserve the integrity of the artwork and of the artist.

Posted November 27, 2008