Art Print Issues by Barney Davey

Is Giclée Passé?

The art market is not immune to using gimmickry to sell product. If ever there was any artist who fully understood this concept, it had to be Andy Warhol. A great part of his appeal was his ability to assess art and popular culture and make art that simultaneously illuminated and poked fun at it.

Warhol died in 1987 on the cusp on the digital revolution. it's sometimes hard to believe it's been two decades because he still represents contemporary art proving Hippocrates truncated aphorism, "Ars longa, vita brevis." (The full text is worth knowing: Life is short, [the] art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgment difficult.)

It's a shame Andy didn't stick around long enough to see the rise of technology in the last decade of the millennium. One can only imagine what he would have made of and done with the Internet and digital photography, painting and printing developments, not mention You Tube and other social network media. It's easy to believe he would have utilized the new tools to put his personal mark  and make a lasting impression with them. Perhaps in ways we are not seeing today, or which aren't getting the awareness and notoriety he so effectively courted and deployed.

The term giclée, about which I have previously blogged, is a perfect example of successfully using gimmickry to solve a marketing problem. The problem was that in 1990 using digital print to describe the emerging IRIS fine art printing techniques was certain to stultify sales of prints made with this new medium and hamper its impending impact on the art business and specifically, the art print market. The marketing solution was to come up with a French term and voila "Giclee" was coined for new usage.

You can find links in the above mentioned post that provide the most accurate genesis of the giclee's usage to describe digital print. I encourage any who use giclée in their marketing parlance and haven't read and studied those links to go there and get the education. It will be a service to your collectors and the art industry to be able to offer accurate details about the origin of the usage of giclée and the process it describes.

Painting is Art, Publishing is Business

The Buzz, Balls & Hype blog recently got my attention with a multi-part series of posts titled, Writing is Art, Publishing is Business. The blog author, M.J. Rose, is a successful author of eight books and numerous magazine articles. She has a program called Author Buzz that helps authors get noticed and find readers. Wouldn't it be great to have a service like that for painters and self-represented print artists?

Wishful thinking aside, my admittedly creatively borrowed title (with homage and apologies to M.J. Rose) applies equally as well to the art biz as it does the book biz. The more authors and artists come to grips with the fact that getting work sold requires a business approach that has little do with the creative product being promoted, the sooner they understand their success quotient. I've said it too many times to have counted, "Artists who have attained success in the print market are not in the art business. They are in the business of building, nourishing and replenishing a dealer network."

It goes without saying the art must resonate or the book be a compelling read, but beyond the likability factor, there has to be buzz, balls & hype. There has to be the three Ds: Discipline, Desire and Details. When these factors are in place with an adequate budget and persistent smart marketing, success ensues. Go forth and paint. But also go forth and build ye an awesome dealer network that will love to sell your work.

New Owner Announced for WetCanvas.com

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss - We Won't Get Fooled Again by The Who

Usually when you see those lyrics, you expect a bit of cynicism to follow, which would not be surprising, the song carries much of that sentiment. In this case, however, let's hope the lyrics can by literally applied.

An announcement on the site came a few days ago that Wet Canvas has a new owner. F+W Publications, a huge media company with books and magazine titles in lots of fields, including the art patch where it publishes The Artist's Magazine, Watercolor Magic and Pastel Journal, is the buyer. It also owns the North Light Book Club for artists. I was honored to have my book, How to Profit from the Art Print Market, included in its Spring catalog last year and pleased to have a reorder for it late last year.

Bad News Rising - Is the Trouble at Art.com and the Atlanta Decor Expo Related?

I posted a couple of days ago about the difficulty in being a poster publisher. For decades, the bread and butter of the marketing for poster publishers has been a one-two punch of trade advertising and tradeshows. Publishers knew they could reliably count on those activities, when steadfastly applied, to generate growth for their businesses.

To this point, I have not mentioned the aftermath of the Baltimore Decor Expo show. I felt offering any negative news could only hurt its slim chances of succeeding as a thriving show. With new developments and news on the tradeshow front, I am compelled to chime in. As expected, Baltimore was weak, but many exhibitors looking on the horizon and seeing little else to replace it verbally committed to coming back in 2008. The history of weak shows is they last about three years. Given other market indicators, Baltimore will be lucky to make it that far.

One might reasonalby assume with the New York Decor Expo show abandoned after 2006 and Baltimore weak that the Atlanta Decor Expo show would benefit as the court of last resort. From reports I'm hearing that is not the case. Tradeshows grow and contract on the consensus opinion of exhibitors. Once you gain momentum either way, things can happen fast. Inside of a decade, the Atlanta show grew from a 350 booth show to nearly 2,000 at its zenith. This phenomenal growth made it one of the largest tradeshows in the U.S. Quite a feat for an industry virtually devoid of ownership and influence from large publicly held corporations.

Fine Art from England's National Gallery On the Street, Digitally

This headline from a BBC News story, Bringing Art to Life in Print -- Some of the world's most advanced printing technology has helped bring priceless art to the streets, announced the presentation of some of the National Gallery's most valuable art, including works by Constable and Da Vinci, as reproductions on vinyl displayed outdoors.

Of course, as with neary all fine art printing technology, there is controversy and discourse about the equipment and the process. Disagreements aside, the publicity and surrouding attenion can only help digital printing take on more luster. Check out the video below for more on the story:

Business Isn't Getting Easier for Poster Publishers

Now Main Street's whitewashed windows and vacant stores
Seems like there ain't nobody wants to come down here no more
They're closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks
Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain't coming back to your hometown - lyrics from Bruce Springsteen's "My Hometown"

Running the business of being a poster publisher has never been easy. Oh, there was a time back in the day when art entrepreneurs with a little savvy, an eye for what sells, some cash and ambition could start up a poster publishing business and become successful. Those days are long gone.

If one studies the history of the open edition print and poster publisher market, it quickly becomes obvious there hasn't been any new blood for years. Even before the advent of the Internet and the Giclee phenomenon, the cost of entry had risen to the point it was not feasible for new companies to enter the market. That gave the existing crop of publishers protection from serious competition from newcomers to the field and they needed it. The price of posters has not kept pace with the economy at all. The $40 price barrier has held firm for years. This while the cost of nearly everything else has escalated two, three, four fold and more. Just look at fuel and housing.

Chinese Oil Painting Knockoffs Go Unabated

I ran an article in the newsletter that preceded this blog. It was titled, The China Syndrome - Assembly Oil Line Paintings Come of Age. I also submitted a press release about the article via PRWEB. Both got a very strong response. Nearly two years since it was written, the latter continues to draw traffic to my Web site on a daily basis. The  point was the rather sleepy art industry (by comparison to software, films and music) was being aggressively attacked by Chinese companies that create oil paintings by the pound. Often blatantly knocking off artists from all genres and locations.

From the numbers provided by PRWEB, it's obvious it hit a nerve center. The statistics reported this usage: 26,862 times read/2,165 picked up by news media/8 times forwarded/27 times printed/427 times downloaded as a PDF. If you think the adverse publicity or government action has slowed down activity in this market, you'd be wrong. A syndicated article originated in the Toronto Globe and Mail recently caught my eye in Tucson's AZ Star. Here is the link: http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/relatedstories/184714.php. It's a sickening tale of yet another artist discovering his art being illegally copied and knocked off. 

Around the same time I published my information, Robert Genn of the Painters Keys Twice Weekly Newsletter was also taking up the charge to try and stop knockoffs of his work and other Canadian artists he knew. If you read my story, you'll see it has been the subject of articles in the New York Times and ABC World News. Despite the press, the situation is far from being corrected.

Tracking Back to the Art Biz Coach

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you know I collaborated last month with Alyson Stanfield, the Art Biz Coach, on a teleseminar about the art print market. We had a great turnout. Thanks if you participated. If you missed it, you can still download the hour long seminar. It's only $14.95, send an email to: barney@barneydavey.com for details.

Alyson and I both agree that blogging is a good thing for artists to do and have blogged about it. There is really no better way to communicate with your collectors and to find new ones. One of the tricks of successful blogging is to use the trackback feature available to Typepad and Word Press users. Alyson recently published a post about using trackbacks. She linked to advice from blogger and copywriting guru, Ryan Healy.  I'm tracking back to her blog and his on this blog and suggest you take a look at her post with the link to the useful information on trackbacks from Ryan Healy.

Online Visual Artists - A Lively Discussion.

Besides blogging here and ocassionally on Absolute Arts, I like to engage the community on the some of the discussion boards. I've previously mentioned Wet Canvas. Today, I'd like to tell you about Online Visual Artists. After I published my recent post just below, I made note of it on the appropriate OVA board. It started something that unfortunately doesn't hapen here. That is a lively discussion of a post.  Please don't be shy, If you read something I publish, add your thoughts in the way of commentary. It makes for a better environment all around. Here's the link to the thread in question: http://onlinevisualartists.com/forum/index.php?topic=691.0 

I just posted a reply there longer than my original post here. I hope some of you will join in there or here with your thoughts on the subject of open edition reproductions that are digitally printed.