Two events at the High Museum in Atlanta, a recently concluded lecture on collecting fine prints, and the upcoming Art Print Fair, have put a local focus on this sometimes overlooked area of the art market and art collecting. Fine prints have a long history and rich tradition and today just about any significant museum acquires prints. World-class private collections have been built around prints and works on paper. David C. Driskell Center Executive Director, Dr Robert Steele and his wife, Jean, have amassed a remarkable collection of prints by African American artists over some 30 years of collecting, employing a strategy of supporting Black printmakers and the workshops and galleries that sustain them. Much of their collection could be seen in the 2002 traveling exhibition “Successions: Prints by African American Artists from the Jean and Robert Steele Collection”. Artist and art educator, Kevin Cole, has built an exciting art collection that has a targeted focus on printmaking as well.

For the collector, there are a number of compelling reasons to look at fine prints. Printmaking is a unique art form that has its own distinct qualities and endless innovative possibilities for artistic expression and aesthetic beauty. Picasso, the greatest print innovator of all time, showed just how breathtaking those possibilities could be, and the prints of Elizabeth Catlett demonstrate the immediacy and emotional depth that can be achieved through the medium. It is common to hear printmakers talk about the process in almost religious tones and many devotees will swear that a well-executed fine print is unparalleled in visual and aesthetic appeal.

In the world of modern art, the silkscreen prints of Andy Warhol illustrate the investment potential a print can have. Anyone who bought a Warhol print early on in his career probably made one of the best investment decisions one could make. While I always advocate caution in viewing art principally as an investment class,  it is worth noting that a real fine print, kept in good condition, will hold its value relative to other works by a particular artist.

The other, perhaps more obvious reason for us to collect fine prints is that they are simply more affordable than most other mediums. In some instances it may be the only way to acquire a bona fide work by a master whose works in other mediums have soared outside of our budget. Or it may be a chance to collect a significant, high quality work by an artist we like. And, not least, we would be supporting the work of a pioneering young or mid-career printmaker, the often unsung hero of this most labor intensive, and painstakingly demanding pursuit. Artists like Eleanor Neal and Robin Holder come to mind.

What is a Fine Print?

So what exactly are fine prints (or original prints as they are also termed)? Definitions continue to evolve, especially with the advancements over the years in technology, materials, techniques and equipment. As a recent reviewer of the International Print Fair in New York observed, “It helps to have a flexible definition of the word print, which can mean an engraving after a Joshua Reynolds painting … or a roll of limited-edition wallpaper by the contemporary artist Trenton Doyle Hancock”.

Back in 1961, the Print Council of America in establishing some criteria for what original prints are, issued the following guide:

1. The artist alone must create the master image on the stone, or whatever material would be used to make the print.
2. The print -if not printed by the artist- should be hand printed by someone under the artist’s direct supervision. Each impression should be approved and signed by the artist and the master image (the matrix) destroyed or cancelled.
3. The original print is not a copy of anything else, not a copy of a painting or another print. If an artist chooses to copy his own work, originally done in another medium, it would be a print done after an oil (or other medium). An original print is a creative endeavor by the artist and therefore is as valid an expression as is any other form of visual art – may it be a painting or a sculpture. The original print is a work of art in its own right.
   

An updated view is currently offered by The International Fine Print Dealers Association:

A print is a work of graphic art which has been conceived by the artist to be realized as an original work of art, rather than a copy of a work in another medium. Prints are produced by drawing or carving an image onto a hard surface (known as the matrix) such as a wood block, metal plate, or stone. This surface is then inked and the image is transferred to paper by the application of pressure, thus creating an impression, or print. The printed image that results is the exact reverse of the image on the plate.

Unlike paintings or drawings, prints usually exist in multiple impressions, each of which has been created from the inked plate. The total number of impressions made is called an edition. Artists began to sign and number each impression around the turn of the 20th century to ensure that only the editions they intended to make would be in circulation. Plates are not to be used in subsequent printmaking runs without the artist’s explicit authorization. The process of printing the edition is therefore just as important to the authenticity of a print as the act of inscribing the image onto the plate.

There is a lot of information available on the history of printmaking, printmaking techniques, the language of prints and caring for prints. Links to some resources are included at the end of this piece.

Less is probably known about the rich African American tradition in printmaking and the contribution of Black printmakers to contemporary printmaking. Often overlooked too, is that many important African American artists, both past and present are also printmakers.

A Brief History of Black Printmaking

This history goes back to the earliest recorded print of Phyllis Wheatley by the enslaved African American artist Scipio Moorhead, created in 1773 to illustrate her book. Other early Black printmakers were engravers and lithographers trained principally to work in the publication industry. Grafton Tyler Brown, one of them, went on to own and operate his own lithography firm in Oakland, CA.

The most significant milestone in the history of African American printmaking was the establishment of the Works Project Administration (WPA) in 1935. Community Art Centers were organized in cities across the U.S. where artists of every stripe were able to work at their art and were paid to sustain them. This afforded the Black artist the opportunity to now explore printmaking creatively in a collective environment that allowed for cross-pollination of ideas and socializing. As a result, as Leslie King-Hammond writes in her well-researched Essay on Black Printmaking and the WPA, “…during the years 1935 to 1945, Black artists—and in particular Black printmakers—attained remarkable artistic and technical levels of achievement.”

The WPA’s Harlem, NY Art Center was a hub of creativity and the list of artists who congregated and worked there is a virtual who’s who of seminal figures in African American art: Aaron Douglas, Selma Burke, Jacob Lawrence, Palmer Hayden and Augusta Savage, among them. A teenage Bob Blackburn was a pupil at the center where the teachers included Charles Alston, Norman Lewis, Ernest Crichlow and James Lesesne Wells, one of the first WPA alumnus to pursue printmaking professionally.

The Philadelphia center, the only one of the WPA’s community arts centers to be designated a fine print workshop famously fostered innovation  and nurtured Dox Thrash, Claude Clark, Raymond Steth and Samuel Brown.

A footnote to the WPA era of creative activity, after nearly 60 years since the end of the great depression the government has initiated action to identify and catalogue WPA art, and to enforce an archaic claim of title to creative material produced by artists under the program.

Who’s Who in Black Printmaking

In addition to those artists already mentioned, other Black artists who have and are making indelible contributions in the field of printmaking include (but by no means limited to) David Driskell, Romare Bearden, Samella Lewis, Sam Gilliam, Emma Amos, Ann Tanksley, Lois Mailou Jones, Stephanie Pogue, Howard Smith, Jeff Donaldson, Faith Ringgold, Louis Delsarte, Michael Kelly Williams, Laurie Ourlicht, Willie Birch, Otto Neals, Howardena Pindell, Larry Walker and Camille Billops. And Black printmaking owes a particular debt to the pioneering contribution of art educators, printmakers, master painters and studio founders Bob Blackburn, Allan Edmunds, Lou Stovall and Curlee Horton.

Contemporary Black printmakers continue to innovate and stretch the boundaries of the medium and their own creativity. Along with them, we have a new generation of artists who are not primarily printmakers, but who have embraced the medium as a means to explore, experiment, expand their portfolio and to make affordable multiple originals available to collectors. Together, they are largely responsible for the resurgence in interest in fine prints in the African American art market. Fine prints by the likes of Radcliffe Bailey, Kerry James Marshall, Martin Puryear, Kara Walker, Renee Stout, Edgar Arcenaux and David Huffman are trading heavily on the primary and secondary market.

New to collecting fine prints?

Here are some key things to keep in mind when collecting fine prints:

1. The general criteria that we use in evaluating the quality, desirability, and value of art in any medium apply when looking at fine prints. In addition, learn as much as you can about the particular medium, the techniques and practices, its special characteristics, relative values, and so on. Develop an eye for the qualities that make a good print.

2. Try to find out the provenance of the work, especially if you’re buying on the secondary market.  Following the trail of the print’s ownership is important to safeguard against buying forgeries. Keeping your own record is important and should start at the point of purchase with getting a Certificate of Authenticity or a Bill of Sale that includes information on the print.

3. Works on paper are fragile, can damage easily, and should be handled with care. Make sure the print you are buying is in good condition and free of creases, tears, etc. If you have doubts, try to see the work outside of the frame if possible. Fine prints should never be permanently mounted and should be framed using conservation methods. Ask your dealer, or learn about the proper way to care for prints.

RESOURCES

About Fine Prints:

http://fineartrep.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/intaglio-prints-original…

http://www.ifpda.org/content/collecting_prints/basics

http://www.aviscafineart.com/Art_Talk/News_Articles_/Printmaking_Te…

Definition of printmaking terms:

http://www.philaprintshop.com/diction.html

Essay on Black Printmakers and the WPA
http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/vpadvance/artgallery/gallery/wpa/essay1.htm

BOOKS/CATALOGS

Forbes, Dennis  Collecting Limited Edition Prints: Contemporary African American Printmakers, Cavanaugh Press

University of Maryland (Exhibition Catalog), Successions: Prints by African American Artists from the Jean and Robert Steele Collection