I recently went to an art gallery show for a famous and well known artist who was introducing a new giclee edition in conjunction with an equally well known West Coast art publisher. The piece was a pleasant 30 x 20 modern art item, very much like the several already hanging on the wall of the gallery. The price was $1,200. The edition size was 375, offered each on both canvas and paper. Many persons, who previously had bought the artists' work, were invited to the show. The main theme of discussion was how much they had paid for the previous pieces of art and how much they had appreciated in value, according to the gallery's "black book". All were happy, drinking champagne, and congratulating the artist for having made them a significant amount of money.

Is this what art is all about? Is this you? What is wrong with this scene?

If you say that this is where you want to be, don't read on any further. Many people are proud to have overpaid for art. It is a great conversation piece. "Do you own a (Artist name)? I got the one for $1,000 over the original issue price!"

Here are some questions you might like to ask about this scene:

1. Why is this artist published?
2. Is this artists work in a museum? Does it matter?
3. Why is the initial cost of the art $1,000 or more?
4. How much does it cost to print a fine art piece?
5. How many of the artist's editions have sold out and has a secondary market been created for the artist's work?
6. How many of the publisher's artists are still popular 5 years after their introduction to the public?
7. What is an art collector? Is this really you?
8. Can you dispose of a piece of art at its current selling price?
9. Why are there no true discount art galleries? There are discount stores for everything else, aren't there?

OK, enough questions! Just remember everyone has a personal opinion about a subject. These are our opinions about the art business. You don't have to buy into our opinion. You just have to buy our products!

First, you buy art, why?

1. Because you like it?
2. Because you can afford it?
3. Because your friends buy it?
4. Because you want to make money?
5. Because you want to beautify your home?
6. Because you want to be different?

All of the above reasons are valid either taken alone or in combination with the others. Everyone wants to emulate the art collecting rich, who don't waste their time collecting print editions, limited or otherwise, but buy original work from museum quality artists. They are the true collectors. Thomas Crown didn't steal a limited edition print from that museum under Renee Rouses eyes. Did he? While it is possible to collect anything at any price, is someone who buys limited edition art truly an art collector? The Industry would like you to believe you are. Some people become so enamored with the act of collecting that they start to lose site of the objective of art. Art is truly an elixir for the senses, not something to possess.

The limited edition was created by the American art business as a way to bring "true art collecting" to a greater number of people. There are only so many museum quality artists, originals, and the funds to buy them. Why not make "copies" of art, but unlike the practice all over the rest of the world in producing ordinary prints or posters, we'll get the artist to hand-sign and number the pieces to create a finite number and presumably more value? The positive aspect of this practice was to create a higher quality print because to justify the higher price points the print making should be better than ordinary prints and posters. Therefore, serigraphs, art quality lithographs, and giclees replaced four-color lithography as the means to display these new items. Better print quality is a major reason to buy a limited edition in the first place (as is collectability/appreciation). Certainly from a décor point of view, why buy a poster when you can buy a higher quality limited at or near the same price. Don't you feel proud of your house? Supplement it with quality art!

The first numbered editions were small in quantity, usually under 100. The trend now is to make edition sizes under 500, but usually with more than one media (canvas, paper, etc.) and with a significant number of additional prints, such as A/P's HC's, Roman numerals and the like. A/P's were originally created as the first approved items off of the press and were typically the artist's property by agreement with the publisher. With some editions approaching 1,000, are these truly limited?

Why are there art publishers to begin with? I know! We in the public can trust only a few distinguished firms to decide for us what good art is, what is collectible, and what we should buy. Is that right? No, the true answer is that promoting art and artists and producing art is expensive. Especially expensive is promotion in the form of gallery shows, wholesale art shows such as Art Expo, and art magazine advertising. These costs have to be recouped out of sales. Artists typically can not afford, nor are capable, of quality promotion.

Before the creation of giclees, a new method of printing, which allows for the production of prints one at a time as sold, rather than as a series, the entire lithography or serigraph edition had to be produced up front, a costly item. Investing in an entire edition(s) and promoting an artist requires a significant investment, especially since every published edition or artist is not successful, which means the cost of the unsuccessful is added to the cost of the successful or else the publisher can not be profitable.

So art publishers are like banks, financing all artists? No, not at all! If every artist is published, there would be no exclusivity or "taste". It is the same as in the book business. By making it difficult to get published, the value of the work of those who are is therefore considered greater than the value of those who aren't.

While it is practically impossible to publish and promote your own book, it is much easier to publish your own art editions. The self-published artist is very much more common than self-published authors. However the major difference is not in either the quality of the work or the quality of the printing (especially with giclees), but in the ability to promote the work (compare ads in Southwest Art with appearing at a local art fair).

So is the work that is published better? If you believe that someone has to arbitrate taste, the answer in general is that published work is better because those qualified to judge work, based on experience and financial risk, say it is, but don't those publishing have a financial investment? Does that mean that they are independent? What is better must be what appeals to you. Come on, you know what you like!

If you compare, say, two similar landscapes of the same size from a published and a self published artist, both quality giclees on quality paper, one typically costs $1,000 or more and the other significantly less. One is found in a fine art gallery and the other is found at a lesser gallery, art fair, or on the Internet.

First, why does the published piece in the fine art gallery cost $1,000 to begin? It's all about overhead. You have two sets of expenses, one for the publisher for personnel, overhead, and promotion, and another for the gallery for rent, personnel, utilities, and promotion. By the time you are finished allocating overhead both to the initial publishing effort and the sales effort, money can't be made in today's "bricks and mortar" economy without a higher price point. A gallery is just rented wall space. "Keystones" (standard pricing) in the art industry are that the publisher sells to the gallery for 50% of the stated retail and the gallery sells to the public at least at full wholesale or more, if the artist or work is well promoted and sought after by the buying public.

On the other hand, the emerging artist has only their print cost. Their typical marketing outlets (i.e. art fairs, shows, public exhibits or the Internet) are not loaded with the type of overhead that is typical of art galleries. Let's say that the artist chooses to price the same size print for $250. Did you know that the typical published artists are paid less than 10% of wholesale sales for their sold print royalty?

Also, just for information sakes, a typical quality giclee costs less than $100 per print. Many cost half as much as that, depending on a great many factors. Some publishers have their own production plants, lowering costs. Serigraph editions can cost twice as much per print, depending on the number of screens. Art quality lithographs tend to cost less than serigraphs, but there are a lot of variables involved so it is difficult to be general about the subject of print making. Many collectors want only serigraphs. That is a notion created by the industry to obtain higher prices. Now, as giclees become the industry standard, serigraphs are not being produced as often and the emphasis has been made different. Just like any new technology, giclees were scorned originally, but now have become the norm. A bad serigraph is still not better than a good lithograph or any giclee. People tell you a lot about print making based on what they are told in a gallery or by fellow collecting friends, but the truth is that each image fits better in a certain category and that is what is typically produced. Another way to look at print making is that it is not always true that the greater the cost or the amount of hand work the more desirable is the print. The only way to truly tell is to see an image in all three mediums and decide which one is better. That never happens! Some artists are print makers, so their prints tend to have higher quality. Publishers are interested in both quality and making money so there balance usually goes to acceptable quality at the lowest cost.

Which is better for you, the buyer, to purchase the published item for $1,000 or the emerging artist item for $250? Isn't the answer the one you like and can afford? Is there any other answer? So, OK, it's like marriage, why not marry a rich one (one that can appreciate in value) rather than a poor one? Do we have to make money on everything? OK, so the answer is yes. Are you assured of making money with a published print from a major publisher?

When is it that you actually make money on print editions? When someone tells you your art is worth more or when you actually sell it? Until a print edition is completely sold, your art may appreciate when the distribution channel raises the suggested retail price. Isn't that a paper profit? When editions remain unsold, a retail buyer is competing against the gallery for the sale of art. I know that you trust me in making the statement that if you resold the print during this time to the same gallery that sold it to you, that they would pay you less than they could acquire it from the publisher (30-40% of retail). So, regardless of the "suggested retail", you can not make money on a print until you get a bone-fide offer from a third party for more than you paid for the item.

Only when an edition is completely sold, can continued demand cause appreciation. Only a small number of published artists have sufficient post-edition demand to create an active secondary market (the market created post edition by brokers, galleries, and other specialists in this after-market). Once there is an active secondary market, true appreciation is possible. However, in order to sell a piece of art, the owner typically pays generous commissions to a middleman, making profit more difficult for the owner. Also, there may be an active secondary market for the items this year, but what about 5 years from now. Hey, we are still not talking about museum quality artists for the most part (That is an entirely different story, having little to do with commercial success). Also, what do you think the effect might be if with a successful, published artist, the entire edition became available in the secondary market all at once?

What happens when an edition remains unsold for a long period of time? Having success in the secondary market is the only true measure of appreciation. Having editions costing more means nothing unless the after- market demand is there. After a while the artists loses strength and it becomes virtually impossible to sell the work at anything resembling the original issue price.

Successful artists tend to be prolific and their edition sizes tend to increase, as they become more successful. Success begets success except for creating the possibility that true appreciation may not occur due to having too much work to re-market.

I would be willing to bet that, given real art industry statistics, it would be true that most published prints have little to no after-market demand as a percentage of the total. That is not to mean that there have not been some spectacular short and long term appreciation for certain artists for their whole body of work and for some artists for certain images. The end result may be that most print editions depreciate over time, rather than the opposite. However, this does not mean that the prints are not fine quality, just that they are not investment art (or are they synonymous?). Buying a formerly expensive print on its downside constitutes a great "value".

Therefore, if one removes the financial consideration for buying art from the equation, that still leaves the issue of "expert advice" (i.e. the publishers and galleries know good art) as the principal reason for buying from them. I leave that up to you to determine. Not everything is better just because it is more expensive. Self-published artists have the same problem when they over price there work similar to those of fine galleries without any previous track record, promotion or overhead base. My father once told me that the difference between Leonardo da Vinci and Joe Smith is that Joe didn't have a good press agent. Self published artists (or emerging artists as the industry likes to call them) produce excellent work. It just isn't widely distributed or known. The Internet allows these artists to reach people who appreciate their fine work.

We have discussed price and art investment, but have not discussed where the art industry puts those who do not frequent galleries. The answer is poster shops. There is a great dichotomy! Either you buy your expensive print editions in a fine art gallery or you are consigned to the poster bin. There is nothing wrong with purchasing a poster, but why do so when affordable, high quality editions are available at or near the price of a poster.

Why is fine art not discounted. First of all, it is, but only on an "on sale basis". Second of all, publishers refuse to supply those who don't hold the suggested prices. Thirdly, art galleries can't cover their overheads discounting unless they have tremendous volume. Only those with little to no overhead (like Internet galleries) can afford to do this. Funny thing, how many full-time, discount Internet galleries are there?

At LeonARTo.com, we believe in selling quality affordable art. We acquire art from publishers and self-published artists with the thought of providing a similar gallery quality item at a less than gallery price. Most of the art we carry is priced under $500. Most are signed and numbered editions. Most is discounted. That is our credo and our mission. By the way, we also pay our artists more than most do as well. This is a "win-win situation" for all.

Thanks for your time!. We hope you found this statement informative.

Steven Kern, President
The voice of LeonARTo.com