[Baren} the mailing list / discussion forum for woodblock printmaking Baren Digest Monday, 29 May 2000 Volume 11 : Number1023 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gayle Wohlken Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 10:53:31 -0400 Subject: [Baren 9788] Re: Baren Digest V11 #1022 Arye asked: > A question: Is it ok to send you (Ex.#6 coordinator) the Ex/ > #6 prints? > Arye, I will be leaving here on Friday the First of June for a month. You can go ahead and send your prints if you desire. My son, Shane, will be here to receive them. I will be sending a message soon to everyone on Exchange #6 about this. * * * Welcome all new members. Gayle ------------------------------ From: Bella1yopp@aol.com Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 11:55:21 EDT Subject: [Baren 9789] subscriptions/editions ...and stuff Dave, That is a great system! Since I am mostly printing reductive prints it would not work so well for me. But I think that's a great system. Actually I am participating in a group printmaking show in conjunction with the University of Arizona and I've been struggling with the prices of my pieces. Yes, a limited edition, handprinted prints. Prints don't sell very well here in Tucson, AZ. There's more of a market for saguaro paintings. But with every show I struggle with the prices. I look towards my peers and see what they are charging and feel they are overpriced and not selling any prints. Then I do my own framing ... actually going to the lumber store and buying the wood and building a frame... I have a hard time calculating in that cost. So I guess and try to be consistent with past prices and try to sell atleast one of cover expenses. I want to one day to support myself off of my printmaking. But I was also thinking about picking up painting again in graduate school (I think it will help my printmaking). Just a dreamer, Amanda ------------------------------ From: Greg Robison Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 19:50:37 -0700 Subject: [Baren 9790] Re: Morals and editioning Kampala, 28 May 2000 Dave: I agree with you that "when you come to a clear philosophical stance on something, and then follow those principles in your daily activities, you...make plenty of headway." But that's only half of the question. The other half is that your philosophy has to be basically right, or all (or some) of the headway may be in the wrong direction. No end of grief and trouble is caused at the personal level -- and at the global level -- by philosophies that are simple, but not quite right. For example, you wrote that: > Maria says 'if you want to eat', but suppose for a minute that the only >type of print that was selling these days was the repro posters ... would you > then start making those? Don't your own standards come into the equation > here? Now let's leave aside for a moment that there never was a time, nor will there ever be one, when "the only type of print selling...[is] the repro posters." You did say, after all, let's "suppose." Still, by my lights at least, you draw exactly the wrong moral conclusion from this hypothetical situation. Surely the answer to the dilemma between starvation and making repro posters is to make repro posters. Yet you seem to imply the opposite. Do you expect the artist to come home to her family and say, "Bad news, kids: it's death by starvation. I'm sure you'll understand, because the alternative would be to sell repro posters, and I have my standards..." As an illustration of practical ethics, I guess your hypothetical case is not so silly. In a milder form, it's what artists deal with all the time. That's the real world, the world in which artists like Maria have to worry about the real problems of making enough money to support herself. You also wrote, continuing on the moral angle, that we are "recommending is that one should not follow his/her own moral compass." Wow! I know Maria didn't say that; did I? Moral decisions have to do with good and evil, right and wrong. Most of a printmaker's decisions aren't moral ones. They're esthetic, commercial, economic or technical. Morality may come into play with the message being conveyed. For example, does it incite hatred? Encourage despair? Entrench oppression or false, damaging ideas? Or, conversely, does it offer hope and bring the light of understanding to a viewer? Does it celebrate the beauty of this world? All of these things are arguably part of a possible moral dimension to printmaking. Less obviously, morality might be a factor if a person uses printmaking to avoid obligations (making prints instead of watching the kids, say). It might then even be possible to conclude that printmaking itself, at least for this person under these circumstances, is somehow mildly immoral. But to equate abandoning one's moral compass with "doing something that you don't want to do (or don't believe is right), simply in order to 'get the business'" is to paint with too broad a brush (carve with too big a knife?). Perhaps simple philosophies can only be expressed in broad, sweeping statements like this. But the real world is messy and complex. Obviously we shouldn't do what we know or think is morally wrong. Yet very often "doing what you don't want to do" is actually an inescapable part of the price for saving your marriage or job, doing right by your kids, advancing in the art, getting along with your neighbours, keeping your own body maintained... In other words, it's another word for all the little compromises we do to live in the world. We should be alert to the temptation of saying "the things I don't want to do are also simply morally wrong, and for this reason I won't do them!" This is solipsism, and it's the enemy of moral progress. Get a good friend, confidante, analyst or confessor to avoid this problem. But to get back to printmaking, you also wrote: > But when you sell prints with edition numbers, thus encouraging your > clients to think of them as an 'exclusive' product... A casual observer would be forgiven for thinking that your method is far more encouraging of 'exclusivity' than the custom of numbering prints, against which you have set your face. After all, numbering is not by its nature a creator of exclusivity. It can be interpreted that way by collectors, but in and of itself it simply provides data. And I have never known a buyer, otherwise indifferent about the quality of two prints, to say "I'll take that one because it's an edition of only 10, whereas that one's an edition of 20." I'm sure it happens, but it's the exception, not the rule. Nor have I known an artist to say, "this one's priced at twice the other because the edition was half the size." My guess is that most printmakers, most of the time, determine their edition size by many factors -- how many they think they can sell, how many they can make before they become exhausted or bored, how much paper they can afford, etc. -- but rarely by a desire to create a false exclusivity. Prints are bought and sold mostly as any work of art should be, that is, on their artistic merits. Your method, on the other hand, is exclusive by its very nature. Someone looking to buy a single print is simply turned away. It's like going to a country club and being told you can't play a round of golf unless you're a member -- and membership costs $5,000. It's disingenuous to say that you believe in modestly priced prints...and then force people to buy them by the gross. It's the same as if the country club said, "True, $5,000 seems like a lot to pay for the privilege of playing on our course, but if you use the club twice a week for the whole year, it turns out to be cheaper on a per-visit basis than paying green fees as you go at the public course..." This is intellectual sleight-of-hand. The real purpose is to keep out the "riff-raff." There is no question that working this way is easier on you, for all the reasons you mentioned. It's a method that many printmakers (but not all) would no doubt love to be able to use themselves, if they could. And it's one that I admire and talk about with respect and approval. (And my support is not just notional; I'm a subscriber.) It's ingenious and was invented at great personal cost to you. But I question its moral superiority over other methods. It's just a channel from producer to collector. Yikes! I've exceeded my word-count quota! Gregory Robison ------------------------------ From: "John and Michelle Morrell" Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 09:22:48 -0800 Subject: [Baren 9791] Editions It was my understanding that if an edition really went well and you wanted to do it again, you could reprint it as "edition #2" and write that in the same vicinity as where you write the print#/edition size #. Likewise, if you wanted to limit yourself to one edition of a print and you wanted to give some away without taking from that edition, you could write "proof for so-and-so" where you would normally pencil in the print#/edition size #. In any event, I have been doing this as I usually limit my editions to 30 or so because 1) I tire of printing them, and 2) I have no great optimism in getting rid of them! Re-carving the same image only slightly different to make yet another edition seems more tedium than I ever want to get into! I'd bet everyone here who paints has had someone say, gee, I really liked that one, can you paint me another just like it? I start to feel really queasy at that point! ------------------------------ From: "Maria Arango" Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 10:25:12 -0700 Subject: [Baren 9792] Re: friendly rebuttal Gee I just couldn't leave it alone, but there are some interesting points here: >but I do feel that your philosophy here > is a bit ... misguided ... I am being guided by my own beliefs, Dave, not by yours, so see, not misguided at all. > What you are both recommending is that one should not follow his/her own > moral compass, but simply accept 'that's the way things are'. Maria Now that's a bit silly and a bit insulting; of course not, I am a printmaker and an artist first, not merely a seller of prints. If I never sold another piece again I would still do woodcuts until my fingers fell off. > Any transaction of any sort, whether it be for a loaf of bread or a > woodblock print, must match the needs/desires of _both_ parties. If you Nobody is saying that we are doing something we don't want to do. I don't secretly believe that unlimited editions are either right or wrong, or that limiting an edition is either morally right or wrong. They are simply two different approaches to the art and craft of printmaking with long-lived historical traditions from two different schools. > But when you sell prints with edition numbers, thus encouraging your > clients to think of them as an 'exclusive' product (and thus one that You are also creating an 'exclusive' product by using only paper from Living Treasure papermakers, using shark-skin to soften your brushes, printing only by hand, using exclusively traditional methods and choosing traditional imagery, are you not? Are we then forced to think that you are 'artificially' inflating your prices, and that you are forming an exclusive club of collectors to increase the value of your prints now and in the future? I don't think so! But when doing reduction prints the reality of the limited edition is very real and when you use words like "artificially" and encase 'exclusive' in quotes it really is crystal clear what you are implying. Again, nobody here is doing anything that we don't believe is right and the answer to the question above is an emphatic, NO (or perhaps I should say: maybe according to your standards). We may perhaps be doing something that YOU don't think is right and that is certainly your prerogative. But you are imposing YOUR belief set onto the way I do things. I suppose we all do that to a point, we choose a particular way of doing things and try to berate other ways in order to reduce the cognitive dissonance between an elusive objective reality and the more subjective reality we have chosen. But everyone's subjective realities are different and an objective reality--the way things ought to be--doesn't really exist. It's okay by me that you do things the way you do, as long as it's okay by you for me to do things the way I choose. That last phrase shows that you are already beyond the point where 'having to eat' matters, which is really admirable in a world where so many artists fail. But don't forget the self doubt that you probably felt in earlier years. Some of us are just starting out and a specific formula-type of approach just doesn't work for me as it has so successfully for you and others in the group. Ju-nin To-iro? Health to all, Maria --------------------------- From: Graham Scholes Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 10:26:40 -0800 Subject: [Baren 9793] Re: subscriptions/editions ...and stuff Just a dreamer,Amanda wrote..... >Prints don't sell very well here in >Tucson, AZ. There's more of a market for saguaro paintings. >But with every show I struggle with the prices. I have some thought on the thread "editioning" and will be responding. The feedback from Greg, David, and Maria is all good stuff. Amanda's contribution is bottom line important to so many of us. Hopefully next week will see a few hours for me to put in my OR. Graham ------------------------------ From: "Daniel L. Dew" Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 14:19:18 -0400 Subject: [Baren 9794] Wow Last time discussions were this much fun was when we were discussing whether digital prints are really prints! Seriously, I made a decision a long time ago that my art would not be compromised by money, so I got a job far away from "art" that paid well. Right decision or wrong decision, who's to say? I enjoy my art for me and, ultimately, IMHO, that's it. Have we got a theme for exchange #7 yet? (how about a print that best describes were "you"live? mountain, by the sea, war zone...) Dave, have you ever considered, if there is an interest, in breaking exchanges into two mixed groups. i.e. say 60. Go down the list, you're in #1 group, you're in #2 group, kinda like, boy...girl, boy...girl, etc. Oh well, back to printing and having fun. dan dew. ------------------------------ From: "Philip Smith" Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 12:09:50 -0700 Subject: [Baren 9795] To Be or Not to Be...... When I was a lot younger I had high moral ideals on what an artist should and should not do. Things have changed over the years. I do what I have to do to continue working as an artist. Yes, most of my days are spent doing dribble for kids books for some doppy publisher somewhere,..but I do it so I have the opportunity to draw everyday. The main reason I like our group is that through all of you I have learned something. My soap box is smaller these days. I still feel strongly about a few things. Giving your work to a publisher gratis is one. I always like to think that everyone takes more pleasure in actually doing the work than worrying how it's sold. You want to make a poster great. You want to sell by subscription, perfect. Number them or don't number them, who really cares? I love drawing and good design. I love it when you hit that sweet spot in your work that makes you look and look again at your picture, and say, "Not bad, not bad at all", the rest of it is a lot of BS,...sell where you can, as much as you can,..keep afloat!!! That's the main thing!! I think that calls for a walk on the beach, a large sandwich and some cold milk. Chow, Philip ------------------------------ From: severn Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 08:14:43 +1000 Subject: [Baren 9796] making a living from prints - books Dave said >"I've been talking about this system for years now here on [Baren], but >I >have completely failed to convince anybody at all on any of my points >(open editions, reasonable prices and subscription sales)." Wrong Dave. You convinced me. What you are doing follows traditional methodologies doesn't it? By this I mean printmaking as it used to be when it was one of the master crafts used for disseminating pictorial information, before we had photography. Open editions and boxed sets were standard practice I think. It would quite a while and a lot of effort to build up the custom for subscription sets I would imagine. One of the library books I took on holiday was 'the art of japanese prints' by Nigel Cawthorne, Hamlyn ISBN 0 600 59124 7 It was very informative in an introductory sort of way about the whole thing. He outlines the type of prints produced over time and how governmental policy influenced what could be printed and in which style. Eg "The government (Kyoho era 1716-36) restricted the size of prints and colours used. Shunga pictures were outlawed altogether, on the grounds that they were a threat to public morality." The other parts of interest was the private lives of some of these men. Some went mad, (from pigment poisoning perhaps?), and one was married forty times. And he confirms that those garish colours we were discussing earlier arose from the nature of the pigments that were available at the time. He also mentions the Yoshiwara-makura, is this reproduced on the web anywhere? I'm also interested in locating the 'pillow book' that Peter Greenaway based his film on. Has anyone seen this film or can tell us about the book? I watched the film twice and am about due to watch it again. Somewhere in a box is another book on traditional woodblock printmaking which I acquired from a second hand shop. Its a fifties edition from memory. By a Japanese fellow. It contains samples of paper and one of his prints is included. There are b&w photos of methods throughout. When I find it I'll give you the name. Oh its a green cover. Now is that enough to identify the book? Its very cold (by our standards) here at the moment, and windy enough to blow the milk out of your tea. I think it has been snowing on John R down in Melbourne? Josephine Sydney, Australia ------------------------------ From: David Bull Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 08:27:48 +0900 Subject: [Baren 9797] Re: Morals and editioning Wonderful stuff in my Inbox this morning! I'm a bit concerned though, that I may have walked a bit too close to the line when trying to explain my (confused) thoughts in my post yesterday. Please understand that I do not in any way whatsoever think that somebody who chooses to do things in a different way from my own method is 'wrong' or 'immoral'. I used the word 'misguided' and perhaps that was clumsy (misguided even!) ... I have simply been trying to explain my _own_ feelings, thoughts, and ideas here. Maria and Greg are two of the people in this group for whom I have the highest respect, though I have never met them - I have 'seen' plenty ... *** I guess what I have been trying to say is perhaps something like this: The custom of using edition numbers on prints is not something that is 'natural' in a medium of mass reproduction. It was created in the not-too-far distant past by people who, when faced with the advent of new mechanical means of reproducing images (printing presses and photography), tried to find a method that would give their products a cachet of exclusivity, and that would distinguish their prints from ordinary 'printed matter'. For contemporary artists to simply follow that now- traditional pattern may, or may not, make sense. But I wanted people to be aware that numbering is simply a _habit_ that has become 'attached' to print-making, it is _not_ something fundamentally native to the medium. It is a good idea, I think, not just to blindly follow the habit, but to look at it, think about it, subject it to serious scrutiny, and then make your own decision as to whether to continue doing it, or to break off and discard the numbers. I think that what is actually happening though, is that nearly all printmakers do not go through this 'scrutiny' step, but simply do it because 'that's the way it's done'. Is that a bit better? Now where the 'morals' come into this (for _me_) is here: Now after going through such a scrutiny of the editioning process, _if_ one comes to the conclusion that "Hey, I think that the idea of numbering prints is fundamentally antithecal to the medium, and is only being done to try and increase the amount of money that changes hands." _and_ one then still goes ahead and puts the numbers on, _then_ one's motives become 'suspect', and we start to move closer and closer to what we see happening over in the poster sales shops, where getting the maximum $ is far more important than any artistic consideration ... What my post yesterday failed to emphasize, and for this I apologise, is the _if_ _and_ and _then_ aspect of this argument. *** _Now_ on to 'battle' ... (may I?) Greg wrote: > Surely the answer to the dilemma between starvation and > making repro posters is to make repro posters. Sorry Greg, I see this exactly the other way around. When faced between starvation and taking up a way of living that one feels is morally repugnant, one must simply choose the third option - go and be a window cleaner or something. Of course you can't let your kids starve. But that is _no excuse_ for doing something that you don't believe is right. I knew this right to the core when I quit my job 16 years ago and came here to try and 'cut it' as a printmaker. I knew from the beginning that I might not make it, and that I might end up as a translator of computer manuals or something. I had a lot of second thoughts along the way, you bet I did. When I started up my ten-year poets series and had the first exhibition, and had to watch plenty of people walk out the door shaking their heads in disgust because I wouldn't sell them one print ... Back at home those evenings during that exhibition (working on translations of computer manuals) I had _plenty_ of second thoughts. But I had gone through that scrutiny process I mentioned a moment ago, and the _if_ _and_ and _then_ was there staring me in the face. > That's the real world, the world in which artists like Maria > have to worry about the real problems of making enough money > to support herself. I too, live in this real world, and the week of that exhibition was one of the most 'real' times in my life. But I stuck with what I thought was the correct way to do things, and now, more than a decade later, things are moving along OK ... > We should be alert to the temptation of saying "the things I don't > want to do are also simply morally wrong, and for this reason I won't do them!" > This is solipsism, and it's the enemy of moral progress. I'll buy half of this point, but certainly not all. I would like to think that what I am doing is using your above phrase the other way 'round - "The things I think are morally wrong are the things I won't do." I _have_ given these things a great deal of thought; I'm not simply standing on a soapbox wagging my finger at people who do things differently from me. > Get a good friend, > confidante, analyst or confessor to avoid this problem. The first two I hope I have here on [Baren]. The third and fourth I have no interest in. :-) *** > There is no question that working this way is easier on you, for all the reasons > you mentioned. _Easier_ for me Greg? But my system which 'forces people to buy them by the gross' also means that I must _produce_ them by the gross! Ten 'surimono' prints this year ... 200 copies of each one ... an average of around 13 colours each ... This is 'easier for me' than making small limited editions at higher prices? During the years of my poets' series my 'formula' was 100 copies of each print, sold at 10,000 yen (around $100.). When it came time for the new series to start up, I _consciously_ decided to alter the proportion - I doubled the quantity to 200 copies, and I dropped the price down to 6,000 each (around $60.). When you factor in the vastly increased number of colours in these prints, I ended up increasing my work-load _three times_, while the revenue increased only 20%. Why did I do this insane thing? Because I want as _many people as possible_ to be able to enjoy these prints! You think my system is 'exclusive'? A printmaker who shipped out more than 2,500 prints last year is 'exclusive'? Your golf course analogy is misleading. It is the printmaker who charges $500 for a woodblock print who is the one trying to 'keep out the riff-raff'. I look through my list of subscribers and see that it is full of 'Mr. and Mrs. Suzuki' type people, and not 'corporate sponsors'. This is something that gives me great pleasure - the people who are collecting my work are people like _me_ ... who like these little scraps of paper, who like to support this kind of work, who love these things for what they are, and not for investment ... > Yikes! I've exceeded my word-count quota! Me too ... But boy, I have to add that trying to get these ideas across in (relatively) concise emails certainly makes one try and come to a clear understanding of one's thoughts. Thanks for the discussion gang, it's something that I don't get in my daily life here in suburban Tokyo ... Dave ------------------------------ From: David Bull Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 08:36:58 +0900 Subject: [Baren 9798] This just in ... Hey, this just in ... I could have saved it for next week's NewsFeed, but thought it was too 'neat' to wait. Go the the Encyclopedia 'Directory of Printmaker's on the Web' section, and check out the new entry from [Baren] lurker Mike Lyon ... http://woodblock.com ... the link is down near the bottom of the portal page ... Dave ------------------------------ From: Julio.Rodriguez@walgreens.com Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 18:58:32 -0500 Subject: [Baren 9799] The funny side of editioning.... Hey.....I just hope some day my prints are good enough were someone actually cares a hoot about wether I do them or not........ Lot of good discussion....some strong statements. I think I will step in an exercise one of my unwritten duties and declare a "draw". Next topic....hey, it's anyone editioning digital prints, yet ? What happens when you create a digital print but use two different printers to generate the output.....can that be called stale one and stale two ????? Julio ------------------------------ From: Julio.Rodriguez@walgreens.com Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 19:27:50 -0500 Subject: [Baren 9800] The funny side of editioning...State II Hey.....if after closing out an edition, woodblock artists cut up their blocks or hit them with a hammer to make them unprintable for future generations... what do digital artists do ? Drill a hole thru their floppies ? Julio ps. On a more serious note, there is an alert out on the web for a new virus just unleashed for the holiday weekend, It's disguised as an email labeled "Original Art", if opened....it searches thru your hard drive till it finds a jpeg image and then prints out 10,000 copies of it...labeling each one 1/10000, 2/10000, 3/10000......there's no way of stopping it as it rewrites the IDOEDI.TNS file in your hard drive ...and then it searches your email address book and sends out each person a copy of the virus with your name as sender and the subject..."Original Art work for sale....cheap!". Beware! ------------------------------ From: "Bill H. Ritchie, Jr" Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 17:55:11 -0700 Subject: [Baren 9801] Re: Morals and editioning These messages about editions, money, morals and whatnot are fascinating. As we drove home from seeing Cider House Rules, we talked about "the meaning of it all" and I think similar meanings apply here, too. IMHO, this afternoon: "The people who wright the rules don't have to live by them." ------------------------------ End of Baren Digest V11 #1023 *****************************