The Secret Life of Original Prints (entry by Roger H. Boulet)
Author's note: Years ago I wrote a little text which pretty well sums up my enthusiasm for prints. I was then Director and Curator of the Burnaby Art Gallery, near Vancouver, and published the following article in the Gallery's newsletter which was then called NewsPrints. The article appeared in the Vol. 1, No. 1 issue, December 1984, and was written in the context of an exhibition called the "B.C. Printmakers' Showcase" which was actually an exhibition also designed to promote (unabashedly!) the purchase and collection of prints ...
The collection and enjoyment of fine, original artists prints has been with us for some time, yet the misunderstanding that persists about printmaking and printmakers seems to relegate editioned fine prints to a limbo between the common crafts and the so-called "fine" arts, such as painting or sculpture and everything else in between... There persists an attitude that an original print must hold its own against these supposedly loftier forms of art if it is to ascend to the heights of Parnassus... Prints are matted and framed and become just another form of "wall art", a decorative appendage to a living space, subtly reminding all who view it that its owner is a person of chique, culture and taste...
Yet to me, the enjoyment of prints is a more personal experience, a very intimate experience and one that is denied visitors to a public gallery (such as the Burnaby Art Gallery)... In interest of their preservation, they are protected from the touching and the handling, - the feeling... But I like to feel prints, I confess it openly... I love the feel of the paper, the richness of the impressed inks, be they the velvety blacks of a drypoint or the subtle colour nuances of polychrome prints. Really, the best way to enjoy prints is to be seated at a table with a Solander box full of them, silently sliding a print aside as its contemplation is complete...
Prints do possess qualities unique to them. Ink is not paint; its range of colours seems infinitely more varied and interesting. Ink can become one with the paper that absorbed it or it can appear to float lightly on it, or on another layer of ink. Ink can be richly textured, or so sparse and incisive that it appears to cut the paper. It can make the light of the white paper burst forth, or filter it with veils of silken colours, or eclipse it entirely... Ink can shine or shimmer, or lie flat and still.
A printed line can be feather-like, chalk-like, brush-like, knife-like - life-like! Papers can be hard and cold, soft and tissue-like, textured and cloth-like; it can caress your hand or cut it! Paper is the life of a print, or its shroud...
The fact that this work of art consists of several originals is a matter of comfort to me: I can acquire a print without feeling selfish. To be the sole proprietor of a work of art puts more distance between it and its owner, as its uniqueness makes it all the more precious - to be enshrined and made untouchable, inviolate. I like to feel that an artist's print is a shared experience: I can show my prints to others, they can show me theirs, and the fact that twenty people enjoy the same print I enjoy makes me feel a little less egotistical about having it. I take pleasure in the fact that prints, being less expensive than one-of-a-kind items, can be collected. I can own a greater variety of works, both historical and contemporary, and, with a bit of thought, if I must have prints on the wall, I can have different ones up at any given time, so that I need not tire of any one. Once I have enjoyed one for awhile, I can put it away until I want to see it again...
This to me is the advantage of prints: they offer variety, and a good collection can be assembled at the same cost of acquiring an original with which I may become all too familiar all too soon. Prints yield their secrets only little by little with the growth of the collector's knowledge and sensitivity to their unique qualities, qualities specific to the processes that have been utilized in their making... A fine print is unique and can rarely be replicated in any other form!
The art market quite understandably perpetuates the belief that the rarity of a work of art should be met by a rare price, destined as it is for that rare person who has both taste and wealth. Yet the artistic value of a work of art has nothing to do with its rarity, and nothing at all to do with its so-called "investment" value... The real value of visual art lies in its ability to move us, or to make us wonder, or to satisfy a mysterious and ever changing aesthetic sense. Quite happily the material used by an artist when he brings forth this reaction from us is really immaterial... and it can therefore exist singly or in multiples. When the methods and materials are part of the process of its creation, the print is not lessened by its multiples, but is really and severally enhanced.
As you walk through an exhibition such as our B.C. Printmakers' Showcase - 1984, 1 hope you will enjoy yourself. I hope you can feel the prints at least with your eyes, if not with your hands, and I hope you will covet one or several... The selection of the prints has been done with you in mind rather than with any particular adherence to peculiar aesthetics, or to "the latest thing"... Look and enjoy, and remember that it is not entirely unexpected that you will love some prints, and hate others...
Do remember what Goethe said: "Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking."
The man would have delighted in organizing exhibitions...
Roger H. Boulet