FEATURES ARCHIVE

Everyone is familiar with the term ‘print’, but it has so many different uses that it can be difficult to define– what is your view?
‘Print’ is such a useful word that people use it to describe a whole range of things, photographs, posters, in fact anything and everything printed. In general terms we define prints as original works of art created using one of the various print techniques. I have to admit that life is a little simpler for my French and German colleagues as they use specific terms such as Estampes and Druckgrafik.

Some of the world’s most successful painters are also important printmakers, a fact not widely known. Printmaking obviously gives them something they cannot find in other media – what do you think that is?
I think it has two major advantages. Firstly, in simple terms, the various printmaking techniques can be very inspiring to use. Many artists relish the opportunity to investigate the many weird and wonderful possibilities. Fundamentally art involves making marks, and printing adds a whole new repertoire, a whole new toolkit, to play with. Hockney is a great example – he has spent forty years mixing it up, even to the extent of using a humble office copier, and each new technique he tries pushes his creativity in new directions. A second advantage is that printing allows you to repeatedly change and modify an image, without having to start from scratch each time. This allows great freedom of expression and experimentation. Rembrandt particularly made the most of this. He would etch an image, then print it any number of different ways, perhaps very darkly, with lots of ink, or very cleanly, or maybe on an exotic type of paper. He loved the extent to which he could change things, sometimes subtly, sometimes radically, but because he was working from a metal plate he could keep printing and keep experimenting. In our sales we often have two impressions of the same image, but so different that each is unique. Comparing the two, wondering what the reasons were behind the differences, is fascinating.

Why is it that some artists are so closely identified with a particular technique? Andy Warhol’s name is synonymous with screenprints, for example.
Some artists love to experiment and try many techniques, others quickly settle upon one, and stick to it. Warhol is a good example of the latter. It is hard to imagine him working with anything else but screenprint. Some artists have an image in mind, but don’t need to get involved with the process – they are happy to leave it to a master printer to translate their ideas. Others love to get their hands dirty, to really understand how the image develops. For the relationship to work several things need to happen, the first being that the artist is comfortable technically with the way the print is made. I also think there needs to be a sympathetic relationship between technique and image. Warhol was all about the surface of things, with superficial popular culture, and screenprinting, developed for the packaging industry, with it broad areas of flat colour, perfectly expresses this philosophy. Toulouse-Lautrec, on the other hand, was a natural match with lithography. It is capable of beautiful, subtle tones which capture the ethereal life of Fin de siècle Paris. I just don’t think they would work as screenprints. When an artist works in a medium he loves and understands, the results can be truly wonderful.

Many people see prints as an ideal place to begin collecting art. Would you agree?
I would, but only up to a point. Because prints are generally less expensive than paintings and sculpture they tend to be more accessible to people just starting out as collectors. This has its advantages of course. If you develop a taste for Roy Lichtenstein you can buy superb examples of his work as a printmaker for a fraction of the cost of his oils – for example we have one of his great compositions, Shipboard Girl, in our April sale for £10,000-15,000. Where I disagree is the implication that after a certain point collectors should graduate to ‘real’ art. Given the subtlety and complexity of printmaking over the past five hundred years you could make an equally convincing case for moving from paintings to prints, rather than the other way around.