Giclee... Huh? What is "Giclee"??

One of the terms used in the art world, particularly regarding digital fine-art, is "Giclee" (pronounced "Zee-clay").

Giclee comes from the French word "giclée" and means a spray or a spurt of liquid. The term is specifically used to indicate prints created typically using professional 8-Color to 12-Color ink-jet printers. Among the manufacturers of these printers are Epson, MacDermid Colorspan, & Hewlett-Packard. These modern technology printers are capable of producing incredibly detailed prints for both the fine art and photographic markets. Giclee prints are sometimes referred to as Iris prints, which are a printer pioneered by Iris Graphics, and now owned by Scitex.

I use a Scitex Iris printer to produce the prints on graffitipix.com.

The quality of the giclee print rivals traditional silver-halide and gelatin printing processes and is commonly found in museums, art galleries, and photographic galleries.

Numerous examples of giclee prints can be found in New York City at the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Chelsea Galleries. Recent auctions of giclee prints have fetched $10,800 for Annie Leibovitz, $9,600 for Chuck Close, and $22,800 for Wolfgang Tillmans (April 23/24 2004, Photographs, New York, Phillips de Pury & Company.)

More about printing next post...

Molly

Creating good prints Part I

I spend my days creating prints of graffiti. I term them "museum-quality prints". Prints of graffiti? Huh??

Yeah, my business sells art prints, the kind you put on the wall in your living room, dorm room, bed room, waiting room... and they happen to be of graffiti.

Basically, I take, or acquire, photographs of graffiti art that I like. That's the easy part. Turning them into "museum-quality prints" is a little more involved. I'll start Part I of this by defining "museum-quality prints":

First, what constitutes a print? In art-land, a print is usually actually a "re-print", meaning it was created from the original, it is not the original itself. There are lots of different types of prints i.e. lithographs, photo prints, canvas prints, etc. Generally though, a print is a reproduction of an original.

Now, a 75 cent color copy from Kinko's qualifies as a "print". It would not, however, qualify as "museum-quality"! In the art-world, the term "museum-quality" generally refers to the quality of the medium, whether it's photo paper, canvas, etc., the quality of the ink or pigment, the quality of the process i.e. lithography, photography, etc., and the "fastness" or longevity of the piece.

Without going into each and every possibility, I'll focus on photo prints, the most popular prints we carry. First, the medium: the paper itself. While the term 'photo' is misleading in this case as they are not done using a photographic process, the paper is termed photo paper. As you can imagine, there are varying grades. To qualify as museum-quality, the paper should be at least 240 g/m - this the weight of the paper. Higher numbers indicate heavier paper, lower numbers lighter, flimsier paper (we use 270 g/m paper). Next, the fastness, or longevity. As with the ink or pigment, the paper is rated on how long it keeps it's original characteristics i.e. resistance to fading, yellowing, etc. Museum-quality would be considered "archival", meaning under normal circumstances, it will look the way it did the day it was produced for at least 40 years.

Ok, to sum it up, creating "museum-quality prints" means they are produced on high-quality, heavy media, and using media and inks, that are "archival" - they will look the same way after hanging on the wall for at least 40 years.

Next entry: the mechanics, or how a photograph of graffiti is turned into a print you can hang.

Molly