Giclee Art Prints

Giclee art prints can get your collecting juices flowing.

You might even find collecting giclees to be addictive.

There are several reasons for this.

• The reproductive quality of a giclee print
• The longevity of a print
• The reasonable cost of most giclees
• The wide, and growing, inventory of giclee prints

Let's take those attributes one at a time.

First, there's no other reproductive process that provides results as near to the original as a giclee art print. The process involves special inkjet printers - two quantum leaps ahead of the ones you can buy at Circuit City. They have at least six ink cartridges that spray an almost continuous palette through a slow line-at-a-time process. Larger prints may need an hour's run. In addition the substrates used to reproduce museum-quality giclees are produced to be color neutural.

Most lithography-produced reproductions fade relatively quickly. But the specially formulated inks used for giclee reproductions have been rated at five to seven decades before fading is discerned. (Since giclee have only been around for two decadesl, these are estimates based on accelerated testing.)

Giclee art prints are generally more expensive than lithography-produced prints, but certainly much less expensive than original oils or watercolors. Giclees bring fine art into homes and offices that rival the originals in color vibrancy. You can get giclee prints reproduced on fine paper or on artist canvas. Artists may product a limited edition of a particular work, and they will naturally be more expensive than open edition prints. But even so, a giclee will be priced somewhere around a tenth of the price if the original was to be sold. The price range for most giclees can begin around $25 and range into the thousands.

Giclee prints are a way that artists can leverage a particular piece of art, and many more are doing so because giclees are becoming more accepted and popular with collectors, designers and even museums. Yes, MoMA And the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art have giclee prints in their collections. in addition, many of the masters of earlier times are available today in giclee form. They are usually made from the originals and authorized by the museums in which they reside.

So whether you're new to art collecting or just need a really fine piece to accent a special room, look at giclee art prints as an economical and high-quality solution.