From the Pen of a Painter #1:

What is Known Today as "Hand Embellished"� by the Artist

Article #1 - What is Known Today as "Hand Embellished" by the Artist

With regard to the term "hand embellishment by the artist" it is worth precisely explaining this UNNECESSARY process which I call "the false artistic process which is the most fraudulent and stupid one in the industry of fine art prints." It was created solely and only to increase sales or to create a false and fictitious effect of an original and thus raise the prices and also the numbers of an edition and in the end increase the sales of an edition, since modern printing equipment made it possible to print on various substrates aside from the thousand year old traditional one of paper.

This phenomenon has its roots even before the retouching by Andy Warhol with acrylics on bad quality silk screens (serigraphs) left over after printing a whole high quality edition and before throwing away the trash consisting of proofs left over after the process of printing a limited edition. That is to say, in order to attain the quality needed, either technically or artistically, in a printed work, the artist has usually supervised or at least been involved with the process and the rest of the experimental proofs should be destroyed along with the plates from which the prints were created. This is what honest artists, printers and publishers do to respect the unwritten law or practices of graphic works, at least in the realm of fine art prints.

In fact, and to remain faithful to the history of art, this later use of proofs which were outside the limited edition is not as recent as, and even less an invention of Warhol in the 1960s, but rather much earlier. It goes back to the 17th century to our beloved and ill-treated Rembrandt and possibly a lot earlier than that. But we will use this great artist as our example, since he is so famous and the public in general easily recognizes his name.

Etching and Engraving

Rembrandt used to "retouch" his Etchings (intaglio print etched with acid) with what is known as dry point.

Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal (the original process - in modern manufacturing other chemicals may be used on other types of material). As an intaglio method of printmaking it is, along with engraving, the most important technique for old master prints, and remains widely used today.

In pure etching, a metal (usually copper, zinc or steel) plate is covered with a waxy ground which is resistant to acid. The artist then scratches off the ground with a pointed etching needle where he wants a line to appear in the finished piece, so exposing the bare metal. The échoppe, a tool with a slanted oval section is also used for "swelling" lines.

The plate is then dipped in a bath of acid, technically called the mordant (French for "biting") or etchant, or has acid washed over it.

The acid "bites" into the metal, where it is exposed, leaving behind lines sunk into the plate. The remaining ground is then cleaned off the plate. The plate is inked all over, and then the ink wiped off the surface, leaving only the ink in the etched lines.

The plate is then put through a high-pressure printing press together with a sheet of paper (often moistened to soften it). The paper picks up the ink from the etched lines, making a print. The process can be repeated many times; typically several hundred impressions (copies) could be printed before the plate shows much sign of wear. The work on the plate can also be added to by repeating the whole process; this creates an etching which exists in more than one state.

Etching has often been combined with other intaglio techniques such as engraving (e.g. Rembrandt) or aquatint (e.g. Goya). (Thanks to Wikipedia)

This, in very simple terms, is the technique of etching. This is different from an engraving. In the engraving process there is no use of acids. Instead the artist cuts directly into the metal plate with a burin (sharp pointed tool or chisel used by an engraver), in other words, dry, although the printing process itself is the same.

(a) etching needle

(b) scraper

(c) & (d) burnishers

(d) & (e) graver or burin

Well, our Rembrandt used to "scratch" or semi-engrave over those metals after they had been etched with acid and he had already pulled one or two preliminary proofs on paper. If he considered that the "drawing" would look better with some final touches (but without a new acid bath), which he normally did for heavy shading, he would scratch fine lines on the metal plate with a burin. This technique is known as drypoint. Then he would pull another print and so it would go on until the final result was to his satisfaction. The true experts in fine art printing and also art historians call this a "state" or phase of the printing and so we often see in specialized books on Rembrandt "Etching so-and-so, state II of IV" (or whatever it is).

Well, all that this has to do with the modern "hand embellishment" is that the process evolved in some ways from the 17th century, although Rembrandt did not retouch or draw or paint on the paper after it was printed but rather before the printing. He did not use a different printing method but a type of engraving after etching.

Now you already know much more about those ancient printmaking techniques.

We will move forward in time in the history of these techniques.

Lithography

Goya, in the 18th and 19th centuries used to retouch his lithographs in ink, after they were printed in black and white, especially in his series Tauromaquia.

Now we arrive at our beloved and creative Henri de Toulouse Lautrec at the end of the 19th century. This extraordinary artist was one of the pioneers and developers of what we now call "advertising posters" if he wasn't the first. His famous lithographic posters include the one of Aristide Bruant and those of the Moulin Rouge among others, all in color.

Lithography today

Serigraphy

We arrive in our summary to what today we call "serigraphy", a fairly quick way to produce a colored print.

Do not confuse the two methods, serigraphy and lithography.

HERE finally we arrive at what Andy Warhol developed in the 1960s which is related to the subject of this article, Hand Embellishment, or rather, a retouching after the printing on the paper or other substrate. Warhol would give these prints a few brushstrokes of paint to artistically emphasize or distort, according to his own artistic vision, and in this way created a whole new and completely different work of art, unique and higher in value. This was for two reasons: first the manual involvement of the artist in a piece supposedly made or derived from a series of identical prints; second, as soon as that piece from within a series in which all the prints should supposedly be more or less the same as the other prints in the same edition, in this case the retouched piece is immediately transformed into what is known as "a unique artwork" which does not have a series number. In other words, you wouldn't write on the lower left of the sheet 1 of x, 2, of x, 3 of x, 4/x, 35/75, etc. as one usually would with a regular limited edition.

It is therefore a work of art with unique variations and derived from a limited edition. In other words, as a direct reverse of making a limited edition of prints from a unique work and derived from that original work, this time we will create a unique work derived from a series of non-unique limited edition prints.

Therefore, what is called today "hand embellishment" is something quite similar to Warhol's retouching but with two major fundamental differences. First is that all these "hand embellished" retouchings on these (later) prints are made to be the same from one to the next in the series, taking care that the retouching is in the same place and of the same color on all the pieces. In this there is no improvisation as there was in the works of Warhol, but rather the same retouching is imitated on all the pieces in the series. Secondly, and the most important difference, is that in fact the artist hardly ever involves himself in the process of this retouching, but rather it is done by assistants or most of the time by people whom the artist doesn't even know, contracted especially for this work by the publishers or the artist's rep.

Usually from the instructions or preliminary samples left by the artist to those assistants, publishers or printers, after the third piece done by them (the embellisher) there is nothing left of the artist's original instructions but rather a rough, coarse and badly done retouching which has usually greatly harmed the original image due to the speed and lack of care in which it was done, and even worse, without the personal supervision of the artist himself. The result of this harmful process can be seen in the majority of the retouched prints called Hand Embellished and the only purpose of this type of series or derivative of the original series is only to create a false product with an apparently higher value, based on the supposed but hardly ever true fact that the "artist" retouched them personally, which hardly ever happens. This is a process of interference which in my opinion is the most ridiculous, harmful and fraudulent that exists today in the framework of derivatives and limited editions of fine art prints.

Dear collectors and art lovers, don’t be fooled. I hope you will find this short article useful not only to you but also to artists.

In future articles I will expand on these processes which I personally call, "The phenomenon of a sausage cut into thin slices which will produce more profit than a hundred whole sausages" so that once and for all the public can receive first hand from a professional artist an explanation of the subject and can understand what all this means, and so that the public finally has a clearer concept of what a "Limited Edition" is and thinks twice before buying one of these strange extensions to series.

It will also be good for the health and reputation of the fine arts print industry to also explain the "phenomenon" of the incomprehensible extensions to a supposedly limited edition, "honest" ones of which don't exceed 350 per series, and the strange new sub-nomenclature invented solely to expand underhandedly the edition with the end of selling more. And I will also, in passing, make known the fascinating tricks which today can be done with the highly efficient and technically advanced ink jet printers using supposedly indelible inks combined with good graphic editing software and an operator who has imagination and technical skill and some experience with antiquing paper, using heavy plate presses and so on.

Also, so that the public can acquire some knowledge of how an inversion of a photograph of an old engraving can be used to create a new metal or plastic master so that a new "plate" can be created and thus a false edition of antique engravings can be presented to the public which are in fact no more than cheap forgeries. Also how today it is easy to extract an artist's signature from a simple photo of an original work of art and, using sophisticated technology, print it on new prints and thus create the false impression that it is an original signature by that artist, and thousands of other tricks of falsification within the realm of what is called today, Fine Art Multiples or Prints.

After all, a forgery of a tiny Rembrandt etching can be sold for much more money than a forged $100 bill. That really IS a lucrative market!!

Don't be fooled by lying conmen!!

— by a Concerned Artist  |  February 19, 2010

Discuss on FAR® Forum   |   Print   |  

back to top