An Analysis of the Creation and Marketing of Art Prints

The mass marketing of fine art reproductions and art prints directed at multiple collectors has been a heavily debated topic since its inception in the late Nineteenth Century. The development of lithography in 1798 by Alois Senefelder created the potential for making duplicate art creations; however, it took another one hundred years of extensive technical developments before quality reproductions could be produced.

These advancements in lithography merged with a growing awareness by art dealers that an untapped (and highly profitable) new art market had opened up, whereas a piece of fine art could be sold over and over, exponentially inflating both dealer & artist profits and exposure, which drew in even more collectors from across America and Europe.

The intrinsic value of an art print, and its subsequent appreciation in financial value, was a happenstance occurrence that came with the almost immediate induction of limited edition prints: I am sure the dealers would have been tickled to create endless runs of art prints based on each popular original in their possession, but technical limitations (the copper and zinc printing plates gradually wore down) forced a production limit, as eventually the quality of each print deteriorated.

Except in rare cases, an art print never has and never will have the high collectible value of an original painting and the use of limited editions (typically a run of 1,000 prints or less and each individually numbered) offsets this problem to a degree by creating inflated value using the age-old marketing strategy of supply versus demand. There is a segment of the population who will buy an art print simply because they enjoy the look of that particular piece and want to hang it on their wall for personal enjoyment. The rest consider themselves modest or serious art collectors and desire a piece that they not only visually appreciate, but has investment potential.

It is human nature to strive to possess something your art prints posters do not, and this desire can only be filled by offering your clients objects of exclusivity and scarcity: In this case, ending a print run at a certain point and selling those numbered prints as limited editions. It should go without saying that the smaller the edition, the more valuable the series: Less is more in this case. It is up to the individual artist to weigh potential financial gain against distribution numbers and decide on a reasonable & appealing total number of prints to release in each edition.

Modern Twenty-First Century technology has muddied the waters a bit, merging the once distinct lithographic quality art print into the realm of art reproduction. Originally balked at by purists, artwork recreated using high-end ink-jet printers has finally come into its own, now widely accepted by both the public and art dealers because of its understood practicality and the extreme level of artistic detail rendered. Again, to maintain its appeal and create intrinsic value & investment potential, the artists rely on the practice of limited editions.