How to Defraud Art With a Giclee

Giglee is a fancy name for a reproduction of original art on paper or on canvas.  Learn how giclee prints will give a bad name to art reproduction in the near future.

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 Steps

1. 1
   Take a fine art giclee print
2. 2
   Use a jewelers loupe or magnifying glass
3. 3
   Look closely at the giclee art print
4. 4
   You will find a multitude of little dots such as the ones seen from a photocopier
5. 5
   Compare the giclee print to the original
6. 6
   The original is a unique piece of art that took more than just hitting a few buttons on a computer to make the giclee "artwork"
7. 7
   You can now differentiate between real art and the giclee reproduction

Tips

• Avoid buying Giclee art if it is labeled as original art. That is fraud. If you purchase Giclee art, be aware it's a print and that it's an archival printing process. Signed, numbered, limited edition archival art prints are collectibles priced quite lower than an original painting by that artist. For many styles of art which may take months to produce, the limited edition prints are what makes it possible for the artist to live on the work. Could you pay $25,000 for the painting that took six months to create? Probably not - but if you pay $150 or $200 for a limited edition print, you can enjoy that rare, beautiful, high quality limited image.
• Be sure the print is actually Giclee. Giclee is a high resolution, high accuracy archival reproduction process usually done on archival all-rag paper. If you can compare it with the original you can see the quality of the print. If you become knowledgeable about prints and print conservation, you can spot frauds. If you take a signed, limited edition print to an appraiser, he or she can tell you if it's what the artist or dealer says it is or a cheaper imitation.
• Giclee prints are only relatively cheap to create. They take several hundred dollars to produce a small print run, as opposed to older methods of creating archival prints that demanded a $2,000 pre-production color separation. This is a technological advance in high quality printing that has reduced the overhead for artists, but any signed, limited edition print is a valuable collectible that is somewhere between "cheap prints" like a $25 poster and original artworks.
• When buying art, buy artwork that involve "process" such as oil paintings, engravings, etchings, drawings and watercolors. Etchings, linoleum block prints, woodcuts, intaglio prints, all the "print making" processes are not called Limited Edition prints. The physical prints pulled off the lithograph stone, wood block or engraver's press is called an Original Print and is a type of original art even though there is usually a short run of original copies. The plate or block or stone will wear down until more impressions can't be made. Limited Edition Giclee Prints can be made from Original Prints and will cost less than the Original Prints.
• Signed and Numbered Limited Edition Prints will all have these things in common: there is a set specific number of them, from maybe 25 or 50 up to a thousand or two. Each of them is hand numbered by the artist and signed with a pencil. A smaller, much smaller number of Artist's Proofs can be made in the process of getting the prints right - color corrected and so forth. At least one of those Artist's Proofs will be accurate and correct. These are also collectibles and often kept or given by the artist as gifts rather than sold. They're valuable later in an artist's career.
• Prints that are not made with archival inks and high quality artist grade paper (usually also 100% rag paper but not always) are less valuable and less durable. With some fugitive art mediums, where the original paint may fade in a few years, the Limited Edition Signed and Numbered Archival Prints may be the most durable form of the art. Some artists use Giclee and other archival printing processes to work in paint and inks that are not lightfast or durable, treating the prints as the originals. Because Giclee prints can be produced in unlimited quantity from a digital image, they will usually do them as a Limited Edition.
• Unlimited edition prints such as posters, cards, cheap prints, calendar pages and "prints" at much lower prices do not have the collectible value or the durability of Archival Signed and Numbered Limited Edition Prints. Watch for those terms. You can get a beautiful image cheap and directly pay the artist for unlimited edition prints at a low cost, which is also a way to support your favorite artists.

Warnings

• Don't be fooled by commercial claims to high quality fine art reproduction that giclee companies advertize. 
• The word itself means "spit" in french or "spurt" in obscene vocabulary.  For this reason alone one would not want to put a giclee to decorate their walls.