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Home / News / Wonderful art from Southeast Asia, Giclee prints and other mischief (October 2012)

Wonderful art from Southeast Asia, Giclee prints and other mischief

October 2012

 

Angel by Asian Pairoj Karndee (Thailand)
Angel by Asian Pairoj Karndee (Thailand)


(More) Wonderful art from Southeast Asia – It's been an interesting few months in the UK, as well as travelling and meeting our established artists and endeavouring to discover someone who is looking at the world differently. It sounds an easy task, but it is proving very difficult.

The influences of major artists sometimes pervades the vision that younger ones have of their work. Rather than producing art based on original thought, they are producing highly influenced works that hamper their own creative development. Not just in Asia, this is everywhere.

Our latest "discovery", Pairoj Karndee (Thailand), has continued to produce very fine works, and we sold his most recent pieces even before getting them online.

In our view Pairoj will be a major contributor to the international awareness and growing popularity of Southeast Asian art.

He is producing a new series of Angels, of which we had taken delivery of the first two. But, within 3 hours, they were sold (see one of the artworks above, Angel, 90cm x 130cm). Sadly, no matter how good the images are online, they just don't come close to the quality when viewed in real life.

Are you interested in Pairoj's artworks? Please drop me a line.


"Limited edition" Giclee prints – Beware of "limited edition" Giclee prints. It is an oxymoron. Giclee prints are being offered more and more as a legitimate form of limited editions printmakers by some galleries.

  • The fact is that Giclee prints are produced on an ink jet printer. Yes, the type many of us have at home. Professional printers can accommodate larger sheets of paper, but the technique is identical: they reproduce a photographic image and have no relation to the accepted interpretation of a "limited edition" print.

  • The editions can be in the thousands. The printer can just keep printing these reproductions. Who then will guarantee that the print you have purchased is "limited"? At the push of a button another 200 or 20,000 can be printed off. Money can be a big temptation... particularly if it's so easy to make this way.

  • I have seen advertisements pushing the uniqueness (how could they be?) of these prints and the reassurance that they are "signed by the artist". These signatures, like the prints themselves, are almost valueless in this context.

  • Also, I have seen some advertised as being "artist's proof". Again, these are identical reproductions, so why would there even be a need for an artist's proof (AP) as there is in traditional printmaking?

This will eventually become a big problem for the sellers of such reproductions, as well as the artists who have allowed them to be sold as anything other than reproductions, let alone the end buyer who will have wasted their money.


Aboriginal art: other mischief – I have seen a number of artworks by a couple of major Aboriginal artists appearing on the market through, shall we say, not the main stream outlets, that are doubtful the works of the artist(s) named.

What's news about this? The fact is that these artworks are also being sold with an image of the artist signing them or with the paintings in question, but not painting them.

Recently, I was offered a quite beautiful painting attributed to an Aboriginal art legend, together with images of the artist with the painting and signing it. This lady is in her 80s and her paintings for many years have shown the frailty of her hands in the wobbly application of the paint. This painting showed none of this, and the colours were different from those she is known for.

A quick conversation with a person close to the artist confirmed that this work was most likely done by another member of the artist's family.

So, again, a word of caution: buy only from trusted establishments.


Happy collecting and don't hesitate to contact me.
Anthony Smith and the asart team


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Anthony Smith has been invited by Art Antiques Design to share his expertise about art in a series of articles:

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