What is a Giclée print?

[Bruce Watson]

And is it any better than a Canon i9900 print with Tetenal Fine Art Glossy paper?

Edit: Also, what is the best 8x10 print from a 4x5? What type of printer?

http://www.dpandi.com/DAPTTF/glossary.html#G

[Walter Calahan]

Inkjet, when someone wants to put on the airs that it is something "special".

Marketing BS.

[tim atherton]

Most of the prints you see called giclee were made in the 1990s. Back then high quality inkjet printers were very expensive and were used mostly for commercial purposes. Artists had to go to a print shop or service bureau to get inkjet prints made. Giclee became synonymous with art prints made from these expensive commercial machines. The name fell out of favor (at least in this country) when the printing technology became cheaper and more widely available.

and Giclee print = Iris print. See http://www.largeformatphotography.in...-printing.html
Not the inkjet printer you have in your office (even if it is a 9800).

that used to be the case. It's now become synonymous in a certain a type of gallery and/or print shop with (mainly) inkjet reproductions of or artists work, such as paintings - or with inkjet prints of the work or artists who work directly n digital.

The term is actually used very widely now (as humorously objectionable as the term is) - I bet if you went down to your local gallery area where the work sells in the $50 - $250 range you would see tons of giclees for sale.

I seem to recall it's main actual use in French (it's was not an everyday word) as as a veterinary term for squirt or spurt... (or ejaculate)

[robc]

What's In a Name: The Story of Giclée

One thing that became quickly apparent to the early digital pioneers was the lack of a proper name to describe the prints they were making. By the close of the 1980s, IRIS printers were installed all over the world and spinning off full-color proofs in commercial printing plants and pre-press shops. These prints were used to check color and get client approvals before starting the main print run. They definitely were not meant to last or to be displayed on anyone's walls. Most people called them "IRIS prints," or "IRIS proofs," or, more simply, "IRISes."

However, this wasn't good enough for the new digital printmakers like Maryann Doe of Harvest Productions and Jack Duganne, who was the first printmaker (after David Coons) at Nash Editions. They wanted to draw a distinction between the beautiful prints they were laboring over and the utilitarian proofs the commercial printers were cranking out. Just like artist Robert Rauschenberg did when he came up with the term "combines" for his new assemblage art, they needed a new label, or, in marketing terms, a "brand identity." The makers of digital art needed a word of their own.

And, in 1991, they got it. Duganne had to come up with a print-medium description for a mailer announcing California artist Diane Bartz' upcoming show. He wanted to stay away from words like "computer" or "digital" because of the negative connotations the art world attached to the new medium. Taking a cue from the French word for inkjet (jet d'encre), Duganne opened his pocket Larousse and searched for a word that was generic enough to cover most inkjet technologies at the time and hopefully into the future. He focused on the nozzle, which most printers used. In French, that was le gicleur. What inkjet nozzles do is spray ink, so looking up French verbs for "to spray," he found gicler, which literally means "to squirt, spurt, or spray." The feminine noun version of the verb is (la) giclée, (pronounced "zhee-clay") or "that which is sprayed or squirted." An industry moniker was born.

However, the controversy started immediately. Graham Nash and Mac Holbert had come up with "digigraph," which was close to "serigraph" and "photograph." The photographers liked that. But, the artists and printmakers doing reproductions had adopted "giclée," and the term soon became a synonym for "an art print made on an IRIS inkjet printer."

Today, "giclée" has become established with traditional media artists, and some photographers. But many photographers and other digital artists have not accepted it, using, instead, labels such as "original digital prints," "inkjet prints," "pigment prints," or "(substitute the name of your print process) prints."

For many artists, the debate over "giclée" continues. Some object to its suggestive, French slang meaning ("spurt"). Others believe it is still too closely linked to the IRIS printer or to the reproduction market. And some feel that it is just too pretentious. But, for many, the term "giclée" has become part of the printmaking landscape; a generic word, like Kleenex, that has evolved into a broader term that describes any high-quality, digitally produced, fine-art print.

One problem, of course, is that when a term becomes too broad, it loses its ability to describe a specific thing. At that point, it stops being a good marketing label and make no mistake about it, "giclée" is a marketing term. When everything is a giclée, the art world gets confused, and the process starts all over again with people coming up with new labels.

This is exactly what happened when a new group formed in 2001--the Giclée Printers Association (GPA)--and came up with its own standards and its own term: "Tru Giclée." The GPA is concerned with reproduction printing only, and its printmaker members must meet nine standards or principles in order for them (and their customers) to display the Tru Giclée logo.

In 2003, recognizing that only a small number of printmakers could meet the requirements of Tru Giclée, the GPA instituted a lower-threshold standard, "Tru Décor," which applies to the much larger decor-art market.

Others have also jumped on the giclée bandwagon with such variations as Platinum Giclée (Jonathan Penney's term for his black-and-white printmaking process), Canvas Photo Giclée (a California photo printmaking shop), and Heritage Giclée (Staples Fine Art's trademarked term for their brand of giclée printmaking).


giclée (zhee-clay) n. 1. a type of digital fine-art print. 2. Most often associated with reproductions; a giclée is a multiple print or exact copy of an original work of art that was created by conventional means (painting, drawing, etc.) and then reproduced digitally, typically via inkjet printing. First use in this context by Jack Duganne in 1991, Los Angeles, California.

[Frank Petronio]

Back in the day, you could go to Jon Cone's studio and he would make squirt prints with specially modified Iris pre-press proofers, into which he inserted a vaccum cleaner head to suck up the dust from the artist's papers. At the time Jon was a printmaker who printed editions using traditional methods. He also made a mint with a NYC gallery in the go-go 80s, so he bought this farm estate in Vermont.

Another guy, good old whats-his-name, worked with the musician Graham Nash (of Crosby, Stills and Nash), to do the same thing. I don't know who was first but the company they formed, Nash Editions, got a lot of PR from the name recogonition.

Both guys worked their asses off to perfect the process. Neither fully succeeded but I think they made some nice money. Around 97-98 there were about 100 people who started Glicee service bureaus using either Cone or Nash modified $100,000 Iris proofers and special artist's inks.

The problem was that the Iris printer was a very expensive piece of gear to maintain -- the service contract was a couple grand per month -- and folks were trying to move 300mb files around with Ethernet and Mac Quadras. It was frustrating.

I still have a Iris print from 1991 hanging in indirect light in my garage. It looks pretty damn good except for where I dinged the aluminum plate I permanently mounted it to when I slammed it into the tailgate of my car.

I also have some gliceee prints squirted onto thin rolled sheets of tin, which were then sealed and mounted onto plywood. They are 8 years old and holding up fine.

In 1995 I bought a smaller Iris that sold for $50K in 1992 for $12K. I used it for 3-4 years and then had to sell it for parts for $1500.

I don't know of anyone still running an Iris Glicee type printer except for Nash Editions. They probably have a warehouse full of parts to keep theirs going.

Even Jon Cone gave up on it. He now runs an operation called inkjetmall.com and tries to sell people expensive Epson inks for "piezography" (his branded greyscale printing process.)

[Frank Petronio]

RobC beat me -- great minds think alike

[tim atherton]

I don't know of anyone still running an Iris Glicee type printer except for Nash Editions. They probably have a warehouse full of parts to keep theirs going.

I think I read an email by Nash saying they had stopped using the Iris?

[tim atherton]

http://digitaljournalist.org/issue01...interviews.htm



http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0105/nash_intro.htm

[robc]

It seems to me that in the digital age with the immeidacy of the web, anyone who tries to invent a new marketing term to try and enhance the perception of their work, is destined to failure since the derivation of the term will be `anal`ysed by all and sundry, thereby rendering it pretentious.

Just be honest and call them what they are, inkjet prints. If you try and ponce them up with pretentious names you only do yourself a diservice. (or maybe not).

[Jon Shiu]

What do you think of the term "Ultrachrome Print"? Sort of analogous to silver gelatin print, I think, but more commercial. I guess you would have to put a little trademark symbol by it.

Jon Shiu
Elk, California