Jonathan Sobel not happy with William Eggleston's latest marketing move.

[Drew Wiley]

Jay - I obviously have not seen anything that's being marketed at this moment, but have
seen various digital restrikes (technically the wrong term, I know...) of older work. The shoe just doesn't fit. This is my subjective opinion, of course. But Eggleston's classic work
was off-the-cuff snapshooting. The better reproductions were dye transfer, which landed
the color and matched the relatively low quantity of detail present - it pretty much kept the rough edginess of the work intact. Lightjet C prints (which I have seen) just respond
with a "thud" for me. Too much capacity for detail which simply isn't there - and significant enlargement just creates a cheap decor look. Not like a mystical little image in
a portfolio box. And C prints have no real permanence advantage over dye transfer unless
open display is involved, which pretty much discounts the "investment" value of either.
Maybe a really good inkjet printer could keep the general look intact, but it depends on the
specific hues. I found Eggleston's medium format work especially disappointing - neither
fish nor fowl. He really needed zero onto something simple and arcane to hit the nail on the head. 35mm was ideal.

[John Kasaian]

Pictures of sad clowns, or kids with big droopy eyes are my kind of Art. IMHO those Hamms beer signs with the waves in the lake that look like they move really kick @$$ Velvet Elvis, not so cool (but I'm a tough critic!)

[Drew Wiley]

Just redux one of those Hamm's signs twenty feet across and put it in the Miami Pop Art
fair with a twenty million dollar price tag, or take a photograph of that black velvet Elvis
rug and ask fifty grand for it - can't be any worse than a photo of a billboard. Winning is largely the art of the bluff, and not art of the eye, just as in poker.

[Jay DeFehr]

Just redux one of those Hamm's signs twenty feet across and put it in the Miami Pop Art
fair with a twenty million dollar price tag, or take a photograph of that black velvet Elvis
rug and ask fifty grand for it - can't be any worse than a photo of a billboard. Winning is largely the art of the bluff, and not art of the eye, just as in poker.

I think there is an element of game theory involved in these kinds of payoffs, but I don't think poker is the best analogy for the game, which seems to have more in common with the category of games in which discovering the rules of the game is part of the game play. Poker would be more difficult if one didn't know if two Aces beats a straight flush, or the other way around, and even more so if your opponents did know.

[Drew Wiley]

The difference in this case is that you get to invent the rules of the game. But not much
sheer statistical chance to it. You need 250K min for a booth space and a well recognized
dealership. Need to know your potential clients. Everyone knows it's an esthetic con with winners and losers, but it can't be a business con. Have to have an established reputation for delivering the goods. Sorta a closed-loop highbrow thing for people willing to gamble big, but who are otherwise just excercising their right to conspicuous consumption. But it is a game. Once an artist loses collectable momentum, the house of cards falls. Not many are going to have recognized value in the long run. Fortunately, a lot of color photography will just plain fade. Going archival is not always a good thing.

[Drew Wiley]

Slightly different perspective on it - in his old age nearing death, Dali was signing stacks
of unprinted paper before even being lithographed. It infuriated collectors because they
thought it would make the value of their own collection fall. But the truth all along is that
these mass-produced reproductions were virtually worthless anyway. You go into some
Fisherman's Wharf tourist gallery, plop down a couple grand for a fancy Dali poster, which
is probably worth less than the frame itself. The dealer paid about fifteen bucks for it. If
you want to "invest" in Dali, you need hundreds of thousand of dollars to play with, or way more, and won't waste time on reproductions, signed or not.

[Moopheus]

Slightly different perspective on it - in his old age nearing death, Dali was signing stacks
of unprinted paper before even being lithographed.

I did a limited edition book where I sent the author endsheets to sign. There were a small stack left over after production. A few years ago, he passed on, but I still have the extra sheets. Someday they might be wanted. I know of editions done for a deceased author where signatures were cut from cancelled checks and pasted into the books.

This is one way, I suppose, where it is easier to deal with dead artists; the amount of work that has come from their own hands is fixed by time.

[Drew Wiley]

Hard to know what the truth was concerning Dali - but at the time the mere rumor (and it
did move fast) of him signing blank sheets caused a panic. But it is known he signed his name to tens of thousands of pieces, many relatively worthless. In this case he was obviously a deservedly recognized painter; but the casual "collector" probably didn't even know the difference between a lithograph and mass-produced photolithograph. At one time
the Wall St Journal ran an article pointing out naive collecting as one of the worst forms
of investment there is - in that case they were specifically referring to Kincade, whose stuff has already collapsed in value. No mystery there.

[John Kasaian]

Few things stinks worse than a dead Artist.

[Drew Wiley]

I don't know about that, John. I can remember a few hundred times driving past that muddy feedlot across the road from Little Table Mtn, on the Madera Co side of the River.
When I was young, a couple of the young cowboys who lived there would daily board the
school bus, and the other kids would sure be pulling the windows open!