The definition of ‘original’ print that I work to is two-fold: -
- the work should be conceived for the medium in which it is to be produced, (so no copies of paintings etc.), and
- the work should be carried out by the artist in person. or under their close supervision, (so no consignment printing where an order is placed and the picture is printed and delivered without the artist ever having seen it.)
Note there is nothing in there about the size of the edition. To me this makes sense. If I wanted to spend the rest of my life printing the same image in an edition of 250,000, each print made by me personally, then so long as the matrix held up, each and every one of those prints would still be an original. It would not make commercial sense of course, (although there are any number of artists who appear to make quite a decent living essentially painting the same thing for years!) There is however no physical characteristic, that makes the 26th or 51st or 251st or even 250,000th print, so long as still made by me, any less an original. Of course if I said it was an edition of 25 and actually produced 50, that would be dishonest, but that is a different question.
It has been said to me many times that a digital print cannot be an original simply because it would be possible to produce an unlimited number of copies. That however applies to several other print processes. Screenprinting is used to make vast numbers of printed boxes and other products, solar etching is used to make millions of printed circuit boards. In both cases the technical aspects of the process allow for large numbers of prints without deterioration in quality. For the argument that sheer quantity makes a difference we must look for some other, deeper, reason. Walter Benjamin in his essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” argued that the "sphere of authenticity is outside the technical" so that the original artwork is independent of the copy, yet through the act of reproduction something is taken from the original by changing its context. He also introduces the idea of the "aura" of a work and its absence in a reproduction. Can this argument be extended to cover the case of large numbers of technically original pieces? Does the knowledge that there are say 20,000 copies of a work change our view of it as opposed to a knowledge that there are only 10?
The answer to that lies I think partly in psychology. In some way with large edition sizes perhaps we lose that sense of ‘specialness’ that we get with a unique work or with a small edition. It may even be something like Benjamin’s ‘aura’. In any case something seems affects our judgement, in ways that are different to the economic laws of supply and demand that affect price. Even there though , what we might call the ‘brand value’ of the artist’s name, which must surely be a part of this ‘aura’ if it exists, will affect how much the price of a print varies with edition size.
Returning to the question of a digital print, in trying to establish whether we should be selling in a large edition it seems likely that there is some functional relationship between the price of a work, and the editions size. Algebraically, expressed, if the value of a unique work by a given artist is £x,(in other words an edition size of 1) then the value of a multiple will be discounted by some factor. For an edition size up to say 25 this might be 90%, i.e. each print will be sold for only £0.1x. Assuming the whole edition sells the overall value though would be £2.5x, so providing an increased income to the artist (ignoring for the moment commission fees, extra cost of materials etc.). For large edition sizes, approaching say 500, the discount will be greater perhaps 99% i.e. each print would be sold for only £0.01x, in which case the overall return would only be £0.5x. Of course there is no absolute way to quantify these discount factors. Every artist must develop a feel for who form their market, and for how those buyers would be affected by the existence of large editions. My feeling is that for very large editions the difference in price between a limited edition and a completely open edition is so small, there is no point in trying to claim ‘original’ status, for all the difficulties this might cause.
So, in essence, digital prints are technically original, even in very large editions, but other, perhaps psychological factors affect our judgment in such cases and we lose the sense of being special associated with smaller editions. As to why this is so, one possibility is that similar same factors are coming to bear as in social relationships. There is a concept in anthropology called Dunbar’s Number, which suggests that groups above a size between 100 and 250, (the median number of friends on Facebook is 100) stable relationships cannot be maintained. Perhaps in a similar way we cannot maintain our sense of a special relationship with an object created in large quantities. This is highly speculative and is to some extent contradicted by the many products aimed into the ‘collectibles’ market such as Lilliput Lane.
How do you set an edition size? Is it based on money or some concept of creating something ‘special’. Let me know in the comments.
