The first time I ever saw a giclee print I was in a very upscale art gallery in Miami, Florida.  The least expensive one was selling for $17,000.00 and some went up as high as in the $30,000.00 range.

I’d never heard of giclee and thought it was a different type of medium.  The paintings exhibited were great and I was in awe of the many talented works that I observed.  I didn’t want to show my ignorance, so I asked no question about them.  However, I stared at the paintings trying to see if there was some special something about them that would make giclee a better medium than I was using.  I found it odd that this magic medium appeared as oil, acrylic, and watercolor, depending on the painting.  Again not to appear as ignorant as I obviously was, I asked no questions.

As soon as I got back to my hotel, I called my brother long distance.  “What is the medium, giclee?”  I immediately asked.

“It’s zzzzsssshhhh(pause)klaaaaeee”  He responded, drawling out the word.  “Not a painting medium.  It’s a print.”  I was baffled. I couldn’t believe it.  Could prints no matter how limited sell for that much money?

The next day I returned back to the gallery and talked to the owner.  He was very helpful, and explained the signed and numbered giclee prints in his gallery were much more than a print.  The original artists had gone in and touched up their prints, making each print in its own way an original.

It turned out that these were very popular, known, and demanded artists that sold their original paintings for much more than the giclee prints.  He said in the case of some of the artists his gallery featured that the giclees sold for roughly ten percent of the originals.

I was impressed.

I’ll talk more about the process of giclee printing in a future blog.