Giclee
Giclee (jee-klay): The French word “giclée” is a feminine noun that means a spray or a spurt of liquid. The word was probably derived from the French verb “gicler” meaning “to squirt”. The term “giclee print” describes an elevation in printmaking technology. Images are immensely high resolution digital scans printed with archival quality inks onto various media including canvas, fine art and photo-base paper. The giclee printing process now provides better colour accuracy than virtually all other means of reproduction. Giclee printing outperforms traditional silver-halide and gelatin printing processes and is commonly found in museums, art galleries and photographic galleries. Many museums throughout the world have exhibited giclées prints including The Metropolitan Museum of New York, The Los Angeles County Museum, The British Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
There are also many examples of art collectors reproducing expensive paintings and drawings as giclee prints, and thus safely storing the originals. It is very difficult for the casual observer to notice the difference between the two. giclee prints (sometimes mistakenly referred to as an “Iris”, which is a print from a 4-Colour InkJet printer line, pioneered in the late 1970’s by Iris Graphics) are advantageous to artists who do not wish to mass produce their work, but want to reproduce their art as needed, or on-demand. Once an image is digitally archived, additional reproductions can be made with minimal effort and reasonable cost; the up-front expense of mass production is eliminated. Another tremendous advantage of giclee printing is that images can be reproduced to almost any size and onto various media, giving the artist the ability to customize prints for a specific client.
Giclee prints are created typically using high-end 8-Colour to 12-Colour printers. Among the manufacturers of these printers are vanguards such as Epson, MacDermid Colorspan and Hewlett-Packard. These state-of-the-art printers are capable of producing astonishingly detailed imagery for the fine art market. Giclee is accepted by the Fine Art Guild and, if the correct media and inks are used, prints are colour-fast for over 75 years. Giclee printing has now attained absolute superiority in the reproduction of fine art, and so it is little wonder that paintings and drawings in this medium have become so highly collectable.
Many artist may then paint over parts of the giclées print using oil paint to create a more authentic reproduction. These reproductions are then signed and numbered by the artist.
