I’m releasing my version of 21st century etchings with a series of reproductions of my latest most recent etchings produced here at my atelier. These will be printed on high-grade photo paper to get ALL the nuances of the originals, without the danger of them being used as counterfeits — the back clearly reads “photo paper”.
The print itself is $25, a fair price for a signed-and-dated-in-the-plate graphic multiple, if my memory of the art market serves me right. I will float-mount your print in a double mat board, and mount it for you in one of my finest museum-grade heavyweight 6″ wide hand-carved gilded hardwood frames for an additional $650, or in a lightweight custom frame at only $125 for the entire framing job — both framing jobs do not include the cost of the artwork — I have to pay folks to do these jobs, and fair wages is fair wages. It isn’t easy to frame a work of art — both Robbert and I have done it, at the rate of hundreds of pieces a week, and believe it, the pay is scarcely enough to cover the personal cost.
You can order a LIMITED EDITION print on handmade 17th century type “Dover” paper, made for 400 years by an unbroken line of family paper-makers. The paper is valued at $150 a full sheet at today’s rare paper market prices, and was $30 a sheet wholesale back in 1987, when it was obtained from the factory in England where it had been made many years earlier.
The paper is laid linen and is watermarked with the Dover watermarks and lines. It is totally archival and contains no acids whatever. It is the exact paper that Rembrandt often used.
Paper in the time of Rembrandt, the mid 1600s, was rare and expensive, and he took advantage of this to buy an entire shipload of paper and thus control the cost of paper for his print business and at the same time to corner the market on paper, which made him rich for a while, but what artist dies with money in the bank?
If you said “Picasso”, you were only half right. Almost every well-known artist from Marc Chagall to Andy Warhol, if he can be called an artist, died with money in the bank. Some, such as Vincent van Gogh, gained posthumous wealth and fame — that means they were dead at the time — which is the best way to achieve wealth and fame, so you’re not bothered with pesky business associates. Would you want to spend most of your time talking with your stock broker, your lawyer and your accountant?
You would not be reading this, if you were the type of person who only invited their business clients and associates to their parties, in order to take advantage of the small tax allowances made for such expenses?
Rembrandt was a painter of portraits, landscapes, animals and still-life studies of fruits and vegetables set out in a strong side light and boy, did he ever do religious subjects, knowing how popular they would be, just like Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash milked the religious crowd with their pee-salms.
But painting was not where Rembrandt Harmenzoon van Rijn — known as “Rembrandt” — made his money … just his fame.
“Reputation, reputation, reputation,” moans Gene Wilder as Young Frankenstein, and had he been an artist and not a mad scientist, he’d have been right. Reputation is important, if you have repeat customers. IMAGE: Mortuary on city street, with sign that reads “We Bury Any Body”. Smaller sign in window reads: “walk-ins welcome”. You’ll soon see that Lin Larsen cartoon on our cartoon page on IDHHB’s website, I’m hoping.
Rembrandt was a print dealer. He made almost all of his money speculating on his own prints, often buying them back at auction to raise the prices of all similar etchings, a practice carried on as a tradition by several very public art dealers at Sotheby’s and Christie auctions. I could name names, but they’re dead now, so what’s the point?
No point sending original professional cartoons to the New Yorker anymore. They only buy from those they know, same old story. You have to know someone to get into their club, and that’ll cost ya. So what was I saying about Rembrandt??? Oh, yes… now I remember…
Rembrandt was a print dealer. He operated a print gallery, and he regularly bought and sold etchings and woodcuts — his own, and those of other artists. He ran an art school, accepted some apprentices in the painting and printing departments, and operated a full-scale fairly modern art gallery & print boutique.
Rembrandt also painted portraits of rich and famous people, and made “CDV” prints for them, “Cartes de Visite”, visiting cards, for those rich and famous folks to leave, at the envy of all who received them, when they saw with their own eyes that the great Rembrandt had actually done their etched portrait for their CDV!!! This was one-upsmanship to the enth degree back in the 17th century, believe you me!
You could have me do a portrait of you for your CDV, but they don’t accept them anymore, and I don’t do windows or facebook. Of course, I only tell people that AFTER they slip me a fiver, and it’s only a few minutes ’til the end of the world and all that money will be useless when the Vogons blow the planet away to make room for a small local off-ramp leading to the EMPIRE MALL where my friends Darth & Son run a small poetry book store.
So I better get to the point before breakfast is in my face and I’m led off to the stage for the morning show on new.livestream.com.
Okay, here it is: There are a whole bunch of newly-discovered high-density scans of my earlier artworks, and I’m back into making small etching blocks — and all of them plus more that I made back in the 1940s and 1950s, we’re making into VERY AFFORDABLE and really beautifully made high-density color prints, so if you’ve always wanted to own an art gallery, now you’ll be able to do it.
The trick to great prints is to print them in “millions of colors” high density photo-paper prints, that reproduce the FEEL of the original and the EXACT LOOK & COLOR of the original down to microscopic level.
We own all the rights, of course, so we can make them cheap if we want to, and we do.
And Plus Also in Addition, we’re looking at all of our Grass Valley Graphics Group images to see what else we can offer in the way of art prints that you can resell. Oh, yes, I almost forgot to mention that that’s the whole point of this, to offer you wholesale and distributor prices on my art prints so you can generate extra income on the side or as a full business operation.
The real money in art galleries is not the profit on the art work, but the extreme profit on the framing, and if you’re smart, you’ll turn it into a full-home and business re-modelling job as a decorator, designer & interior arts consultant.
You probably don’t know that I make monumental sized artworks for entertainment venues, mostly jazz clubs, theaters and a few jazz museums, but I also create sculptures that are 20 feet tall and more, but need no engineered support, yet are made of sculpted metal.
The etchings are typically apartment-sized, small enough to make an easy fit in a tiny New York apartment or London flat, yet can be framed to make a very important statement on a large wall — I can show you how to achieve this, and will demonstrate it at this weekend’s workshop.
If you’re not interested in this project at all, don’t contact me to tell me so. I’ll be on the phone with those who are.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby