Prints for Prince Charles highlight art controversy

Press, 31 March 1981, Page 17

Prints for Prince Charles highlight art controversy

By

GARRY ARTHUR

The choice of two drawings by the Thames artist, Rei Hamon, as gifts for Prince Charles when he visits Rotorua on April 6 shows how widely accepted reproductions have now become as “works of art.” When the Queen last visited New Zealand, in 1977, the Government presented her with the original drawing of Rei Hamon’s “Jewels of Okarito.” But the two pictures —• “The Kokako” and “The Huia” — which Tasman Pulp and Paper Companv has bought for Prince Charles are not the original drawings. Prince Charles will be one of 2000 owners of each of Hamon’s reproductions.

Ail 2000 copies of “The Kokako” have now been sold, says the artist’s brother, Noel Hamon, who runs the Hamon Gallery in Wellington. They cost $l5O each. “The Huia,” which comes out this week, will cost between $230 and $250, and all 2000 copies have been pre-or-dered.

Although the news item announcing these gifts described them as “original lithographs” by Rei Hamon, his brother is careful to point out that they are not original works of lithography. Rei Hamon drew the originals, using his now wellknown pointillist method of building up the picture dot by dot in pen and ink, but he knows nothing about printing, Noel Hamon says. The •printing plates were professionally made in Wellington and the pictures were printed commercially by Whitcoulls.

Prince Charles will be presented with No. 1 of each limited edition. All are numbered and signed by the artist. “He comes down and the plates are destroyed in front of a J.P.,” Noel Hamon says. “When the printing is finished I take them up to Thames and he sits there

with his accountant and signs them.” The originals, which Noel Hamon values at $45,000 in the case of “The Kokako”and $BO,OOO in the case of “The Huia,” are owned by the artist. “Rei doesn’t want to sell them,” his brother adds. The distinction between an original print and a reproduction is at the heart of a row that has grown in recent years between artists who hand-print limited editions of their own work and businessmen who machine-print limited editions of an artist’s work. In essence, the pictures to be given to Prince Charles are no more original prints than the colour reproductions anyone can buy of works by Rembrandt or Van Gogh. However, several New Zealand entrepreneurs, including Rei Hamon himself, have managed to build up such an aura of value around their commercially-printed reproductions that they are able to sell them at prices that often far exceed those asked by artist print-makers for original prints.

They say ‘ that they will appreciate in value, and that they are an investment. As evidence of this, Noel Hamon says he has bought back some copies of “The Kokako” (sold originally at $150) and resold two of them in the last month for $BOO each, framed. The Tasman Gallery in Christchurch has one for sale, too — at $925, framed. So it seems that because of the marketing skill of the reproduction entrepreneurs, the public has decided that such reproductions are a good investment. The art world, however, takes a sour view of such works. Art critics and art historians have described commercially printed art reproductions as being worth little more than the paper they are printed on. The “Consumer,” j'ournal of the Consumer -Council, recently cautioned its members that while the prices asked imply that such reproductions are valuable, “yet they are no more intrinsically valuable than any other reproduction — which is its

production costs and anv profit mark-ups. “To quite an extent it is the artist’s signature on the reproduction that is being sold. The whole idea of limited editions for reproductions is a selling strategy aimed at justifying the price being charged, because the technique is capable of producing hundreds of thousands of reproductions with no loss of quality.” Raymond Ching is another well-known New Zealand artist whose works are reproduced commercially in limited editions. Reproductions of his work were advertised for sale last year at prices ranging from $l5O to $225. Another is the Central Otago painter, Grahame Sydney, who was the subject of a recent “Kaleidoscope” programme on television. Commercially printed reproductions of one of his egg tempera paintings, “Auripo Road,” are offered for sale at the Tasman Gallery in Christchurch for $B5, unframed.

A notice describes the reproduction as an "original limited edition print,” but the gallery says the word “original’’ is a mistake on the part of the signwriter. It is not an original print, because it is not the original work of the artist. It is a reproduction printed mechanically from a printing plate prepared from a photograph of the original work of art. Sir Ronald Scott, whose Small Gallery deals in original prints, says the Customs Department’s definition of a genuine original print is one for which the artist has made the printing plate himself without mechanical assistance. Prints meeting that criterion are allowed into New Zealand without an import licence and are dutyfree.