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Limited Edition Prints
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Robert Longo
Couple Dancing , 1996
Lithograph on Guarro Paper.
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One of the main reasons for the development of printmaking was the desire of artists to make more money from their work by selling multiple copies; printmaking satisfies this motive. Much early printmaking consisted only of copying existing works of art, and was considered then as posters are considered now: a downmarket version of a great work. From the 18th century on, though, artists commonly pursued printmaking as the primary medium for some or all of their work.
Prints by artists today retain their financial value as art (i.e., as an appreciating investment) because they are created by an artistic process rather than by a strictly mechanical one, and because the number of multiples is limited. Plates can be reworked and restored to some degree, but it is generally not possible to create more than a thousand prints from any process except lithography. A few hundred is a more practical upper limit, and even that allows for significant variation in the quality of the image.
Because of the variation in quality, lower-numbered prints in an edition are sometimes favored as superior, especially with older works where the image was struck until the plate wore out. In later times, printmakers recognized the value of limiting the size of an edition and explicitly numbering the prints (e.g., a print numbered 15/30 is the fifteenth print in an edition of 30). With printmaking earning respect as a legitimate medium in its own right, the printing of editions with tight controls on the process to limit or eliminate variation in quality has become the norm. Nowadays, prints are not only released in small editions and the plate is usually cancelled afterwards: marked or destroyed to explicitly prevent any more prints from being struck. This is an expectation of collectors and investors, who want the prints they buy to retain their value.
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