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January 1, 2008 - Cleveland, Ohio - Many people on the internet that are selling art prints like to use the term giclée in selling their print quality. One need look no further than Wikipedia for the true meaning of giclée. It is a print made from a digital source using ink jet printing. I took part in a debate over the term giclée and one of the people in the debate said it was French for Kinkos and that in a sarcastic way is true. The ink jet prints you can get from Kinkos could be called giclée.

Giclée was a term coined in the early 90's for prints produced from a digital source by spraying ink from a nozzle using an Iris Printer instead of rollers in an offset process. It in fact did produce higher quality prints with much finer detail, at the time. As we all know since the early 90's digital technology and digital ink jet printers have exploded with better quality and finer detail. The ink jet printer you have on your desk may well produce better quality than the original Iris Printers.

The use of the term giclée implies better quality. Use of any ink jet printer could qualify for using the term. Any additional quality that you might not get using your home or office ink jet printer or in a "giclée" print would be from the inks used. Because someone uses the term giclée does NOT mean they are using high quality archival inks that won't fade. A giclée print says nothing about the material the print is printed on.

It has been and is the policy of DOUGLAS Art Prints® and DOUGLAS Modern Art Prints™ not to use the term giclée because we find it deceptive. We spell out and clearly state that our prints are all produced from 100% gallery quality archival materials, archival inks and papers.

One might wonder why someone would use a term like giclée when the term was coined for a technology that is now oudated and for what could now be a common ink jet print, from Kinkos.

Investing in art for your home or office is an investment in your personal environment first. Art contributes a great deal to the atmosphere you live in. In the case of art it isn't solely the subject of the art itself.

One can invest a relatively small amount in a poster print reproduction of a Picasso. If you display it in the often available inexpensive mass produced frame it will look like a framed poster.

One can invest in a Picasso poster print and then invest in a professional frame. Unless your extremely wealthy no one would expect you to own an original Picasso so a print would be most acceptable. The poster print may be a temporary viable alternative. If you know anyone who collects say movie posters, you will know they go to great effort to prevent the rapid fading and the rapid yellowing that occurs. If you are displaying what is clearly a poster, say a movie poster, the fading and yellowing is something one would expect to see. In the case of a Picasso print the fading and yellowing of a poster is not. In a matter of just a few months your Picasso print may look like an aging poster in maybe an expensive frame.

The print shown as it would appear in a 22.5 in. X 16.5 in. frame.

Click on the print for a larger view

The print shown as it would appear in a 22.5 in. X 16.5 in. frame.

Click on the print for a larger view

Failure in Iraq is failure for The United States of America. A failure we will pay for for generations to come. History makes that clear.

We must support the fine Americans who have volunteered to risk their lives in honor of this nation and help them WIN this war in Iraq and the war on terror. Our lives and the lives of our children and our childrens children depend on them.

I have had 2 prints designed to honor the men and women of our military. I have reintroduced having these images available to download and print your own for free. There is also a discount for the current and former members of our military and their families who would like to have one of our professionally printed archival prints.

The print with text has "The United States of America Land of the Free Because of the Brave" lightly printed over the image of the soldier in Iraq.

These prints, as are all of our prints, is 100% art gallery archival quality. They will not yellow or fade for over 100 years if displayed properly. The prints are all produced at the time of the order and each print is hand signed and numbered by Douglas.

There are more than 200 original Douglas contemporary art prints / modern art prints to select from. Everything from wine to nudes to Harley Davidsons to barn doors.

Some people denigrate the art coming from digital photographs and being generated from a computer. For decades some refused to consider photographs as art. That is no longer the case.

Let's take the photo art of the famous Ansel Adams that we have all seen. Mr. Adams would spend hours or even days manipulating his original photograph into the final art we know today. He used the tools he had available at the time, his camera and his darkroom. He had to talent to see art through his camera as well as the talent to take his original image and manipulate it into something special in his darkroom.

Andy Warhol was a very talented graphic artist. That isn't what he became famous for. Andy Warhol is famous for Polaroid pictures. Photographs that he manipulated through the use of silk screening to produce his final works.

Ansel Adams and Andy Warhol became famous because they manipulated photographs using the tools they had at the time. The truth be told many artists work from photographs or even project photographs onto a canvas and copy them using paints or pencils. Don't think for a nano second that if Ansel Adams and Andy Warhol had the computer technology they wouldn't have used it.

In fact odds are that unless you have the money to buy an original painting the print you buy is digital art. The original was scanned by a computer, turned into a digital image and the prints were produced by a computer. Unless it is an original that painting you have hanging on the wall is a digital image.

If you don't care for the art that's fine. Don't discount it's value because it is digitally manipulated digital photographs.

As a commercial photographer I get paid to manipulate the photographs you see in ads.