Technical Matters

A Picasso for $14?

Collecting, Signatures, Technical Matters

  Check out the ABC News story for which yours truly was interviewed, “A Picasso for $14? Ohio Man Buys Print in Thrift Store”. Well, I guess I’m just not satisfied with 15 seconds of fame–I’d like to catapult to 20! So here’s what the kind journalist edited out of my comments. Despite all the problems with the poster, and particularly with the signature, that she quoted in that story, the journalist made it sound like I had concluded the signature was fake and maybe even the linocut. Actuallly, all in all, I imagine that the print is real, the red signature was distorted photographically to give it a pinkish hue, and it is just an unusually unevenly faded but […]

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Fading

Collecting, Technical Matters

I’ve belatedly considered that it might be useful to indicate here when I’ve updated any of the Collecting Guides.  Well, perhaps you might like to know that  I’ve just expanded the discussion on the fading of prints, which you could find in the “Collecting Pitfalls” chapter of The Guide to Collecting Picasso’s Prints, just a little ways down from the top….

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THE MINIATURE PICASSO COLLECTOR’S CORNER

Collecting, Technical Matters

There are those collectors who love the art no matter how small, and there are those who won’t look at a piece if it doesn’t reach a certain size.  This “column” is for the former.  Having addressed the merits of collecting small art works before, I would now like to further the discussion by drawing your attention to two highlights of this spring auction season.  They demonstrate both the highs and lows of collecting miniature Picassos.  Well, just the current high, not the real highs—some of those were most recently sold a couple of years ago (see Does Size Matter?). First the low: the 1919 gouache and pencil, Nature morte à la guitare that went for a giveaway 60,000 Euro

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Window Treatment

Technical Matters / 2 Comments

I am home having film applied to the windows. I ended up getting a newer type that is made by 3M. It is more expensive but has no metal in it to interfere with cell and all other wireless stuff…. a problem in our apartment building. It is also slightly brighter but filters all the bad stuff just as well. -Heidi M.

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Artist’s Proofs

Picasso and Printmaking, Technical Matters

Question: Can you tell me something about the fact that [the print in which I’m interested] is one of the artist’s proofs? Does that mean that because it isn’t numbered it is of less value than the rest of the edition? -Judith C. Response: Most of Picasso’s prints were released in editions of 50, with a small number (usually 5 to 20) artist’s proofs. An edition of 50 would be numbered 1/50 to 50/50 by a hand other than Picasso’s. Whereas the artist’s proofs bore no numbers, they were usually inscribed with the words “epreuve d’artiste”, also by another hand. There are certainly no hard and fast rules about the relative value of artist’s proofs. Some dealers will accord a

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