Page 47 - Studio International - September 1973

The life and costs. Prints are still cheap to produce — the medals, usually in separate gold, silver and
bronze editions, was recently displayed in a
principal outlay is the artist's fee, but spread
death of the over an edition of 75, let alone the 200 or more charming exhibition at the Goldsmiths' Hall.
Commemorative objects, whether in precious
being printed by some of the newer agencies,
metals, cast metals or pottery and china are
multiple the cost per unit is low. So are the possible increasingly offered to the public. A typical
liabilities — there are no costly tools or moulds
required, nor is it necessary to become example is 'The Benjamin Britten Royal Derby
Charles Spencer
involved in expensive industrial processes, Service' to mark the composer's sixtieth
warehousing, or elaborate forms of packaging. birthday on 22 November 1973 and promoted
Secondly the marketing of artists' prints by the Aldeburgh Festival. The service
If the multiples movement is not dying, it is utilizes existing channels. Multiples, on the consists of fourteen pieces, twelve nine-and-a-
brilliantly enacting a Genet-like version of the other hand, bound up with a desire to produce half inch plates and two eleven-and-a-half inch
last rites. Recalling the enthusiasm of dealers, good art objects at a low price, require large bowls, each bearing a design 'in colour and 24
publishers and artists for a new industrialized editions and a more commercial outlet. Once carat gold representing one of Britten's operas
art form, a new channel for the involvement of art objects are produced in large numbers they with, on the reverse, a musical quotation signed
a wide public in art experience, it is difficult fail to attract the normal art-buying public, by Britten and a brief note signed by Peter
to see what went wrong. We were provided, and the margins, whilst possibly suitable for a Pears'. The service costs £350.
in many parts of the world, with large large store, are commercially unattractive to a This public, however, has not been
assemblies of objects and designs destined to Bond Street dealer. In other words, the converted to any similar involvement with art
give artists a new social role, and art an multiples movement in Britain has failed for multiples, i.e. objects which are not merely
egalitarian link with society. After all, through lack of investment and commercial outlet. The decorative, functional or commemorative. The
the popular media, especially television and publishers or agencies which have tried to efforts to do so have been half-hearted or
the colour supplements, let alone radio, promote multiples have lacked these facilities, ludicrous. When the Tate Gallery celebrated its
gramophone records, stereo and the cinema, just as they have lacked the industrial know- seventy-fifth anniversary last year it published
almost all the other art forms have finally how. Thus they and the artists have been at three fabric kites designed by Gordon House,
achieved freedom from aristocratic bondage of the mercy of small workshop plants with no Robyn Denny and Richard Smith — but only in
patronage or property collectors. The experience of art requirements. The artists, editions of 50. Here, surely, was an opportunity
attraction of the multiple idea to those of us too, have failed to acquaint themselves with for a multiple art object destined for the widest
who wish to see art stripped of its elitist, and express themselves in forms and processes possible, unlimited, distribution, dependent on
materialistic connotations, lay precisely in the related to industrial manufacture. demand. To move on to a more opportunist
hope that as an expression of human But curiously enough the failure of multiples, example, there are the numerous efforts to
experience or idealism, or even on a lesser, certainly in Britain, is strongly at variance with project Salvador Dali on to an unsuspecting
simpler, entertainment level, it would be the enormous successes of the manufacture and public. Various prints come into this category;
possible to make direct contact with the kind publication of highly expensive, limited more extraordinary is the offer by a firm called
of audiences who enjoy the theatre, cinema, editions of a variety of decorative domestic Templeton, Rawlings and Davis Limited of
music, ballet — on whatever level. objects. I am not referring particularly to the Regent Street, London, of a 'wholly original art
The anxiety to relieve the creation and art-toys and gadgets which proliferate in smart medium' in the form of a sculptured frame in
distribution of art of its commercial shackles, stores, or even the more pretentious Italianate `individually moulded and hand cast Century
and inhibiting establishment image, can only be baubels available in the decorators' shops of Wood . . . Hand crafted with antique (sic) gold
strengthened by the effects of economic Sloane Street and the King's Road. finish'. This multiple work of art, limited to a
inflation, the hysteria of the investment It is a fairly normal phenomenon, whatever numbered edition of 600, was offered in the
stakes, as witnessed in the growing importance our education, incomes, taste, or domestic United States for $585 — the present price in
of the art-fairs and the new auctioneers' circumstances, to surround ourselves with a either dollars or sterling is not known.
enterprise in the contemporary field. (Francis variety of decorative-cum-functional objects. It is significant that on requesting
Bacon, it has long been rumoured, intends Even people who might never hang a picture on information on new multiples for the Studio
abandoning exhibitions or dealers, merely their walls will choose with some care, and International directory a high percentage of the
placing two works a year for sale at auction; certainly according to their own tastes, a vase, replies referred to print editions. Multiples Inc.
after recent events Hockney and Hamilton and a cigarette lighter, and numerous other objects of New York, for instance, have almost entirely
others may be persuaded to follow suit. We with which they embellish their homes. Either abandoned interest in three-dimensional objects.
could end up with no dealers' exhibitions of because of greater affluence, or as a possible Among its recent publications the only partially
living artists — the works going from studio to investment, a growing number of people are relevant edition is a new portfolio of
collector, from auction room to art prepared to spend relatively large sums of Rauschenberg where alongside five silk-screens
investment vaults.) money on objects which border on the is a collage of magazine cutouts and a
Multiple object publishing has virtually connotation of art. The colour supplements of brown paper bag. Multiples Inc., however,
ceased in Britain; there is no London the Sunday newspapers regularly offer such occasionally holds exhibitions of foreign
gallery which continues to regularly display objects — I recently noted for instance an multiples, largely the work of German editors
new work, and no manufacturer or publisher advertisement for a silver chess set, one set of such as René Block (publisher of Joseph
actively commissioning. This is in marked chessmen plated 24 carat gold, all fitting into a Beuys, etc.), Edition Staeck and Heiner
contrast to the print boom, where not only leather-bound case. The edition is limited to Friedrich. Germany remains the most active
are the older publishers producing new 65o sets, each numbered, only 30o available in multiple field, but invariably the small editions,
editions, and some galleries editing work by the United Kingdom. The author or creator of sometimes as low as 8 or 10 examples, imprison
their own artists, but a variety of new agencies, the chess set is given as Cy Endfield. The price the objects in a traditional art connotation. In
mostly without any print experience, are of each set 50. Offers of this kind are the United States Castelli has produced
utilizing national advertising space and mail- regularly found in advertising columns; there interesting new editions by Robert Morris,
order processes to reach a vast new public. has, for instance, been a spate of fine Artschwager and Lichtenstein; the latter with
Why is this public not being offered multiples ? reproductions of magnificent old clocks, always John Chamberlain also contributes to Gemini's
The fundamental reason is high investment at steep prices. The revival in presentation Dimensional Object Documentation. The

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