Art: THANKS TO REPRODUCTION

A new field of art experience, vaster than any so far known (and standing in the same relation to the art museums as does . . . hearing a phonograph record to a concert audition), is now, thanks to reproduction, being opened up. And this new domain . . . is for the first time the common heritage of all mankind.

‘T’HOSE words, by Critic Andre — Malraux, pinpoint one of the most important happenings in art history. Burgeoning now, it has been preparing for 500 years. Art reproduction dates back to the woodblock illustrations of the 15th century. In the 16th, the great Raphael was so impressed by the possibilities of copper engraving that he issued some prints from his own designs. By the end of the 19th, Currier & Ives had flooded the U.S. with a choice of 7,500 hand-colored lithographs (“Juvenile, Domestic, Love Scenes, Kittens and Puppies, Ladies Heads, Catholic Religious, Patriotic, Landscapes, Vessels, Comic, School Rewards . . . and Miscellaneous in great variety”).

Today, thanks to photographic copying methods, customers can choose from reproductions of an estimated 20,000 pictures by close to a thousand artists, with prices varying from 50¢ to $50.

How to Pick Them. Nine out of ten people who buy reproductions may know or care little about art. They may be housewives in search of a sunset to hang over a mauve sofa and a painted bouquet to match the floral drapes in the guest room, or decorators trying to bring dreadful cheer to thousands of bare hotel rooms. Stacks of floral pieces, faithful dogs, pink-coated huntsmen, summer landscapes and angelic children are certainly a “common heritage,” but not the one Malraux talks about.

While most reproductions on the market are indeed junk, excellent reproductions of splendid pictures are also available. Even among reproductions of good art, there are great differences in quality. Technically, there is no sure way to tell a good from a bad reproduction. The four chief methods of art reproduction all have advantages and disadvantages, depend ultimately on the eye. hands and consciences of the craftsmen who use them. The techniques are:

¶ Letterpress, which requires four printings—red, yellow, blue. black—on coated paper, permits vast quantity.

¶ Offset lithography, which prints from a rubber blanket on uncoated paper, is best for pictures originally painted on highly absorbent grounds, such as watercolors. t| Collotype, which requires no screen to produce half tones, shows no dots under a magnifying glass, is excellent for reproducing subtle gradations of light and color, and best for editions under 2.000.

¶ Silk Screen, a hand stencil process using thick, opaque inks, a limited-edition medium, often expensive, which can reproduce heavily textured oils either very well or atrociously, depending on the craftsman.

The most expensive reproductions of each type might be presumed to be the best, but this is an unsafe criterion, for the reproduction business is odd and unregulated: markups may be as high as 30 times the production cost. The best test of a reproduction’s faithfulness, next to comparing it with the original, is simply to look at it for a long time. If after a while it seems to go flat, to offer nothing more to the probing eye, then the reproduction is not first-class.

The Bestsellers. Of the serious paintings in reproduction, those by Van Gogh. Renoir. Cezanne and Degas have long been the bestsellers. Van Gogh’s popularity is based on relatively few pictures —the more decorative and least emo tional of his canvases. His View at La Craii, also known as Vegetable Garden (opposite), is a consistent favorite, and calm as Cream of Wheat. Edging the leaders in popularity are Picasso and Cubist Georges Braque. The still lifes which Braque specializes in are nothing if not decorative, and their complexity helps offset the chill nakedness of many modern interiors.

Beneath this artistic upper crust, there is a varied commercial stew. Among the most popular types: 1) The Parisienne, a snub-nosed, black-eyed girl in a flowery hat. derived from Renoir, but produced with the most success by a commercial artist named Huldah; 2) The Dancer, in a ballet skirt and a misty setting, inspired by Degas and churned out commercially by one Fried Pal, among others; 3) The Paris Street, in cool colors with sharp edges, originated by Utrillo, but perpetuated by a more sober and less talented host of hacks; 4) the dashing watercolor of a horse race at Longchamp or a Riviera regatta, which Raoul Dufy invented and his younger brother Jean imitates in quantity.

Non-commercial painters welcome reproduction of their work, since it widens their fame, but they generally miss out on royalties (in the U.S.. an artist must specifically reserve copyright on what he sells; otherwise he loses it). Reproductions have increased the nation’s appetite for art. but they may also diminish people’s longing to own originals.

As National Gallery Curator John Walker has pointed out. those who assume ”that anything printed in color is an accurate copy” are apt to be sadly misled about the very nature of painting. But laymen and scholars alike, who study what originals they can as well as reproductions, and who recognize reproductions simply as useful approximations of the original paintings, can gain from them a breadth of art knowledge and understanding never before possible.