The 'Pumpkin' collage work by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, which was exhibited at K Auction last month, was sold for 105 million won.

It is a small print made in 2000 and measures 21cm wide and 27cm long.

It is numbered 35 out of a total of 135 sheets.

Mathematically alone, the total value of this print by Yayoi Kusama is over 13.5 billion won.




British artist David Hockney's 'Spring at the Worldgate in East Yorkville, 2011' was sold at Seoul Auction in November of last year for a whopping 250 million won.

It was also a work with number 3 out of 25.



As the art market is booming, the prices of prints by famous Korean artists are also skyrocketing.

Park Seo-bo's 'My Law' series prints were sold at K Auction last month at a price of close to 50 million won.

The print price of 'Joeung' and 'Dialogue' series by Lee Ufan is also tens of millions of won.

David Hockney's print works are also priced at 3 to 40 million won.

It is probably because there is a lot of demand for it to be traded at this price even though we take dozens of copies and hundreds of copies at the most.



It is usually referred to as 'printing', but there are various forms and techniques within it.



Except when the creative method itself is printmaking, like Minjung artist Oh Yun, printmaking means replicating rare or expensive original works in large quantities so that several people can own them.

Depending on the nature of the original artwork, lithography or silk screen methods are mainly used. In principle, the original plate for printing is made and a certain amount is printed, and then the original plate is discarded.

It is displayed in the same 'edition number' format as <15/100>, meaning that it is the 15th work out of 100 prints.

This edition number is directly marked by the artist and signed by the artist to add to the 'value' of ownership.

The advantage is that you can hang the works of masters whose original paintings cost billions of won at a low price.



The fact that the details of the original work are well preserved with the development of printmaking technology also adds to the desire to own prints.

Ufan Lee's dialogue series brings out the subtle gradations of the original work well.

In particular, Park Seo-Bo's series of techniques, in which wet Korean paper is scraped off and expressed with a thick texture, is reproduced with a three-dimensional print technique called 'mixographia', giving the impression of an actual original painting.


Not all drawings with an edition number are reprinted from the original condition.

In particular, David Hockney's edition number has a different character depending on the work.

After 2010, Hockney began drawing on his iPad and sending it to his acquaintances, some of which were printed and labeled with edition numbers.

The original is a digital file drawn with an iPad without an original drawing.

Hockney's work, which was sold at K Auction last month for 160 million won, is a photo collage work called 'Photographic Drawing'.

Again, there is no separate original picture, and the digital file is the original like a photo.



The faceless artist Banksy's original work is either a graffiti-style mural or a digital file, so Banksy's edition works are different from ordinary prints.

When NFT first attracted attention in March of last year, there was a performance in which Banksy's work called 'Fools' was replaced with an NFT work and then the original painting was burned.

By the way, there are 500 editions of this 'Fools' work, and the one that was burned on that day was 205 of them.

The claim that 'the original was burned' is just a claim, and it doesn't mean much.



In some cases, the famous works of masters who have already died are engraved.

It is called 'post-printing', and since it is impossible for the artist to number the edition or sign it by hand, the 'value of ownership' is inevitably reduced.

According to the Copyright Act, intellectual property rights of works are stipulated for 70 years after the death of the artist, so anyone can print drawings by artists such as Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) or Gustav Klimt (1862-1918).

However, authors such as Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Marc Chagall (1887-1985) have not yet passed 70 years after their death, so copyrights are still alive.

That's why the heirs or the foundation take some of the works in limited edition prints.

In this case, the signature of the author is also included, which means that they guarantee the digitally printed signature.

However, no matter how limited it is, the price of 'post print' without the artist's autograph is incomparably lower than that of 'live print'.

In fact, on the eBay site, a limited edition print of Chagall's 1915 work 'Birthday' is printed, an edition number is attached, and a copy of Chagall's signature is also being sold, and the price is about 70,000 Korean won.



It is also the logic of the market that determines the value and price of engravings: supply and demand.

You can't have the original, so you own the print, but if it's not as much as the original, it must be a true limited edition, so it can have more than just a 'replica'.