New York's Forum Gallery has long been adamant about being the exclusive agent for the artists it represents. Take the artist David Levine, for instance. If you want a pen-and-ink caricature by Levine, go to Forum; if you want a watercolor by the artist, go to Forum. End of discussion. However, in November, a show featuring reproductions of Levine’s watercolors – digital prints sometimes know as “giclees” – turned up at the Picture This Gallery in Westport, Connecticut, where the artist has a summer home. Had Forum suddenly gone soft on its exclusivity policy?
Not at all. Like many other high-end art galleries, Forum has little taste for reproductions. (The gallery does sell more traditional prints – lithographs and etchings – by other artists it represents, including kent Bellows, Robert Cottingham, Odd Nerdrum and Raphael Soyer). “We try to restrict our activities to that which is made by the artist,” said the gallery’s director, Robert Fishko, “We don’t run a supermarket here.” Giclees (pronounced jee-clays), however, are not $30 posters; those on sale at Picture This are priced between $600 and $1,500 unframed, $1,500-$2,500 framed, and “people do come in and think they’re originals,” said John Bygott, director of the West-port gallery. “the colors are very rich. They are very convincing.” In fact, he noted, “some people have expressed disappointment that they aren’t originals.”
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