Comment by Animats

Rodan was a great artist, but his works were cranked out in a factory, with parts of the process outsourced. The concept of "original" here is weak.

There was once a comic, "The Artist", which had a little guy with a beret and smock. In one panel, he was shown standing on a railed balcony overlooking an enormous high-volume printing press. The caption was "Each print was produced under the direct control and supervision of the artist".

I've seen such an operation in person. Back when software came in boxes, I ordered some custom boxes made. I went to the printing plant with the box artwork on a CD, and talked with the prepress person. She made it fit the box template, using a Macintosh connected to a plate-making machine the size of a car. She said "You want to see the press?", and so I put in earplugs and went into the pressroom. They had a press about a hundred feet long, sheet fed, and capable of about 12 colors of ink. Extra colors were used for shiny gold seals, brushwork, and other special effects. It wasn't turning out boxes that day. It was printing "art reproductions". When the box business was slow, they printed high-quality artworks. Some were reproductions of public domain or licensed material, and some were contract jobs for artists. Pricing was about $4000 for the first copy, $0.25 for each additional copy. It's almost all setup cost. They had some original art and printed copies hung side by side to show off how good the copies were.

The lower-volume version of this is Giclée prints.[1] Those are "collectables" made on an inkjet printer. The term was coined in 1990.

Henry Ford was once marketed to by an art dealer. They sent him a big glossy coffee table book, a catalog of pictures they were selling. When they came by for the sales pitch, Ford's response was to ask why he would want the original when he had a perfectly good copy in the book. He was pulling their chain, of course, but what else would you expect from the guy who made mass production of automobiles work.

The art industry tries very hard to push the concept of valuable "originals". But really, some of this stuff should be taken about as seriously as "original" NFTs. There's currently an "art glut", despite frantic efforts to prop up collectable art prices.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gicl%C3%A9e

[2] https://robbreport.com/shelter/art-collectibles/art-glut-tan...