Urban Art Association

I've often wondered about it myself and my take on it is

1) is defintely an original (although I don't think it makes any difference if they number it 1/1 - I think every artist has their own way of marking pieces) - especially if it's something like a Denning, where none of the works are done in editions. Similarly works like the Blek le Rat monoprints (even though there are 20 of them) all count as originals for me.

2) I actually have a print marked AP 1/1 where the artist originally intended to do an edition run but then abandoned the plan, therefore - to me at any rate - it counts as an original as there is no other copy of it in any form.

3) I would tend to say editioned canvases are originals purely because they'll all differ in some way from the others in the edition.

I think the big differential is between "original" and "one-off"

To my mind at least, I don't really see any print as an original. I feel an original must be produced by the artist and not by printers, a print certainly can be a "one off" or a 1/1 but an original??

I think that this is down to each individual, and it almost seems that you are trying to use scarcity to increase the concept of being "Original".
If you were to split hairs over this you have two seperate areas here:

1. The image / idea / concept itself.
2. The media it is produced in & who produced it.

In it's purest form the idea is thought of and then executed by the artist, regardless of how many times as each and everyone will be slightly different. (runs of handfinished prints are all finshed by the artist so in my mind all originals by the artist)
With any print you've got the original image produced by the artist, then reproduced by whichever printhouse the work is given to, so whilst the image originally from the artist, the print is also an original of a printhouse (Banksy & POW for example)

I think that this becomes relevant when you are looking at owning a piece of art that has been created wholeheartedly by the artist and has as little outside input as possible - which goes back to my point on an artist owning the whole process from conception to execution

Bit long winded buyt I hope makes sense.

I'm not sure where a print stands where the image was produced by the artist on a computer and only printed once (as a giclee) as is the case with the print I refered to above. I suppose strictly speaking I'd have to have the computer file to have the original (or would I actually need his hard drive?). I do see what you mean about whether a print can be an original or not though.