Specialist Picks: Shop the Best Editions to Buy Now
Editioned art takes many forms in this month’s specialist selection, where printmaking, photography and artist-designed objects reveal different approaches to the medium.
This month’s edition picks span nearly a century of artistic experimentation, showing how artists have pushed editioned work well beyond the conventions of printmaking. Handpicked by our specialists, the selection begins with Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso, whose works connect to major twentieth-century print projects, and extends through Jean Dubuffet, Stephen Shore and Dr. Lakra.
The range of techniques is just as broad. Lithography and etching sit alongside screenprinting, photography and an edition composed of cast and hand-etched objects. Some works revisit literary or mythological subjects, while others challenge the boundaries between an edition and an object. Together, they offer a useful view of how artists have approached reproducibility in very different ways, from the traditional print workshop to contemporary experimentation.
Joan Miró, Bougrelas and his Mother III, from Series for King Ubu, $7,800
Joan Miró returned repeatedly to Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi, a satirical play that had fascinated him since the 1930s. Bougrelas and his Mother III, from Series for King Ubu comes from a portfolio Miró created in 1966, decades after he first drew on Jarry’s grotesque characters and irreverent treatment of authority in his work.
Printed by Atelier Mourlot in Paris and published by Tériade Éditeur, the color lithograph translates the strange theatrical world of Ubu Roi into Miró’s own vocabulary of abstracted figures and expressive marks. The connection was well suited to an artist who often used humor and distortion to approach darker political themes. Hand signed and numbered from an edition of 75, the work also reflects the importance of lithography to Miró’s practice and his sustained interest in revisiting the Ubu character across different periods of his career.
Jean Dubuffet, Line with Five Characters (Site Avec Cinq Personnages), $10,700
By 1981, Jean Dubuffet had spent decades challenging conventional distinctions between the figure and its surroundings. In Line with Five Characters (Site Avec Cinq Personnages), human forms emerge from a dense field of looping outlines and fragmented shapes. Rather than separating the figures from the setting, Dubuffet allows them to become part of the same restless visual structure.
The work combines screenprint and lithograph in colors on wove paper, bringing two printmaking processes together within Dubuffet’s highly graphic composition. Published by the Louisiana Museum in Humlebæk, Denmark, it was produced in an edition of 90 and hand signed and numbered by the artist. The shifting relationship between figure and ground gives the image its energy, asking the eye to continually locate and lose the five characters within the surrounding forms.
Dr. Lakra, Doktor Lakra’s Lexikon, $13,700
Dr. Lakra has built much of his practice around altering existing images and objects, drawing on the visual language of tattooing to transform surfaces that already carry their own associations. Doktor Lakra’s Lexikon, created in 2010, extends that approach into an edition of cast and hand-etched objects housed within a leather box.
The format pushes against the expectation that an edition should take the form of a print on paper. Here, repetition comes through the production of a limited group of objects, while the hand-etched elements introduce variation through the artist’s direct intervention. Numbered 5 from an edition of just 10, Doktor Lakra’s Lexikon sits somewhere between an edition, an artist’s object and an archive of the imagery that runs through Dr. Lakra’s practice.
Stephen Shore, New York, New York, 1974 [Kitchen Window], $30,400
Stephen Shore’s photographs of the 1970s helped redirect attention toward scenes that might otherwise pass unnoticed, from roadside architecture to domestic interiors and ordinary objects. New York, New York, 1974 [Kitchen Window] returns to an image made in 1974, placing a kitchen window and the details surrounding it at the center of the composition.
Produced in 2023, this edition introduces a different material experience through an archival pigment print and 3D lenticular lens. The lenticular surface adds depth to an image rooted in Shore’s close observation of everyday space, changing how the photograph responds as the viewer shifts position. Numbered 1 from an edition of five, the work connects a photograph from a formative period in Shore’s career with a contemporary method of presentation.
Pablo Picasso, Winged Bull Watched by Four Children, from The Suite Vollard, $30,700
Winged Bull Watched by Four Children belongs to Picasso’s Suite Vollard, the ambitious group of 100 etchings commissioned by dealer and publisher Ambroise Vollard and created between 1930 and 1937. Executed in December 1934, this plate places a winged bull before four young observers, bringing together the mythological imagery and theatrical encounters that recur throughout the suite.
Printed by Roger Lacourière and published by Vollard, the etching also reflects Picasso’s command of line at a moment when printmaking had become a major arena for experimentation in his practice. This impression comes from the edition of 250 on smaller-format Montval paper and is hand signed, an important distinction since many impressions from this edition remained unsigned. Within the wider Suite Vollard, the work offers a focused example of how Picasso used classical and invented imagery to build scenes that remain deliberately open to interpretation.
This Month’s Edition Picks
This month’s selection shows just how expansive the idea of an edition can be. Traditional techniques such as lithography and etching remain central to the category, but photography, lenticular printing and artist-designed objects push it in different directions. What connects these works is not a single medium, but the way each artist adapts an editioned format to the ideas and visual language of their broader practice.
That range makes editions an especially varied way to engage with modern and contemporary art. From works connected to major twentieth-century print projects to newer experiments with materials and presentation, these pieces show how the format continues to shift across artists, periods and techniques.
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