Giclée

Giclée (/ʒiːˈkleɪ/ zhee-KLAY or /dʒiːˈkleɪ/) is a neologism coined in 1991 by printmaker Jack Duganne for fine art digital prints made on inkjet printers. The name originally applied to fine art prints created on Iris printers in a process invented in the late 1980s but has since come to mean any inkjet print. It is often used by artists, galleries, and print shops to suggest high quality printing but since it is an unregulated word it has no associated warranty of quality.

The word giclée was adopted by Jack Duganne, a printmaker working at Nash Editions. He wanted a name for the new type of prints they were producing on the Iris printer, a large-format, high-resolution industrial prepress proofing inkjet printer they had adapted for fine-art printing. He was specifically looking for a word that would not have the negative connotations of "inkjet" or "computer generated". It is based on the French word gicleur, which means "nozzle" (the verb form gicler means "to squirt, spurt, or spray"). An unintended consequence of Duganne's choice of name is the sense of inaccuracy, of mess, of accident, as against the precision of this process. "What is all the more amusing is that this word has been borrowed in French and is now widely recognised for this technique. It really is ironic that Duganne, who wanted a sophisticated name for this technique, wasn’t aware of the negative connotations of giclée and ended up with a word that doesn’t belong at all in the world of art…." It has also been said that the term is problematic in the French language because it is modern French slang for male ejaculation.

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