Is your Papillon a Shining Star? ?
1982 \ 250 s/n \ 20 a/ps \ 25 s/n ‘state’ edition \ 1000 unsigned
Papillon was released June 1982 as a lifetime-released, limited edition serigraph poster printed by Jeff Wasserman. This is #25 of the 34 lifetime limited-edition posters released.
The print is 25″ x 17″ with six colors. There were 250 hand signed/numbered by Patrick Nagel in pencil. 20 Artist’s Proofs and only 25 state edition prints, all marked “State 1” in pencil by Patrick Nagel, along with his signature, with a HAND PAINTED STAR ? on the cheek and one of the ribbons on the mask is a metallic silver ink instead of yellow in all other versions. There were also a few rare double versions (I know of one available!) and 1000 signed-in-screen prints. ?
You can compare the two here and see his penciled “State 1” version. ?
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For Papillon, as well as Just Looking, and Mirage prints, Patrick Nagel and Karl decided to release the prints in what would now be commonly known as a “variant” version today. While most serigraphs released in these days have a variant that introduces introduces different colors, for Nagel’s work, the variant versions either added or removed elements from the image. Just Looking’s SP version omits the small text under the image, and was marked with an “SP” in pencil, by Nagel, and a number adjacent to the SP. The print known as Mirage omitted the title running vertically in the upper right corner. But for Papillon, they did something quite special – so the hand painted star on the model’s cheek and changing one set of ribbons from yellow to metallic silver is like a mini embellished painting.
Papillon was an small gallery on Los Angeles’ chic Melrose Ave. which dealt in Art Nouveau and especially antique posters that was really popular back in the day. Sadly, the gallery doesn’t exist anymore, but this hard edged poster is classic Nagel and can still be found.
My most recent rare State Proof with Star is now sold. Contact for price of regular signed edition and SIS.
