Friday, February 27, 2009

exuberance or chaos?

Detail, The Day the Cow Sneezed, tempera draft, 1957, courtesy the Dr. Irvin Kerlan Collection, University of Minnesota. A gallery of early Flora roughs and overlays from the Kerlan collection will be included in our next Fantagraphics book, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora (target publication date September 2009).

4 comments:

Ernie said...

Is the original version of this rendered in shades of grey? It just doesn't look right without all sort of contrasting colors in there.

Irwin Chusid said...

The book was published with alternating color and black & white spreads. Possibly a cost-saving measure on the print end?

Ernie said...

So does that mean Flora composed it in shades of grey rather than color? It certainly doesn't look bad, as some color-to-B&W conversions might. I hope to some day get my hands on one of these children's books by Flora. I've been keeping my eyes out at the used book stores and thrifts, but they seem to be about as common as his LP covers. :(

Irwin Chusid said...

Here's some info courtesy Ward Jenkins, who blogged about TDTCS a few years ago.

Most of Flora's books can be found online via eBay and assorted antiquarian book sellers. Some are inexpensive, but the rarer titles (e.g., Charlie Yup) go for hundreds of bucks. Highly recommended and not that rare: the original 1955 edition of Fabulous Firework Family. (However, avoid the 1994 remake -- even Flora wasn't happy with it.)