Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Tenement K


Today we introduce a new limited edition fine art print called TENEMENT K, whose residents are bawdy, musical, criminal, and/or exhibitionistic. Doesn't matter if you're rowdy, serpentine, or headless—the landlord will rent you a room. If you were a mutant miscreant, you'd be home by now.

The previously unpublished and uncirculated work, which dates from the 1940s, is owned by a private collector who allowed us to have the work professionally photographed for print reproduction. Although the work is untitled, we have provisionally named it Tenement K to differentiate it from other untitled Jim Flora works.

Only forty (40) prints of Tenement K were produced for this edition. Each archival-quality 22" x 17" print is hand-numbered in the lower right and authenticated on the reverse with the stamped seal of Jim Flora Art (a Flora family enterprise). The provisional title does not appear in the print markings.

The launch price is $175.00 each (+ shipping and handling). Prices will increase as the edition sells down. Full print specs are included on the Tenement K page at JimFlora.com.

Friday, October 11, 2013

music and art in the crib


Flora, grinning (ca. 1985)
Flora's daughter Roussie Jacksina has received her complimentary copy of The High Fidelity Art of Jim Flora. She writes:
Hi Irwin, I received the book today and it is GORGEOUS! Where on earth did you find all that new material? You are amazing sleuths and the book is stunning. Assuming Dad is among us in the 4th dimension, I'm sure he is grinning wide.

I think the first music I ever heard was a record of Josh White singing "One Meatball" and I heard it in my crib. It's because of Dad's musical influence that I dropped out of college to hang out in jazz clubs and art galleries—not that that was his wish for me, nor was he very pleased.

Thanks so much for the copy. You, Barbara, and Laura did a fabulous job.

Roussie

Monday, October 7, 2013

Gene Deitch: Flora had an "overpowering influence" on my style


Animation legend GENE DEITCH was a longtime friend of Jim Flora, a friendship that commenced in the 1940s and ended only with Flora's death in 1998. Today Gene wrote to us:
Pete Jolly Duo EP from back cover of
The High Fidelity Art of Jim Flora
THE HIGH-FIDELITY ART OF JIM FLORA arrived!  This latest treasury of Jim's art is the closest to my heart, as it covers the exact material that led me to him in the mid 1940s—and which had an overpowering influence on my own graphic attempts.  Everyone who followed my work in the Record Changer magazine, reproduced in the Fantagraphics book, THE CAT ON A HOT THIN GROOVE, knows that much of my stuff was flat-out Flora imitation-emulation, though I clearly knew all the while that Jim's endless graphic invention was inimitable.

Jim himself was in many ways a parallel of his iconic images, a sum of many parts, just as all the convoluted sassy segments strung-out in space joined into a dazzling whole.  A genius of his order may have had every reason to be arrogant, distant, or cold—yet Jim was downright jolly, warm-hearted, caring and helpful. He never berated me for stealing his stuff, but rather encouraged me and worked with me. I tried to work more with him, but am grateful that I was at least able to produce animated versions of his FABULOUS FIREWORKS FAMILY at Terrytoons and LEOPOLD, THE SEE-THROUGH CRUMB-PICKER here in Prague. Best of all, I am proud that he became my close friend and regular correspondent.  His final letter to me lingers in my heart. This new book of his further ensures that I will never forget him.
Gene's The Cat On a Hot Thin Groove was recently republished by Fantagraphics with a new cover:


Saturday, October 5, 2013

The Miraculous Mambo Returns!



In 2012 we sold our 200th and final oversized Mambo For Cats screen print, the last of a limited edition produced by Aesthetic Apparatus of Minneapolis in 2006. Almost immediately, a legion of Floraphiles—especially those fond of felines and Latin terpsichore—began clamoring for this work to be restored to our catalog. The nature of limited editions precludes us from issuing the work in an identical (or even comparable) format. Two hundred hand-numbered, Flora family-authenticated, 20"-square Mambo screen prints (and two dozen proofs) exist. There won't be any more. Want one? You'll have to search on the secondary market—which means find someone who bought one and wants to sell it. We don't control that market, and price is determined by supply and demand.

But we do control the underlying image, and limited edition print protocols permit us to issue the work in an altered format. Consider it done. To celebrate the publication of The High Fidelity Art of Jim Flora, our fourth anthology—and one which specifically features all of Flora's known album covers—we've revived Mambo for Cats. This week we're launching an edition of 200 hand-numbered, 11-1/2"-square, archival-quality fine art prints. It's about 40% smaller than the screen print, and is produced on different paper with different inks via an entirely different printing process (inkjet, or giclée). The giclée image is slightly smaller than a 12" LP cover in order to accommodate a 3/4" margin on an untrimmed 13" x 19" sheet of 310g Hahnemühle stock. (A smaller margin would make matting problematic.) One other significant difference: the screen print was on cream-colored stock; the giclée stock is white.

Upon learning about the new Mambo edition, ears began to perk up in the Flora community:


We also offer a Mambo mini—a 7"-square archival quality print. This is an open edition, meaning the prints are not numbered nor is the edition limited. To date we've sold about 150 minis.

We can't guarantee these Mambo kitties will have nine lives, but for now they're happy to embark on their third.