Surrey Books just keeps the hits coming - all three of these are set for release on 10 Oct 04.



64 pages
ISBN: 1572840676
Suggested Retail Price $12.95

For impulsive Aries, dancing on the table in a Vegas lounge, or intuitive Pisces, who are all about the vibe, this is the perfect way to play "What's your sign?" without losing that hipster edge. The book features 12 new paintings by Shag — beatnik chicks, cool dudes, and other typical denizens of Shag's retro world — each based on a zodiac sign and printed on a two-page spread, along with two to four pages of witty text and artwork.

"12 new paintings... each based on a zodiac sign..." Sounds familiar, eh?



64 pages
ISBN: 1572840722
Suggested Retail Price $16.95

No bachelor pad, lounge, or luau is complete without a cocktail, and this handy hipster's recipe book includes five dozen of them, each inspired by everyone's favorite cool cat, the Pink Panther. The Clouseau blends bourbon, cherry liqueur, triple sec, and light cream for a scintillating drink that pays tribute to the bumbling but beloved inspector. The Phantom, aka the Sir Charles Cocktail, combines lemon-flavored vodka, triple sec, grapefruit juice, and fresh lemon for an appropriately sophisticated taste. Of course, the Panther himself is here in a variety of luscious libations, including some that are actually pink thanks to ingredients like pink lemonade and grapefruit juice. Colorful retro artwork by the infamous Shag adds to the fun, and the bonus CD expands the experience with video clips and songs from Virgin Records' "Pink Panther Penthouse Party."

"Infamous"?

When will this Pink Panther madness ever end!?!



Spiral-bound: 144 pages
ISBN: 1572840714
Suggested Retail Price $12.95

Shag is known as the master of `50s-style graphic art, but with Shag's Jive Journal, the Rembrandt of Retro lets the reader do the creating. His instantly recognizable, angular characters are scattered throughout in spot-art form, but this journaling book is designed to help readers become writers, or even artists. Lined pages with Shag cool cats and chicks encourage scribes to write or even create their own characters, while the open spiral binding with elastic page keeper makes it useful anywhere.

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"Rembrandt of Retro"?

After reading this article from the UK's Guardian and seeing these two (#1 / #2) eBay auction, perhaps the comparison is accurate.

Finnish police said yesterday they were investigating a large-scale art fraud in which dozens of high-quality photocopies of works by artists such as Salvador Dalí [and Chagall, Rembrandt, Picasso and Andy Warhol] were passed off as originals and sold

...rapidly improving technology was making it a lot easier to produce high-quality fakes. "Most of them appear to be high-quality photocopies. ...

Jyrki Seppala, a Finnish police spokesman - "A colleague of mine even tried to do this at home using a computer, digital camera and good printer, just to prove how easy it was."

Take a gander at this -



Described as a "limited edition," it's also "an incredible piece of "SHAG" artwork. Professionally reproduced, the print is entitled The Extended Business Meeting. Very hard to come by."

Even me, a guy with a lazy eye and a monitor from the stone-age, can see the blemishes on this. Enough from me, let's see what the experts have to say:

Expert #1 -
Looks like a BS piece to me...we never printed a composite of the image except for a small one in the catalog.

Rich Roat
House Industries

Expert #2 -
We’ve contacted eBay to have the auction ended. I’m not sure what “Professionally reproduced” means, is that a nice way of saying copyright infringing ink jet print???Anyway, thanks again for letting us know about this.

Best,
Piet Agle
Shagmart

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Coming soon - a short lesson on copyright aka "that mini-print you're putting on sale is more-or-less illegal"

(hint hint)