Al Jaffee created his first Fold-In feature for
Mad magazine fifty years ago in 1964 and he's still at it today. Last night I attended an opening at the Scott Eder Gallery presenting original Fold-In art for
Mad magazine. The show consisted of twelve original acrylics on board and one preliminary drawing. Mr. Jaffee was in attendance.
Fold-Ins are designed to reveal their punch line only after the inside back cover of the magazine is folded into the specified configuration. As a result, seeing the original artwork displayed in a frame on the wall is challenging to the eye, the equivalent of trying to visualize the Fold-In solution without actually folding the page over--something I used to attempt all the time. The gallery helped out by providing a booklet showing what each of the images looks like when correctly folded.
The original artwork by itself might not make sense outside of the context of the
Mad Fold-In page. Therefore the artwork is presented framed with overlays showing all the published Fold-In text as well as the "A" and "B" arrows. Each framed painting sells for $1,500. Two have been sold as of this writing. The sole example of preliminary art is offered at $500 and gives some evidence of the daunting technical challenges Al Jaffee faces with each issue of
Mad.
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Exhibition poster for "The Mad Fold-In Art of Al Jaffee" at the Scott Eder Gallery
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Exhibition Information
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Biographical information on Al Jaffee from the Scott Eder Gallery
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Al Jaffee, Original Fold-In art without overlay, Mad #499, $1,500, the Scott Eder Gallery
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Al Jaffee, Original Fold-In art with overlay, Mad #499, $1,500, the Scott Eder Gallery
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Al Jaffee, Original Fold-In art with overlay, Mad #509, $1,500, Sold. The Scott Eder Gallery
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| The gallery provided a booklet, left, showing how each piece of artwork looks when folded in. On the right is the original art to the Fold-In from Mad #509 as framed with text overlay. |
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Al Jaffee, Original Fold-In art with overlay, Mad #518, $1,500, the Scott Eder Gallery
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Al Jaffee, Preliminary Fold-In art, Mad #518, colored pencil on paper, 15x14" (20x19" framed), $500, the Scott Eder Gallery
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