Scorched Art: The Incendiary Aesthetic of FlameRite Zippos

by Tom Hazelmyer, Coop, Shag

For almost a decade, the radical art group Flame Rite has been producing Zippo lighters featuring the work of prominent comic artists. These "miniature billboards" that normally display a corporate logo have been reinvented as witty pop-art confections. Charles Burns’s ominous Smoking Skull, Daniel Clowes’s creepy-comic Eightball, Big Daddy Roth’s wacky Rat Fink, the fabulous retroisms of Niagara’s All Girls Are Bad and Shag’s Ooguh Booguh — all these and more (130 total) are on lurid display. The book includes the work of more than 30 prominent artists including R. Crumb, Daniel Clowes, and Shag, exclusive, previously unpublished art from 20 artists in the Flame Rite lineup, and every "metal canvas" that Flame Rite Zippo produced, featuring rare and out-of-print models.

104 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2003

Reviews

[SmarterLilac · Rating 1 out of 5]

From the introduction: '(A)nd somewhere in the crossfire, the whole point of lighting a freaking cigarette is long gone and what's left has become art in the truest sense of the word.'

Okay. This thing seemed like a pointless waste of ink to me.