Something tells me that when I go check out Ebay in an hour or so I am going to have a good laugh at the failips.

Sold out now.

It's a shame they feel the need to mark as sold when they haven't. What will they do with the rest?

Not sure it's that as the last 150 generated a lot of talk. I think people just don't like this screen print

Do you have pics of the full set? I'd like to see them all if poss

That's more to do with this forum than the artists though.

Fail.e have been reasonably consistent in terms of frequency of releases, cost vs edition size, quality of implementation,and all whilst remaining one of the few artists that are able to satisfy demand for their work from the exclusive to the affordable, so any lack of discussion on here is likely due to other factors. As an example, this forum can often appear quite faddish with a tendency to fixate on a number of 'hot' artists, many of whom will drop off the radar in a few months or years as someone newer and more exciting comes along. I'm sure we all know people who flit from, for example,  d*face, to burning candy, to chevrier, to s.tik, to pejac, etc. I guess some artists careers can be compared to listening to that one good single by a band - you listen to it too much for a few months, burn out on it, and then never want to hear it again. Whereas some artists are more album bands - they may need a little work in getting in to but that will pay off in the longer term as you'll be listening to it, and learning a little more with each listen, for a lifetime. Or, maybe some artists are just more short term investment friendly than others?

Anyway, I'm sure f.aile will tick along quite happily doing what they do with some hits and some misses  whilst those that have watched them for a while will continue to enjoy their path without worrying too much if a thread on a forum gets two pages or two hundred pages of chatter or if a print sells out in a nanosecond, or over a year.

For the record, I think this is a very fine release, it's multiple references to previous imagery and techniques makes it so much more interesting than the vast majority of the print editions they have chosen to release over the last six or seven years, editions that have often seemed somewhat uninspired, especially when held in comparison to their earlier work. It also seems a fair price given it's complexity, its size, and the reputation of the artists in the wider art world. If I thought I'd ever frame it then I'd have bought one but I long ago realised that buying prints was a waste of money as I will never find the wall space for them and I have more than enough work patiently awaiting framing as is.

Finally, as they are being denigrated for declaring this print sold out when several here are claiming that that to not the case could we see some evidence for that?

You really don't need to inform me that it's just your opinion. I can just about work that out.

So, you have no evidence for this to have not sold out but you are happy enough to repeat that claim as, effectively, a truth? I'm just curious as to why you believe this print to have not sold out but, I assume, accept others as legitimate sell outs?

Maybe it's me but if I were making claims that suggest some form of market manipulation then I'd like some supporting evidence as the recycling of mistruths helps no-one and, indeed, can be actively harmful. Before you speculate, I have been around plenty long enough to be perfectly aware of the allegations (many of which likely to be true) that certain artists have been promoted to sales levels that are well above their worth by acts of unscrupulous market manipulation but, you know, actual evidence is slim so I'm careful to not publicly recycle speculation as opinion, or fact, unless I am satisfied that the allegations are absolutely grounded in truth.

Either way, it's a sad state of affairs when an artist is judged by whether some editioned print sells out. 



By the way, my question regarding the alleged lies of faile was actually an aside to my reply to your main comment.

Thanks for the reply and for offering supporting evidence for an allegation that it seems some are happy to accept as fact regardless.

I am not an expert on how online commerce carts/checkouts/inventory controls work so can only speculate on how a reported webshop inventory relates to physical inventory as I am sure we have all seen oversold editions due to e-commerce break downs. Trying to remotely monitor their stock from the outside would seem to be fraught with challenges as those in and out of cart speculators/chancers really do cloud the waters. Hell, I can recall reading comments in the past from folk who 'were just happy to have it in my cart for a short while' so genuine stock levels could well take some time to stabilise. I have also seen sold out prints released back online many hours after they had officially sold out through, I guess, the release of cancelled/failed orders but that was years ago when I used to bother chasing prints. 

I am quite surprised that the stock control would rise above two hundred though as I understood that there were only two hundred available but, again, that's likely a disconnect between actual and virtual inventory and exactly the sort of issue that, to me, suggests that over-analysing what we see at the consumer end of the website in comparison to the actual stock could be problematic.

But, yeah, I could easily believe that they would set aside a percentage of prints, even before they went online, and either gift them to friends or set aside for onpass to dealers. Either way, I guess the redistribution of stock would count as a technical sell out..

Finally, I would be quite surprised, and very disappointed, if fail.es output was, as you suggest, driven by trying to satisfy critical feedback. Once an artist starts doing that then they are on very slippery slope as making art for a market is a creative dead end (I am sure we can all mentally list a few artists doing just that and with increasingly tiresome results). Anyways, after all that terrible ballet work this particular print stands out to me as a minor return to form and a reminder of how good they were, and sometimes still can be. I wouldn't suggest this print was different or boldly different for them though, it's just a style that they have taken a break from for a few years. 

Again, thanks for the reply.

For what it's worth, the traditional way to price prints is to take the price of the original and divide it by the edition size. That would work out to about $150,000 on this.

I don't know what the original sold for, but I don't think it was $150,000. Personally, I think demand would have met supply at closer to $250. But no one asked me.

Cheers dappy, nice to see the scale of it in the photo.

There would have been only 200 prints available if all 100 of the box sets sold out. I'd be very surprised if that's the case. If they sold 50 of the box sets, 250 would have been available at release.

Prints being oversold and people losing prints that were in their carts are a different animal. Prints oversell sometimes when thousands of people are trying to buy a few hundred prints simultaneously. Depending on what backend software they're running, several transactions can be processed between the time the inventory still shows one and by the time the transactions are completed.

When people lose prints that were in their cart, it's usually because someone completed the transaction faster than they did. Not all carts hold the item while you check out. 

I've followed a few of their releases where this was a pattern. It leads me to believe they won't leave a print for sale for more than a day in an effort to protect their image. Personally, I don't have a problem with that. I just find it interesting. 

The screenprints are made from part of their large paintings.

I agree paintings by had do take time.

They do reuse images quite often.