Little Hokum Rag

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Spirit of Hokum

Photo courtesy of Scoboco blog

Photo credit: Peggy Roalf (this photo courtesy of AI newsletter)

They had an Art Parade in NYC last Saturday sponsored by Deitch Projects and Paper magazine. These two people get the Little Hokum Rag costume prize. They epitomize the spirit of hokum, plus great design. The guy in the top photo is my fantasy man. This parade was a lot like the crazy parades we have here in Eugene, OR.

More great PHOTOS of NYC Art Parade here

Scoboco

The Art of Amy Crehore

Monday, September 10, 2007

Popular Mechanics & Japonisme?

Cover of Popular Mechanics 1924

Look at this interesting cover from 1924! Japonisme influenced popular illustration back then, but this one is puzzling. I love it because the whole concept is surreal.

I found this image at INTERNET WEEKLY

and they found it here .

Be sure to check out the art archive at Internet Weekly for a continuous stream of great stuff.

Please click on "Vote for Me" if you like my blog.

The Art of Amy Crehore

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Retro Redheads- Housewares!

Somehow all of those pattern-y Henry Darger paintings remind me of old-style linens and tablecloths. This is a great Website for Retro and Vintage Housewares!

Retro Redheads

The Art of Amy Crehore

The Henry Darger Influence

Click on images to enlarge. Art by Henry Darger

I wonder if Henry Darger would be surprised at the huge influence he has had on so many of today's artists. Henry was not a commercially ambitious artist, but he was a prolific one and he was obsessed with illustrating and writing "The Story of the Vivian Girls, in what is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion". He did mural sized scrolls, often painting on both sides to save money. They were intricate and detailed and very complicated. Psychologically, these painted drawings must have been art therapy for a man who was working through a deeply wounded, orphaned childhood. Something about him reminds me of Morton Bartlett, although Morton was educated and did not live in a cramped room full of scraps. But, they were both reclusive and alone as adults, and they were both orphaned at a young age. Both created "art families" for themselves - images of children. Both are considered "outsider" artists and both have had a huge influence on today's artists. And, last but not least, there is speculation about their perversity because of subject matter. I don't believe they acted out any kind of perversion, they just made great art and used every waking moment to do it. These guys were so "real" that they failed to even market their work (although Morton once had a feature in Yankee magazine). They were concerned mainly with the process of getting it right and the habit of doing it. We are the lucky ones who get to be inspired now because someone found their stash after they died. And we will always wonder what went on inside their brains that enabled them to give us this gift.

"Like all genuine talents, Darger developed a set of techniques that was at once individual and entirely adequate to his expressive requirements. He was at best a mediocre draftsman, for example, having particular trouble with human figures. Yet Darger created an art filled with legions of figures whose images were appropriated. Darger’s method was to simply trace images from children’s book illustrations, comic strips and similar sources. If the needed image was not of the required size, the artist would take it to the photography counter of a near-by drugstore and have it enlarged or reduced to the proper measurements. " more text by Stephen Prokopoff on Carl Hammer Gallery Website which offers a number of Henry Darger originals for sale.

Henry Darger

The Art of Amy Crehore

Saturday, September 08, 2007

Basil Wolverton - Acoustics in Comics!

A great comic art exhibit just opened last weekend at the Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, CA (continuing until Nov. 11, 2007) of original art by Basil Wolverton. Wolverton was a master of comics with sound effects. There is an article on the ASIFA website that Wolverton wrote in 1948 for the Daily Oregonian that you must read! It's called appropriately, "ACOUSTICS in the COMICS". It tells the tale of how he came up with "realistic" sound effects for his comics after his publisher saw him using the word "cranch" in one of his cartoons:

' "I want realism!" he (my publisher) had bellowed. "No more of this wild imaginative stuff that's causing some people to want to ban our comic books! From now on, get that realism in there, and your strips will be horribly funny! Then the readers will go into hysterics and laugh like crazy, and our books will be acclaimed the most laugh provoking on the stands!" That meant that an imaginative word like CRANCH was taboo. It was up to me to get the real sound word.'-ASIFA LINK to PART ONE

And be sure to read PART TWO which tells us that his publisher actually insisted that he act out the situations to produce zillions of his crazy new "sound-words".

Thanks to John Brownlee at ECTOMOPLASMOSIS for the heads up!

The Art of Amy Crehore