The Great Charlie Chaplin
I like Lloyd's recent post about the history of the Hollywood film industry-
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
This Monkey Seems Oddly Familiar
From a T.S. Sullivant header for the Comic Supplement of "The Chicago Sunday American", November 5th, 1905I like this! See more at
Also, watch "Pipe Dreams", 1938, an MGM cartoon featuring the Three Good Little Monkeys. What a hoot!
Monday, February 25, 2008
Luscious Oil Paint and J. Currin
John Currin's Honeymoon Nude 1998I bought this book about John Currin's art the other day. No, it's not the big, fat expensive one. It's the smaller book that was published around the time of his 2003 exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. I have never seen any Currin works in person, but I would like to. I especially like his nudes of 1998-99 and his "Hobo" and "Sno-bo" paintings. They are beautiful. The skin and hands are especially nice. The humor is subtle in these.
But, there is much to look at in his other works as well which are often laugh-out-loud funny.
Mainly, I look at how he uses oil paint and how he obviously enjoys painting - the lusciousness of the oils and the effects that are achieved through slow layering, textures, happy accidents and the spontaneity of wet-on-wet painting. He is sometimes delicate, sometimes rough. He uses the paint every which way he can think of. In crazy ways. In logical ways. Many styles rolled into one painting. Inspiring stuff if you are an oil painter. Oil paint is just so delicious to use. I'm hooked on it myself.
(Please do not eat the paint, dear readers.)
Francis Picabia 1879-1953
The photo is of Francis Picabia in the film Entr’acte (1924)wearing a dress. Also, here are some examples of his figure paintings of women. "Francis Picabia worked across a huge range of media, from painting and drawing, to poetry, publishing and performance. Born in France he worked between Paris, Zurich and New York at different points throughout his career and was variously integral to and then disassociated from both the Dadaists and then the Surrealists." link
"In the early 1940s he moved to the south of France, where his work took a surprising turn - he produced a series of paintings based on the nude and glamour photos in French "Girlie" magazines, in a garish style which appears to subvert traditional, academic nude painting. He loved fast automobiles and was reported to have 150 of them." Fast cars, cross-dressing and painting more than one woman together based on girlie mags. I sort of like the style of some of his figurative work. However, some of it is clearly lacking in feeling, depth and compositional flow from heavy reliance on stock photos as a reference. Still, he gave painting a good ol' try, when he wasn't being an asshole playboy.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Surrealism in B & W Vintage Films
There is a most unusual and interesting blog about B&W cinematography and film art direction calledThis blog features mesmerizing, mysterious and surreal B&W stills.
The architectural sets are amazing on some of these films.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
All Stocked Up
= Tickler Uke T-shirt by artist Amy Crehore available HERE =I just want to let everyone know that I replenished my inventory of Tickler Ukulele Artist T-shirts and the (2XL 's) came in earlier this week. An amazing number of people ordered this shirt and I want to extend a big thank you. I got some nice letters from people. It was great seeing Mark F. wearing it on boingboing tv this week! (Monday's episode-Maker Faire tryouts). Also, a customer in the U.K. was wearing one on flickr (birthday present for himself).
The number two Tickler Ukulele is nearing completion, but it will still be a couple of weeks. The luthier is using special wood that has been aged 30 years. This uke is guaranteed to have an incredible sound and also be a unique one-of-a-kind art object. Every detail has been carefully thought out. I'm so proud of it. It's looking very art deco, yet modern.
Stay tuned.
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