C-Monster My Favorite Art Critic in the World, C-Mon Chases Fame (and Google)

I don't post enough about people I admire ( and rely on) as often as I should. The post below is cribbed from the outstanding, required, essential, growing and FABULOUS contemporary art survey blog C-Monster.net. and while not a characteristic post, it is delightful and I thought I'd share it.

Normally, C-Mon who writes under a real name as well (including significant cover stories for Art News and such) is one of the busiest art writers around, and she literally travels the world for unusual takes on the contemporary art climate. She is adventurous...and fearless. Insightful, hilarious, serious, well-informed, opinionated, lively, colorful...I'm just getting started. I could provide her real name, but anyone smart enough to follow the real art world at the doorstep of the museum should find it easy enough.

The site's links alone are art gold. She has entertained me for a long time, and has been my eyes in the Art World since I left New York City, and believe me, she is a comer She has a couple of other high-profile gigs which you will come to understand if you follow her regularly.

C-Monster.net is a daily visit for me. If you like any of my "nearly art" sites, you will love her 'REAL" art site, and l will personally give a free t-shirt to anyone (within reason) who doesn't agree it is a great, important and worthy site to follow.

(Offer limited to 5 free t-shirts, and I don't expect to have to mail out even one.)

My 15 Nanoseconds of Fame

Cruising in Brooklyn

I made it onto Google Street View while riding my bike in the vicinity of the Brooklyn Museum. (Full disclosure: I saw the Google car and followed it for a few of blocks because that’s the kind of cheap, internet fame whore I am. Sorry, Joerg.) The whole thing inspired me to look up some of the addresses I’d lived in over the course of my life on GSV— the vast majority of which aren’t online because my family had a penchant for inhabiting incredibly bizarre, out-of-the-way places. It was a trip back in time, except it wasn’t, because I’m seeing all of these spots in the pseudo-present. (A selection: the place I was born in, the road leading to the house we lived in when I was 10, the donut shop where I used to ditch high school English class and the college dorm that was the site of various inebriated indiscretions.) Which brings me to this highly interesting essay — which I discovered by way of Conscientious — about photography in the age of GSV.

Excerpt from the June 13, 2011 C-Monster.net HERE

Punch Card Reel Hit Art of Gambling Vintage Gambling Card Graphics

Large vintage poster-size punch card. Take a Chance!

Unused! Circa 1940? Collection Jim Linderman


Browse and Purchase Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books HERE



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Tintype Painted Backdrop Book Review The Painted Backdrop: Behind the Sitter by Jim Linderman

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A nice thoughtful review of my book The Painted Backdrop: Behind the Sitter in American Tintype Photography 1860-1920 appears on the Art Site Ululating Undulating Ungulate by Deanna. A brief excerpt below... and link to the complete article HERE

"Have you ever thought about the painted backgrounds in antique and vintage photographs?

No?

Well, you aren’t alone.

Until I read The Painted Backdrop: Behind the Sitter in American Tintype Photography, by Jim Linderman (with an essay by Kate Bloomquist), I hadn’t either.

In fact, the story of and between 19th century painters and American photography really has never been told — or, I should say, “hasn’t been explored” until Linderman came along and looked into it via his collection of antique tintype photographs."

"The author / collector states: “This is an art book about painting and photography (or vice-versa) and how they met in a certain time and place.” Ever since the camera arrived, the debate about the merits of photography as an art form has raged (admittedly Ansel Adams helped sway a lot of people that it is), and this book and its 75 antique tintype images certainly is part of that debate. It also raises the question about whether or not the painted backdrops used behind the people in the photographs are art, folk art, or ephemera from the photographic industry. But it’s that last part, “how they met in a certain time and place,” which really gets to the core of things, the thrilling things, for me. That’s where we get to the historical cultural contexts."

READ THE ARTICLE IN FULL HERE

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Rustic Vaudeville from the West Paquin Family of Performers RPPC collection Jim Linderman

What a delight to have seen this family troupe perform. Late 1930s Family Paquin who played the Western Circuit with Snake Chamers, Musicians, Contortionists and more, all from the same stock! See More HERE

Collection of Real Photo Postcards Jim Linderman Collection

Browse and Order Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books HERE

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Party Hats From Germany Crepe Paper and Die Cut Appliques

Set of Crepe Paper Party Hats, No Date, Germany Early 20th Century Collection Jim Linderman

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Miniature Native American Sweetgrass Basket and Lessons from the Birds

A beautiful miniature Native American sweetgrass basket. A decorative trinket form which originated during Victorian times to provide a meager living for our noble original residents. Taking all manner of shape and form, these baskets, which are commonly made even still by many Northeastern tribes, used wood splints which were given color by native, vegetal dyes and painstakingly created adapting traditional native forms for which the makers were hardly compensated.

I believe the decorative handles, tiny and remarkable coils of wood, have been called "God's Eye" but that might be a Western application.

A recent email conversation with a friend reminded me of a myth I heard in Santa Fe, which could be quite true...that native peoples, in particular those who took care of our land before we came to trash it, learned to make baskets by watching birds make their nests. A beautiful sentiment, true or not, and either way these perfect little creations are far more affordable than they should be. You'll see them around. If there are absolutely no breaks, their value is sure to increase.


Miniature Sweetgrass Basket, (Potawatomi tribe?) Circa 1920 Collection Jim Linderman

See and order my published books HERE
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Vernacular Hand Tinted Photograph Collection 1950s

Add some color! Kodachrome is extinct,but I do not expect to see a return to hand painted photographs. I don't mean "contemporary artists" who ruin old prints by doctoring them up, I mean the real thing, usually done with Marshall's Oil Colors, an early supplier to those stuck with black and white film. One of those "art of the people" things and available to anyone who read the back pages of Popular Mechanics or home hobby publications. Gone the way of candy dishes, aperitifs, formal dress and beer steins against the basement bar wall.


Tinted by hand photographs (8 x 10 and 5 x 7) all 1948-1950 Collection Jim Linderman

Jim Linderman Interview

Interview with me and my alter-ego HERE

Summer Snapshots circa 1970 Vernacular Photograph Group

Summer is good. Three anonymous vernacular snapshots circa 1970 Collection Jim Linderman

Civil War Colt Weapons Collection of Gun Collector William S. Lawrence

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Pair of matching original photographs, each 8 x 10 Collection Jim Linderman

DULL TOOL DIM BULB BOOK CATALOG HERE

Indy 500 Race SPECIAL! Pedal to the Metal Pedal Car RACE

Group of Anonymous Snapshots collection Jim Linderman

Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books HERE

There Once Was A Man From Nantucket...Wood Whirligig Folk Art

Whirligig Figure, circa 1930 Collection Jim Linderman

SEE ALSO HERE for the story of the Nantucket Sailor Whirligig

The Worst Woman in the County Addicted to Scolding and Open on Sunday

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What does it take for a woman to get arrested for just being ornery? Start with being "addicted to scolding" and to "instruct and teach her children to insult, abuse and injure children and persons in general." Mrs. Johnson also "makes a habit of using profane, vulgar and abusive language." Not only that, she keeps her store open on the Lord's day which disturbs the rest of the peaceable citizens.

Sounds like just another day at Wal-Mart to me, but to the good folks of Lycoming County in 1884, Mrs. Susan Johnson was a big pain in the Pennsylvania Dutch ass.

Your choice old lady Johnson...the can or the stocks.

Original Court Document, 1884 Collection Jim Linderman

Top Secret Woman Vitals and Man Vitals from the HI Shear Rivet Tool Company

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Everything a spy would need for a night out on the town...or I guess any customer or client of hi-shear rivet tool company!

Pair of Top Secret Folding Cards 1952 Collection Jim Linderman
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Ricky Jay Celebrations of Curious Characters a Review of sorts...and Pizza

As I have been a big fan of Ricky Jay since watching him throw a playing card through a watermelon upstairs in a small theater off Times Square, it would be unfair for me to review his new book Celebrations of Curious Characters. Suffice to say it is a deal at any price (though it costs far less than any price) and it is the genuine deal, not some slight of hand. I'm not going to say he has the power to save the book from extinction, but your Kindle And Nook don't have you looking for the mailman until it comes either.

Anticipation beats a wireless download any day. Consider waiting for a pizza to be delivered. While eating pizza is wonderful too, the 20 minute wait is usually splendid. Some chat, a few jokes, maybe if you are in college furtive tokes with a wet towel under the door...and it arrives!


That is not an opinion, it is a fact. You will look far to find anyone who says they do not like pizza.


The origins of Celebrations of Curious Characters are to be found in a series of brief profiles Mr. Jay did for public radio. That implies erudite already...so bring your brains and expect the prodigious. When you have read it (and you WILL begin reading it immediately after tearing the cardboard strip off your Amazon box) you will have a beautiful spine facing you from the bookshelf rather than some digital bits which do not exist. As such, do not "Tell the publisher I'd like to read this book on Kindle" as you don't.

HERE is Mr. Jay's Wonderful Website. McSweeny published the new book.

Mystery Cabinet Card Pair

A Play? Pageant? Coronation? An odd group indeed, and while they certainly seem on a stage with a backdrop, it is a motley troupe, and identification is not made easier by a lousy photographer.

Two Cabinet Card Photographs circa 1880 Collection Jim Linderman
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