Dull Tool Dim Bulb

Basketball Jones Folk Art Carving Sculpture Florida Collection Jim Linderman

Basketball Player Folk Art Sculpture Carving Florida No Date 16" Tall
Collection Jim Linderman

19th Century Folk Art Valentine Love Letter Drawing

19th Century Folk Art Valentine Love Letter Anonymous Collection Jim Linderman

African-American Folk Art Sculpture Yard Art collection Jim Linderman

The preservation, provenance and acquisition of this outdoor African-American folk art sculpture in concrete has an interesting story. I saw the piece in situ, along with other garden sculptures by the same hand, some 30 years ago. I was too tired to stop, but noted the location for a subsequent trip. I went back two weeks later and the entire environment was gone. Several weeks ago, it turned up again being offered by a New York dealer. It turns out the pair had been, at some time, added to the collection of a prominent New Jersey collector, sold at auction and then finally sold to me. Full circle. I'll give them a good home for some time. Great things thought lost often come around again.

Large handmade folk art garden sculpture (pair) Collection Jim Linderman

BOOKS AND $5.99 EBOOKS BY JIM LINDERMAN AVAILABLE HERE

Photographer Frank Powolny Show Business Photographer of the Stars

Show Business. Guess what? The same photographer took all three of these photographs. Marilyn Monroe, the iconic pinup of Betty Grable…and this staged disaster of makeup from Clarkson, Nebraska circa 1920. From humble beginnings, eh?

Frank Powolny was born in Austria, but grew up in Clarkson, Nebraska. He opened a photography studio there in 1914. Ten years later he was working for 20th Century Fox where for 40 years he photographed them all.

You can read about Mr. Powolny HERE.

Real Photo Postcard taken by Frank Powolny Clarkston Nebraska circa 1915
Collection Jim Linderman

Three Dimensional Magic of the Animated Fusion Chart

Three Dimensional Magic of the Animated Fusion Chart
Thanks and a tip o the hat to Curley's Antiques

Daylight Carnival Photographs by Jim Linderman

Photographs by Jim Linderman 2014

One Man Play? Bizarre Fetish? Magic Trick? Performance Art? Interrogation? Mystery Snapshot

A curious snapshot comes by way of a friend. One Man Play? Bizarre Fetish? Magic Trick? Performance Art? Interrogation?

Gene Bilbrew Draws Bettie Page as a Costume

It's time to start preparing for Halloween again. Here, Gene Bilbrew, African-American fetish artist most prominent in the 1950s and 1950s shows what you will need to show up as Bettie Page. See also the book TIMES SQUARE SMUT for more about the illustrator.

Antique Homemade Handmade Folk Art Paper Dolls collection Jim Linderman

A recently acquired set of homemade folk art paper dolls from the 19th Century with collaged women's faces from period fashion magazines. This gives me the opportunity to link to the Folk Art Magazine article Costumed by Hand: Yesterday's Best-Dressed Paper Dolls, which illustrated numerous folk art paper dolls which used to be owned by yours truly. The essay by Francine Kirsh, I believe, remains the best piece on paper dolls which were made by hand, not those from commercial sources. Enjoy!

BOOKS AND $5.99 EBOOKS BY JIM LINDERMAN ARE AVAILABLE HERE

Bizarre Napoleon Welded Folk Art Sculpture

Bad art from the 1950's. Too good to be good...not bad enough to be bad. A cut and welded Napoleon with tiny head, giant hat and rusty epaulets. It's a horrible mid-century bad painting come to life! From a bicycle repair shop in Michigan, and obviously one which didn't get enough business.

The hat is callled a bicorn (which means twice as corny) and rivals only the beret in Frenchiness. Why the bicorn didn't catch on with the beats is a mystery.

I am inclined to say the worst art is that made by trained yet amateur artists who are trying to be funny, at least during the "beatnik" modern art years, when things French were almost cool. I really don't know why he was satirized in art so often, except that he was a relatively short man who sent taller men into war. Apparently, he died a natural death of arsenic poisoning.

Strange Handmade "Folk Art" Napoleon Circa 1950? Collection Jim Linderman

Books and $5.99 ebooks by the author HERE

The Measure of a Man Articulated Antique Folk Art Sculpture

The Measure of a Man Articulated Antique Folk Art Sculpture collection Jim Linderman

Erotic Folk Art Drawings by Ace Moore

Erotic Folk Art Drawings by Ace Moore Collection Victor Minx

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jim Linderman

"...Linderman is widely regarded as one of the foremost figures in a field of vernacular art collectors working beyond the margins of most institutional axioms and impulses, in what is essentially it's own self-taught art form."
Ursula Magazine Hauser & Wirth 2019

"Linderman produces the most sublime books on dreamy, arcane subjects, sexy stuff, too, all with rare one-of-a-kind images." Craig Yoe 2017

"...disclosing an underground history of American popular culture one oddball tale at a time"
John Strausbaugh in The New York Times

"...one of the blog writers to watch for"
ARTSlant

"...wonderful, extraordinary, fascinating, remarkable and profound" Fans in a Flashbulb International Center of Photography Museum 2016

"Brilliantly Astute, Acerbic and Aesthetic Jim Linderman"
The Museum of Everything 2014

"Dull Tool Dim Bulb is always worth a visit" THINGS Magazine 2016

"...grumpy..." The Austin Chronicle 2014

"Perpetually ahead of the collecting curve...a one man Taschen. An authentically curious individual...diligently archiving the forgotten curiosities of American History"

Emma Higgins in Art Hack May 2012

"Jim Linderman likes Art, Antiques and Photography and his collection of Vernacular Photography, Folk Art, Ephemera and Curiosities is a wonderful place..."
LifeElsewhere with Norman B. 2014

"...collected over the years by Jim Linderman, a character who seems the perfect subject for a Harvey Pekar comic. Linderman treats collecting like a calling, and his finds have a resulting air of authority, stunning in their capture of bygone picturesque moments."
Derek Taylor Dusted

"The pictures, discarded artifacts of ecstatic Americana, come from the stash of Jim Linderman, who in his introduction recalls advice he’s plainly taken to heart: “Collect the heck” out of whatever you find interesting."
Drew Jubera Paste Magazine

"His interest in art is rivaled only by his interest in music, and one expression informs the other. He pursues objects with thoroughness and an innate sense of curiosity..."
Tanya Heinrich Folk Art Magazine

"Linderman acknowledges the obscure at the same time that he elevates it.... His collections tell vast stories in sotto voce, allowing curios and objects shadowed by mainstream culture and ideology to converse and be heard. What we hear is an enormous American sub-culture speaking in forbidden, marginalized languages: stuff discovered boxed in the attic out of embarrassment or zealotry, smutty ash trays crowing next to religious pamphlets, each claiming a part of the complex, sometimes contradictory, always conflicted American imagination, a chaos of memories that will one day vanish."
Joe Bonomo Author of Conversations With Greil Marcus, Jerry Lewis Lost and Found and No Such Thing As Was

"...he's one of the world's greatest pickers."
Brian Wallis in The New York Times

"Documenting--one clipping at a time--the scrapbook of a leg and garter aficionado that was dumpster-dived in Virginia in the 60s" "...an outstanding image-archaeologist who has compiled a shelf-ful of worthy and unique photographic histories."
William Smith Hang Fire Books

"Linderman has a knack for discovering untold stories and introducing them to a wider audience"
Joey Lin Anonymous Works

"Jim Linderman...makes us all look a little puny"
Could it be Madness-this?

"...insatiable collector of ephemera and ringleader behind an incredible circus of blogs — including the treasure trove dull tool dim bulb"
The Cynephile

"Yo no sé ustedes pero creo que es uno de los mejores sitios que he visitado en mucho tiemp"
Color Me in Blog

"...there's something beyond the endless photos and postcards and weird propaganda from another time that he lovingly documents - I think it's the collection as a whole, the portrait of a person fascinated with culture and communication. I have met people like this before, and in reading Dull Tool Dim Bulb I feel I have been lucky enough to meet one more. This site is a goldmine in terms of links..."
The Hyggelic Life October 2009

"Linderman is always on the lookout for the new and exciting"
Chuck and Jan Rosenak Contemporary American Folk Art

"...an amazing collection..."
Revel in New York October 2009

"Jim Linderman has a nice little colllection of interesting books and blogs...But every so often he just loses it."
American Digest March 2010

"FOR MOST OF HIS LIFE, COLLECTOR JIM LINDERMAN has searched high and low for authentic things--unique and special objects that define the artistic culture of the American experience. From folk art to popular culture, from pulp fiction to Delta Blues-- Jim is a walking authority on so many things American they are too numerous to mention. One thing is certain-- his collecting interests are for things that have fallen through the cracks, those things lost and forgotten--the box of material under the table at the flea market booth. If it wasn't for dedicated collectors like Jim Linderman-- so many important objects about our culture would have surely been lost to time and indifference."

"Jim Linderman maintains a most interesting blog about the most amazing things from his collection—a site he calls “Dull Tool Dim Bulb,” the only curse words his father ever uttered. I love it, and read it everyday."
"...an excellent writer and I devour your blog daily. I am impressed at your deep knowledge of things within your niche..."
John Foster Accidental Mysteries

"I am grateful to Jim Linderman for first alerting me to the existence of the 1930s Spiritualist hymn "Jesus is My Air-o-plane."
William Fagaly New Orleans Museum of Art, Author Tools of her Ministry: The art of Sister Gertrude Morgan

"Linderman describes a long gone world...(he) claims not to be a writer but he is most certainly an excellent researcher..."
BOOKSTEVE

"Jim Linderman, King of the Internet Ephemeral Arts"
Spaniel Rage

"Jim is a fantastic historian...show him some love"
Astrid Daley Fringe Pop / Sin-A-Rama

"Almost an experimental narrative"
Idiopath

"He came to us with hundreds of jaw-dropping baptism photos that he'd been collecting for 25 years," Ledbetter explains. "By the time he found us, he'd already done half a lifetime's works, and he trusted us to handle it properly." Lance Ledbetter in Creative Loafing 10/13/11

Fair Use

Though the images, which I have myself largely scanned from my personal collection of photographs and ephemera, some are subject to © by the artist, syndicate that distributed them or otherwise the individual artists. The use here is regardless covered by the U.S. fair use laws because:
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