Jim Linderman blog about surface, wear, form and authenticity in self-taught art, outsider art, antique american folk art, antiques and photography.
Large Folk Art Carving / Sculpture Articulated Man with Big Feet and Little Hands.
Large Folk Art Carving / Sculpture Articulated Man with Big Feet and Little Hands. Nearly 22 inches tall. Figure is wired to "walk" when cranked. Circa 1940?
Collection Jim Linderman
Make-Do Primitive Folk Art one drawer Stand / Desk in Original Paint Antique
A beautiful Antique Make-Do Primitive Folk Art one drawer Stand / Desk in Original Paint. The wood came from a crate used to ship "Noiseless" matches, and the legs are wood branches. With characteristics of a twig stand, but heightened by original paint in a lovely Green / Robin's egg blue.
34 inches tall.
Collection Jim Linderman
Victor Joseph Gatto Nude Woman Oil Painting on Board American Outsider Artist
"Most of Gatto's paintings—scenes of everyday life in New York, exotic cultures, historical events, and tropical episodes —are packed with endless detail built up with many layers of minute brushstrokes. Gatto, a bachelor and a former featherweight boxer, lived with his widowed stepmother in the section of New York known as "Little Italy." Painters Elaine and Willem De Kooning lived in the next apartment in the late 1930s, and Elaine De Kooning and other artists encouraged Gatto's painting. His work received critical acclaim through several exhibitions in New York galleries during the 1940s and 1950s, his most productive period." Lynda Roscoe Hartigan Made with Passion: The Hemphill Folk Art Collection in the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990)
Oil on Board c. 1950 Collection Jim Linderman
Gatto in the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gatto papers at Syracuse University
The Art and Times of Victor Joseph Gatto in the Clarion 1988
Text in full begins on page 58 HERE
How to Cook with Spirits Vernacular Photograph
How to Cook with Spirits Rotary Club Gaggle of Goblins
1946
Books and Affordable Ebooks by the author of Dull Tool Dim Bulb HERE
Winner! Buffalo Bill Folk Art made from 4,000 inches of Crepe Paper !
First prize winner May Hauser poses with her folk art Buffalo Bill sculpture made from a coat hanger and 4,000 inches of twisted crepe paper.
Original Press Photograph 1946 Collection Jim Linderman
Sugar Ray Robinson and the Great Boxers in Watercolor
Sugar Ray Robinson was good. He entered professional boxing with an 85 - 0 record as an amateur. Nearly half of those 85 fights ended with a knockout in the first round. Credit where due, I guess...is that he invented the posse. The entourage. Everybody wanted to be in Sugar Ray's camp. I am sure all the fighters painted here have similar stories. I always hated Leroy Neiman and his garish sports paintings, but these are great. A young, aspiring illustrator named "J. Gallagher" did them around 1950, but that's all I know about him.
Watercolor Paintings of the Greatest Boxers by J. Gallagher, circa 1950 Collection Jim Linderman
Keychain Dummy Ventriloquist Head
Keychain Dummy Ventriloquist Head circa 1960? Eyes move back and forth, Jaw opens to yap. Collection Jim Linderman
African American Hero of Sport Babs Wingo the Wrestler
The star here is Babs Wingo. I am not sure if women wrestlers ever really took off, not being a fan of the sport today. Mostly grown men in superhero costumes playing to an audience with limited education. But I would have gone to see Babs.
Babs Wingo was no better at faking a move than the male performers, but she was out there with a few of her sisters. What a phenom. Her wrestling career was in the early 1950s. At time when African-Americans were segregated and abused, Babs was traveling on the road and climbing into the ring. One article from the time calls her and her tag team "grunters" but all the reviews were great. "Girls please crowd at wrestling show with hold galore" reads one. What a show!
Babs apparently weighed in at 150 pounds. Only 5' 3" and just 21 at the time. She also painted. I'd love to see some of her paintings. Coming from New Orleans, she would possibly have seen painters lining Jackson Square with work for sale.
Did Babs wrestle in heels? Hmm.
Life is good with diversity, even in the ring. Babs blazed trails.
Here is a time capsule film. It's great
Detail from a recently discovered wrestling poster c. 1950 Collection Jim Linderman
American Folk Art Construction in a Hardware Storefront Window RPPC
American Folk Art Construction in a Hardware Storefront Window which celebrates the local football team winning a big game. Real Photo Postcard collection Jim Linderman.
Folk Art Toy Made by Hand Antique Road Construction Repair
Handmade Folk Art Road Construction Toys circa 1940. Includes fence, barrels, numerous road signs and warnings along with red flags. Collection Jim Linderman
25th Century Hunting Watercolor by J. Gallagher c. 1950 Science Fiction original painting
25th Century Hunting Watercolor by J. Gallagher c. 1950 Science Fiction original painting
Collection Jim Linderman
Manipulated Hand Made Postcards 1910 Folk Art for the Guys Back at Work
Three hand-colored and handmade postcards mailed in sequence in 1910. Newspaper comic panels of Happy Hooligan (or a Happy Hooliganish spin-off) affixed to a card, then personalized with color and written references to friends or co-workers. The address side encourages the recipient to "share with the mail boys at the Ambridge Bridge Company in PA. Odd, but industrious!
Collection Jim Linderman. For similar, see the book (and e-book) Eccentric Folk Art Drawings of the 19th and 20th Century available from Blurb.com.
21" Tall Wood Carving of a Nude Woman
21" Tall Wood Cerving of a Nude Woman, likely unfinished. Circa 1950 Studio piece.
Collection Jim Linderman
The Bizarre Easter of Margaret Halpin
Drawing of Easter Egg decorating. Margaret Halpin, New York, Circa 1950
Collection Jim Linderman
See also the book Eccentric Folk Art Drawings of the 19th and 20th Centuries HERE
Cultural Detritus of Horror: Truck Stop Pornographic Eight Track Tapes
Imagine a guy hauling a double trailer-rig, jacked-up on speed with one hand on the wheel and one in his pants. The CONCEPT is as bad as the vision...but here comes "Spanky" with a big load. Pun reluctantly intended. File these pornographic eight-track tapes under "Cultural detritus" which should have never happened.
Someone is driving at dark and listening to cheap, truck stop smut EIGHT TRACK TAPES!
Online, I find a few sources for information about pornographic eight track tapes. I CAN tell you there were at least 57 in this series, as I have both number 000 and 057 here. Collect them ALL. Local entrepreneurs likely churned them out in seedy neighborhoods along the highway.
These obscurities would fall into the "spoken word" category of recorded sound collecting, but I don't think the fellow who purchased these originally would have alternated the playlist with a stirring speech from Winston Churchill or Robert Frost reading his poetry.
Everyone understands by now that every advance in media is taken over by sex somehow. From the camera to the VCR and beyond. But eight tracks? Don't come knocking if the rig is rocking SOLO.
All three here were decorated by the same artist. I guess "cartoonist" is more appropriate. The scrapheap of popular culture has spit out yet another relic of horror.
Group of X-rated Eight Track Tapes. No date. Circa 1970.
Errol Flynn Amateur Watercolor before the Fall
A Tasmanian Devil smoking. Errol Flynn was literally the "In like Flynn" guy and it is estimated he slept with 10,000 woman. He drank "like Flynn" too and by the age of 40 was an alcoholic only offered roles playing an alcoholic, so he took to his boat and sailed the seas. I wouldn't say he lived as a swashbuckler, but he had a hell of a short life. The studio had plenty of reasons to drop him.
Eventually he began to accept the drunk roles.
Errol became a member of an elite club I fear is not too select, despite his fame. That would be the club which drinks a fifth of vodka or more a day. Wrong decision for anyone. The fifth became a quart, then two quarts. When he passed at the age of 59 he was one of those guys they say "had the body of an 85 year old man" about.
He was married three times. but who knows how many woman had his children over the course of his film career? So there must be offspring out there. Yup. Sean Flynn, his son, was quite possibly captured by the Khmer Rouge, executed and later became the subject of a song by the Clash.
Yes, Errol Flynn was born in Tasmania. He may have been a real-life spy. He may have been bisexual. Here he is seen in his handsome Hollywood days.
Amateur drawing of Errol Flynn, circa 1940 Collection Jim Linderman
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