Click to Grow and Show!You may think there could be nothing more trite on an art blog than a post on the Spirograph, a toy Kenner claimed rights to, and I guess they did and do. This, however, is the "Magic Pattern" from Japan, which has no date but from the box it certainly goes back earlier than the tiresome plastic gears on the Kenner toy I had as a kid. They always slipped JUST as I was finishing a design.
There was earlier a cool drawing thing known as "Hoot-Nanny" in 1929, shown HERE on Peabody Penquin's Spirograph collection site...and the 1960 or so "Dizzy Doodler" is fairly common. There was also apparently an even earlier child's toy called "The Marvelous Wondergraph" shown in the 1908 Sears catalog. However, no one has contributed THIS box to the Universal Brain yet, so here you go.
What is FAR more fascinating to me is the over 100 teeny tiny drawings I found inside the box under the rickety machine. Not bad, eh? Trippy! They are so beautiful, I'd love to frame each one individually...but anyone who saw them would sneer "oh...spirograph."
Magic Pattern Japanese Toy (Box, Metal and Wood Drawing Machine) and 100 original drawings, circa? 1930? Collection Jim Linderman
A tribute and profile to the late and much missed inker Bill Kresse, who drew work over 50 years ago that looks pretty darn good today.
Jim
If ever there was a vintage sleaze cartoonist from the 1950s deserving a retrospective showing at the Drawing Center, it would be Bill Kresse. As modern as a Herman Miller Eames chair and just as timeless, his early gag work for sleazy digests stands out for many reasons. Lush and creative, the women all sharp, angular shoulders and heavily detailed dress, the fellas all whirring, confused and excited motion, fevered and flushed. All players in a Kresse panel are happy to be alive and participating in this retro-human game. Fingers and heels like spikes on the dames, gunboats as wide as shoeboxes on the guys. Several things distinguish a Kresse cartoon from the 1950s...One, he always took time to put glass over the modern art on the wall (as if he aspired to the same treatment, which he now deserves) and the large, undulating ribbons of bold black ink which surround his characters in elegant swerves. Surprisingly, his work has not been anthologized much that I can tell. Bill Kresse published a book way back entitled "An Introduction to Cartooning" with the subtitle "It's a Magic World" and in his case, it must have been. Although drawn and sold to over the counter girly cartoon pulp digests, these figures are always clothed (in dresses Lady Gaga could only imagine, if that) and although emotions are at a peak, for the guys anyway, the gags are always harmless, human and honest. Great work from a great artist. Kresse went on to do panel work for New York Daily Papers and had a series for which he became well-known, "Super Duper" and even worked with Terrytoons. An under appreciated master who created work which looks better today than it did 50 years ago.
A nice note from DEVLIN adds the following : Kresse also did work in ARCHIE'S MADHOUSE in the mid-'60s, which stuck out like a sore thumb stylistically. I never learned his name until reading an article about his newspaper work in an issue of HOGAN'S ALLEY
I have always wanted to take a class in wood types. Every time I see the Keno brothers on Antiques Roadshow gush over a native poplar tulip or yellow pine, I swoon like my dear old aunt Myrt used to over Liberace. I guess...I never actually saw her swoon, but when we cleared out her place, there were sure plenty of his records in those 78 rpm sleeves. No offense, guys. Seriously, I love watching them. Never have I seen anyone on television who obviously enjoyed their work so much, except possibly Dan Rather on election night. They know their field and their field is old wood. Wood safe from oxidation through tight construction, primary wood used sparingly with liberal use of secondary wood, delicate inlay wood, crests of wood...even fake aged wood almost gleefully pointed out to average Joe who thought he owned an American treasure. Not to worry Joe, it still has "decorative" value, but not really.
The delicate inlay here comes from what I believe is a Southern lift-top box which belonged to my Grandmother, which I believe once belonged to an earlier relative of hers. It is a beautiful thing, but I am afraid I do not know the wood types, of which there are easily four or five. I would have brought it to the show in a paper bag when they were here last year, but tickets were a benefit for the fledgling PBS station and too dear.
Just for the record, and since I hate to evoke the house of Liberace in any manner which might seem less than deferential, Johnny Mathis is quoted in John Waters new book "Role Models" (The funniest book I have read in a long time...and if you think I'm dropping names, HE somehow manages to mention Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Clarabell the Howdy Doody Clown, Nancy Reagan, Johnny Ray, art dealer Matthew Marks, Tim Burton, Bobby "Boris" Pickett, Grandma Moses, Tab Hunter, the actress who played the Wicked Witch of the West, Jeanne Moreau, Frank Sinatra, Orson Welles, Dorothy Malone, Tim Burton, Miles Davis, bank-robber Willie Sutton, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Carlos the Jackal, Charlize Theron, and more in ONE ESSAY ALONE and make it work... I won't be creating hyperlinks for them all) he "loved" Liberace "because he used his money." Okay...I'll create a link for Bobby "Boris" Pickett.
Details from Wooden lift-top box, 1920? Collection Jim Linderman
One Man Band! This circa 1890 enterprising inventor in the top three photographs could do it all...and presumably without electricity! I can't tell if his fly is down, but he is certainly playing with everything else. What a contraption. Other famous one man bands you may or may not know? Dave Grohl, who did the entire first album by Foo Fighters, Sir Paul, who did it without the other moptops, and MY personal favorite Jesse Fuller, a blues man who played the "footdella" for the bass while busking on street corners. Fate Norris of the Skillet Lickers did the same but added bells.
I used to see Sterling Magee play on 125th Street in Harlem. No, not the Apollo...the STREET. Mr. Magee, also known as Satan from "Satan and Adam" a salt and pepper blues duo, had a regular gig worth taking the A-train for. Satan was once called "The Fastest Guitar Player in the World" and he might have been, but his amp was so cheap it all came out like one glorious distorted note. He used a foot operated drum and cymbal thing while plugged into a lamppost near the Studio Museum of Harlem.
Satan also made art, and I spent a day in his apartment while he showed me his trippy, cosmic, Sun Ra holograms made out of plywood and such. Sorta like primitive Rubic's cube toys but shaped like stars and each with their own particular logic only Mr. Satan could interpret. I went with a friend, he later told me that was the longest afternoon in his life. I wasn't surprised to learn he had a nervous breakdown not long after, but what DID surprise me was the extent of his Wikipedia entry! He never told me he played with a transvestite duo known as "The Illusions That Create Confusion" but he did mention James Brown and King Curtis, both which were true. He also made a few early singles and with Adam, a few LP records but they gave him a better amplifier. Too bad. He sounded great with the one he carried on a modified shopping cart. I don't think this fellow had as much soul, but I'd have taken the subway up to see him play too.Group of Frank Wendt Cabinet Card photographs collection Jim Linderman
Lethal Dose is a mind-bent chunk of REALLY good hair, acceleration, rock and roll, napalm-hot dames, clips from far underneath the underbelly and a dizzying work of genius/love. Think every influence Lux Interior had crammed into a two minute dream and add a trucker's sized dinner of Nodoz. If you live within the metropolitan New York City area, think WFMU and the Hound on a loud distorted speaker. Then add some color. Really bright ones. So I was thrilled to see the linked review of Camera Club Girls HERE.
Tony Fitzpatrick is one of the most amazing people I have ever met but do not know. I'm GLAD I don't know him. You see, Tony came to my house to visit over 15 years ago shortly after I had stopped drinking. Mr. Fitzpatrick was an artist and a damn good one, he still is. After ten years drunk I was a recently sober art collector. Tony won't remember this, he'll barely remember me...but at that time, after confessing I was sober for the first time in forever, he asked me the question of four secret words exchanged between alcoholics. I said no, that I was doing it myself. Tony, after having only met me for the first time. looked me right in my eyes with his...his clear, powerful, serious eyes which only artists have, and said "If you ever feel like a drink again, you call me first."
I have never had to.
Memory is an amazing and curious thing. All of us go through our lives with hardly a thought about how we affect others. What to us might be a flippant comment, a friendly greeting, an abusive finger...could well stay with someone for years. It could stay with them forever. I guess it has to do with timing and chemicals.
I could write a biography of Tony Fitzpatrick here with the standard sources, but he and others have done it for me. Suffice to say, he is a father, an artist, a blunt former pug and poet, a tough mother for ya, one of the brightest lights in Chicago and one of the most honest people I have met but never knew. However, like most of my friends, I knew he was there the whole time, and that is what mattered. Today Tony and I are a few tentacles away from each other on Facebook. I haven't written him, he hasn't written me. But I know he is there. Still.The images cribbed here are early work I can only assume are now owned by fortunate and proud collectors, if any want the images removed let me know. There is already a solid 25 years of good work behind Mr. Fitzpatrick and I could find more. Tony has done other work you have seen, most of Steve Earle's CD covers feature one of his works, as have others. He exhibits frequently at prominent galleries and his work is owned by prominent museums. His website is HERE
Available NOW! The Painted Backdrop: Behind the Sitter in American Tintype Photography The previously untold story of 19th century painters and their influence on American photography during the tintype era. Never before examined in detail, the book contains over 75 rare, unpublished original tintype photographs from the Jim Linderman collection. A Grammy nominated writer and collector who has been called "the perfect subject for a Harvey Pekar comic" this book is informed with Linderman's wit and continues his examination of previously overlooked art and photography subjects. 80 Pages, 8' x 10" with essays by Jim Linderman and Kate Bloomquist. Linderman's most recent photography book was Camera Club Girls which tells the story of the amateur photographers who met to take nude photographs during the 1950s, discovered model Bettie Page, and started a revolution in erotic art...all through the work of one never before published artist. Behind the Sitter i...
By Jim Linderman DUL...
We just "celebrated" the 30th anniversary of a killer tornado here in Michigan, the Kalamazoo doozy in which four folks lost their lives. The entire downtown area was destroyed, and I lived through it. It was the last house I lived in before moving to NYC, and I'll always remember sitting on the porch, drinking beer, ignoring warning sirens, and watching a poor soul drive up to the house on four flat tires, his arm covered in blood, to say "I just drove through a tornado" while shaking his head and trying to clear his ears. We didn't hear the typical "train sound" so often used by survivors, but the path was less than a mile away.
I was expecting this group of five disaster photos to be more evidence of a tornado. Lo and behold one has a barely legible note on the reverse which reads "Explosion at old Gilmore house" and sure enough...the offending stove is shown in one photo. Since these photos pre-date meth labs by a good hundred years, I am going to blame a gas line and hope no one was home. These would typically be called "exterior" and "interior" photographs, but the explosion has blurred those distinctions considerably.
Set of Original Anonymous "Disaster" photographs, circa 1910 Collection Jim Linderman Expect a major announcement of photographic interest this week. Stay Tuned!
Today "Dog and Pony Show" is a phrase used when tricking prospective customers with bedazzling graphics and such. It used to mean what is shown above.
Number 19 in the "At the Circus in Black and White" series. Untitled Anonymous Snapshot, circa 1920 Collection Jim Linderman
There are many beautiful and delicate things in the world. but among the most beautiful and delicate are the 19th century Japanese Crepe Paper books produced by Tikejiro Hasegawa. They hardly weigh a thing, which likely helped ship and carry them to the United States back in 1885 when they were first being made. While they are in fact extraordinary Japanese traditional woodcuts prints, each page done by hand, they were produced largely for the western market as souvenirs, but more. Seldom has such attention been paid to mere exports, and I suspect not only the extremely high artistic standards of the artist, but the desire to share same with the rest of the world was just as important as profit.Takejiro Hasegawa was born in 1853 and lived until 1938, thus just missing the Second World War. The books were printed in quite small editions, some 400 copies, so are quite scarce and highly prized today. He first intended the books to help educate Japanese children in the speaking of English, but as they caught on with travelers he had found his true market. Despite being (almost) strong enough to withstand children's play, the "Chirimen bon" crepe paper he printed on was light as a feather. These selected images are from but a few in the 66 page book "Japanese Jingles" from 1891 which I proudly own. The books were in fact printed on crepe...a light as air paper fabric...hand sewn and bound. Mine is 5" x 6" in size and nearly an inch thick. The entire book is reproduced HERE. Japanese Jingles: Being a Few Little Verses... by Mae St. john Bramhall, Published T. Hasegawa 1891 Collection Jim Linderman
With this post, I am taking a break to finish up another Dull Tool Dim Bulb Press book. More details will emerge soon...keep following! Jim Linderman
Spiritual sisters with purloined street signs point to the source of their inspiration.
(Also posted on Old Time Religion blog)Anonymous snapshot circa 1925 Collection Jim Linderman
