Back in the early days of the IoF©, it attracted a more bookish crowd than the present bunch of clods and schnooks. Intellectual-type guys what dug readin' an' poetry an' shit. So a regliar Dept. was opened to service their needs, named after a quote from The Shawshank Redemption for extry literary cachet. It was a rip-roaring success! Turned out th' Four Or Five Guys© had an unquenchable thirst for the Noble Tradition of Publishin'!
And the library's most-borrowed book? If you're half the beady-eyed rascal I take you for, you've already glommed the evocative artwork decorating this piece - note subtle play of light on sculpted forms! note vibrant polychrome brushwork! - and surmised it's that masterpiece of the illuminated tract The Complete Little Annie Fanny! It's also the most popliar ever screed on th' Isle©! Ever! By some way, by George! That's kind of reassuring, ain't it? The Four Or Five Guys© may know Jack Shit about what they like, but they know about Art!
This post made fungible thru' our sponsor, Fancy Ant's Pantie Pantry™, Gusset, NM. "Puttin' ants in yer pants since the Hoover Administration!"
Renew yer library card by telling us who's yer best, like, artist-painter-type guy.
ReplyDeleteEric Joyner.... robots and doughnuts!!!
Deletep0trzebie.... yes, that one...
DeleteIf necessary I can be reached at a certain blog about a city in the sky....
DeleteDRUCKER! STEADMAN! HIRSCHFELD!
Deletejaxnider
Don Martin
ReplyDeletePlease do try to remember a nick-name when posting anonymously. You can type it out at the end of your comment. It gives you a kind of virtual identity here and warms my heart.
DeleteOh, wait - you're Unknown? Your blog profile lists you as male, living in Cucamonga, and your favorite movie star as Sandra Bullock.
DeleteJust a gentle reminder, because I know a lot of you are on meds, but try to type a name at the end of anonymous comments, and use it next time. I can't see your search history or anything. Stop worrying.
ReplyDeleteI'm partial to Cecily Brown
ReplyDelete... and she's got a taste for you!
DeleteLately, I've been enjoying the retro work of Basil Wolverton. - Useo
ReplyDeleteYes, he stands alongside Rembrandt, Picasso, and Beethoven as chronicler of "la condition humaine".
DeleteLol. That was my truthful answer, but you wittingly reveal it as ludacris. I laughed so hard. Still am.
DeleteNo disrespect for you or Mr. Wolverton, whose work I enjoy more than Rembrandt.
DeleteFor me, it has to be Dali. I can't shake him off.
ReplyDeleteI know an art dealer who claims to have shaken Salvador off several times.
DeleteHe was a rascal. I saw a phenomenal retrospective in Paris, which showed what a genius he was (in spite of his best efforts to appear a showbiz charlatan). He could paint the socks off anyone at eleven - incredible technical mastery. And his "imperial period" was truly visionary (something you can say of very few artists), in spite of his best efforts to wreck his legacy by signing off any old shit when he was too old to care. I've also visited the museum in his home town, which was a trashy surrealist Disneyland.
DeleteYeah!! Dali's the man for me too!! Also partial to a bit of Roy Liechenstein!!
DeleteSteve, I met Roy Lichtenstein at Oxford MOMA. He was surrounded by a Warhol-style entourage of ghastly harpies. I shouldered through and asked him to sign a five-pound note, as I couldn't afford the catalog. He did, with an evil twinkle in his eye - it was illegible.
DeleteIn the 70s my brother picked up Dali's cookbook, Diners de Gala, a lavish art book that included such surrealist comfort dishes as Chicken Cooked in its Own Excrement. We never got around to trying that recipe, but I was pleased to see the first edition is still available at non-stratospheric prices.
Deletehttps://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/les-diners-de-gala/first-edition/
I've got a Dali lithograph from his illustrations of Dante's inferno hanging on the wall that I picked up in Paris back in the 80s. Lucky enough to live within driving distance of the Dali museum as well. Amazing artist
DeleteDon Martin. Gahan Wilson. Mort Drucker. Will Elder, Chuck Jones.
ReplyDeleteDon Van V., Joni Mitchell, Whiting Tennis
ReplyDeletehttps://www.gregkucera.com/tennis.htm
Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson.
Here is a little more reading for you.
READ ME:
Freak Brothers mags
Harold_Hedd_T1_Rand_Holmes
Robert_Crumb_-_Mr._Natural_Takes_A_Vacation
https://we.tl/t-iSUSbaHoEP
Online comics(marvel, dc, archie, more)
https://www.omgbeaupeep.com/comics/The_Sandman/
I recommend the Harold Hedd.
Bucephalus
Theng kyew!
DeleteGracias for the files. I went to a Laurie Anderson art show in the 1980's, & it was so great.
DeleteIn the Pune category I would add Charles addams, Saul Steinberg, Peter Arno and Shel Silverstein.
ReplyDeleteBucephalus
Love the old New Yorker artists like Addams, Arno, and (especially) Saul Steinberg!
DeleteHeinrich Kley
ReplyDeleteTod Browning
Thanks, "anonymous" (*sigh*)
DeleteHow do you know his name isn't Tod Browning?
DeleteGood point. I missed it. Welcome Tod - big fan of your work.
DeleteNo, Tod Browning is the requested nome d'nick.
DeleteYes, I got that, eventually. Keep to it.
DeletePeter Maxx's work from Playboy Magazine in late 60's-early 70s...
ReplyDeleteDon't tell me: you read it for the articles....
DeleteYou can't read pitchers, Babs.
Deletesort of an S Clay Wilson kind of guy, he can fill a page...
ReplyDeleteIt's haunting cadence etched in my brain since reading "The Checkered Demon vs. Ruby the Dyke" at 12: "Some of the dykes had enormous tits though, and used them as clubs on their perverse foe."
DeleteDon't you wish you were me? I sure do.
Also, the recently deceased Justin Green.
Justin Green was maybe the first comics artist (although Babs is going to vote for The Rasberries) to use his childhood traumas as material. An uncomfortable read.
DeleteThe Stealth Link© is a much-loved institution on th' IoF©! Why not gather the whole family around your laptop for some old-timey quality time on the front porch? Will it be Adolf Jr. who spots that elusive hyperlink? Or little Betsy-Hildegarde? Perhaps Aunt Kthexust will descry the loaddown portal! Maybe the neighborhood hookers will drop by, attracted by the gales of wholesome laughter as you stab desperately around the screen, cursing the day you ever washed up at Fabulous False Memory Foam© Island? Be sure to set out some poppers and a dish of blow to enhance the party mood!
ReplyDelete(Link in this comment.)
Ha! Ha!! Took a few minutes!! But then ....!!!
DeleteSurrealist fan here.
ReplyDeleteSo, in order of preference - di Chirico, Magritte, Dali.
My favourite cartoonist is the late Ray Lowry.
I also find Tijuana bibles very interesting!
Favourite comic strip - Red Meat by Max Cannon.
DeleteIn August of '68, there was what we used to call a "dry spell" (Americans of a certain age will remember these), which meant there wasn't much weed around. One afternoon, my friend Patti was at my house, and neither of us had weed, and It occurred to me that my older brother had some hidden in his room. So we did a thorough search of his room. Not only did we find a "lid" (once again, Americans of a certain age will remember these) of primo weed, but we also found his pr0n stash. His pr0n stash, consisted of some Playboys, some B&W lesbian porn, complete with black rectangles over the participant's eyes, and several Tijuana Bibles, which we thought were a scream!
DeleteWith reference to the black rectangles, have you heard the John Cooper Clarke poem "Readers' Wives"
Deletehttps://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi-5_rJk-D3AhVNXMAKHRhKCdwQtwJ6BAgHEAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DaKj_ZkXXfzM&usg=AOvVaw0go8jPXy844hMqTa1N60H6
A classic, Nobby!
DeleteMoebius, Gilbert Shelton, Hugo Pratt, Marvano, Will Eisner, Joost Swarte, Winsor McCay, and many others.
ReplyDeleteLeonora Carrington is worth a look - quite disturbing maybe?
ReplyDeletehttps://sites.google.com/site/tombowersites/leonora-carrington
also comic art, Philippe Druillet and Moebius.
Here's Philippe Druillet - nothing like as good as I remember it. Actually dreadful.
Deletehttps://workupload.com/file/PrrHrtyEbL9
Thanks for that Farq, I have that in physical form (a book), and that was one of my first purchases of that type. I went on to buy Heavy Metal Magazine for a few years, they're all in my loft. I once thought these things might be worth money, but no-one wants stuff these days it seems.
DeleteI bought Metal Hurlant on import for a while, before it got translated to Heavy Metal. Some of it must still hold up - Moebius, Corben - but I expect it looks pretty dull now. I occasionally pull the old Fluide Glaciale down from the virtual shelves for a snicker at Edika.
DeleteIn the late 70's when I was a free loading student I would come back home to the North East of England for the holidays and take the bus to Newcastle to potter through the record shops. One of which was Listen Ear, which had a selection of local photocopied fanzines by the till. I picked up one, it seemed amusing so bought it, read it, put it in my bedside drawer. I must have liked it, because the next few holidays did the same and ended up with Issue 1,3,4 &5. Put them all away and forgot about them. Roll on ten years and I found out that the biggest selling magazine in the UK was called Viz Comic. Hang on, that sounds familiar...you can guess the rest. Yeeh haah, The milky bars are on me!
DeleteI still pick up Viz every now and then, and it's still great, although some is rather bleak, I'm thinking Drunken Bakers and Whoops Aisle.
Deletehttps://i.imgur.com/GeZ3AuP.png
I've not read it in years but enjoyed the Whoops Aisle link. Very true to life, it could have been based on my local Tesco!
DeleteSad to say it's not far from the truth for some people here in Dorsetshire too.
DeleteA forgotten master of weird illustration: Sidney Sime.
ReplyDeleteRobert LoGrippo is my favorite artist-type guy. Did the cover of the first Rarebird LP.
ReplyDeleteYou, Mr. ...morton III, and the 4 or 5 guys out there may be able to help me here. Years ago I saw in a book a photo of a painting called "The Battle of Thermopolis" that featured a black sun and a standoff between two warring armies made up of hideous creatures, with one side possessing a giant lawn mower as a war machine. In the early 70s I saw what I think was the original in the window of an art gallery in Ardmore, PA. Never knew who the artist was. Any idea?
Image search "Battle of Thermopylae" - a very common subject, but not with the lawnmower.
Delete"...two warring armies made up of hideous creatures, with one side possessing a giant lawn mower as a war machine."
DeleteFrom that description, I'd almost guess Kevin O'Neill doing the "Nemesis" strip in 2000AD.
A few years ago I would probably have said Picasso or Leger, but I'm far too cynical now so.... Tony Hancock in The Rebel
ReplyDeleteCartoonist - Benyon
Dan O'Neill...even though my current significant other attests that, back when she was living in SF during her "I have to have a roommate to survive" days, said cartoonist showed himself to be quite an awful person while trying to woo said space sharer. Though Dan himself didn't think he was much good at the drawing arts, his verbal smarts in the strip Odd Bodkins more than made up for it. His coffee-table sized "Hear The Sound of My Feet Walking... Drown the Sound of My Voice Talking" - not just a collection of his previous work, but a real story for our times (at least back then....) - is his classic work!
ReplyDeleteJust this week, I threw out a stack of Odd Bodkins strips I cut out of the SF Chronicle that I have carried around in a shoebox of odds n' ends for fifty years.
DeleteDavis....JACK Davis!
ReplyDeleteYes! Jack Davis. How could I have omitted him?
DeleteWhen I was a teenager, learning about Art n' Poetry n' shit, the French Impressionists were considered a cool bunch and a big deal. I had books about them. Now, I can't understand the appeal. Is French Impressionism still A Thing? For anybody but auction houses? I suppose tourists still pause briefly in front of them as they tick the tour boxes, but are they still rated as highly? Looking at it now, it's mostly dull Sunday painting, and some of it - Manet, Cezanne - seems shockingly bad. The fact that none of th' 4/5g© are naming them - nor classic Dutch and Venetian painters - is pretty telling.
ReplyDeleteRats...I was signed out on the iPad.
DeleteIt's either that or there's been a vast cultural shift in what is considered art. On reflection, I think it's because we're hipsters n' shit. I'm going back to bed.
DeleteHowzabout the late great Al Hirschfeld, whose portrait of Gershwin was Foam Featured antedecently? He drew the Aerosmith fellers too.
ReplyDeletehttps://falsememoryfoam.blogspot.com/2022/04/petes-picks-dept-gorgeous-george.html
NINA
DeleteLovely touch, that.
DeleteAs you, I try my best.
DeleteEdward Hopper first. Hieronymus Bosch, M.C. Escher, Andrew Wyeth thereafter. Comics: Larson, Watterson.
ReplyDeleteC in California
Just watched a very good documentary about Escher with a lot of footage of him at work. It's on Sky Arts.
DeleteOh that sounds great, that's my Monday night TV sorted then.
DeleteJack Kirby. Also the unknown men (or women) who did cave paintings.
ReplyDeleteClarence Pune did a lot of those cave paintings. He's older than he looks.
DeleteBefore the fall when Clarence wrote it on the wall
DeleteWhen there wasn't even any Hollywood....
And I never even got any royalties.
DeleteGahan Wilson and Charles Rodrigues
ReplyDeleteRalph Steadman
ReplyDeleteI miss Hunter
DeleteOh, and Vaughn Bode with his Cheech Wizard strip was a favorite.
ReplyDeleteVaughn, but not forgotten.
DeleteWhile we're on the subject: Shary Flenniken's "Trots and Bonnie"?
DeleteI have the Smithsonian Collection Of Newspaper Comics on my phone - those fantastic Sunday funnies from the Golden Age. Nothing ever better than Krazy Kat, Little Nemo ...
DeleteDali of course but I want to give a shout out to Robert Williams as well who captured the zeitgeist of american post-war culture like no one else
ReplyDeleteHey 4or5s I could never find Massimo Iosa Ghini's "Sillavengo" book I've seen the comic at the Heavy Metal mag by late 80s. Every frame was like a painting. Trippy, mesmerizing stuff. Hopefully someone out there has it.
ReplyDeleteOn the painter's side De Chirico and HR Giger kicked ass too.
Hipsters and shit.
Cheers
Diego
Wally Wood. Walt Kelly.
ReplyDelete