Halloween scenes

"I eated his brain"

Halloween portraits, except second and last, from the notable collections of Geoffrey Hudson.

Second and last taken in Cold Spring, NY 2008.

ADDENDUM: Oh good Lord, how did I miss this? Haunted Air.
Found photos dating from 1875 to 1955, compiled by the evocatively named Ossian Brown.
With a forward by David Lynch.

Dancing Dogs and Posture Masters

There's no date on this but it looks to be about 1790s.
It looks exactly like Barnum's Feejee Mermaid exhibited about 50 years later!
It seems the mermaid had been in circulation for quite a while...

Anthony Maddox, English posture-master

Dancing Dogs: I rather like "A Lady in her Equipage" and "2 Dogs with Milk Pails"

Margaret Finch, Queen of the Norwood Gypsies, died aged 108

Mr. Makeen, Equestrian Hero

Finds from the collection of 18th Century Entertainment Ephemera at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

ice cream and architectural loss

image from Jim in Times Square

image from Plan 59

 

images from Host of the Highways; more HoJos here
Note the Trylon and Perisphere of the 1939-40 World's Fair in the background

Photographs of demolition, March, 1974 by Jeffrey Morris

At the Museum of the City of New York there is an exhibit on the Colonial Revival style in architecture and decor. I only recently paid any attention to Colonial Revival. It's rather ubiquitous in architecture of a certain era, and showed up on a lot of banks and public building. Also, there are many perfunctory examples around so its a style that's easy to be blind to. While I havent gone to the museum, I happened to discover that one of the buildings discussed in the show was the Howard Johnson's on Queens Boulevard I used to go to as a child. Wow. I hadn't realized it was a flagship restaurant. Built in 1940 in an inflated Federal style, it cost a reputed $600,000, a tremendously high figure for that time. As you can see from the images above there was a grand staircase, murals, porticoes, chandeliers, broken pediments and dormers. Graceful, lovely, and with unbelievable (and rather patrician) style in which to serve fried clams and ice cream sundaes to the masses, it could supposedly accommodate 1000 patrons. A contemporary description was rapturous:

The three dining rooms are so restfull (sic) and so attractive that at first we miss some of the details which go to make their perfection ... the thick soft carpets ... the glittering chandeliers ... the blue green Venetian blinds, the maroon leather upholstery ... the restrained use of color in walls and draperies ... the charm of a light-fountain playing in the Empire Room.

I'm sure it must have lost some of its luster by the time I went. Sadly, I dont have much of a memory of the building beyond the vague notion that it was big and nice and I liked it. I do remember the peppermint stick ice cream pretty well, though: gooey bits of candy cane leaving red spots as they "melted" in a pale pink ice cream suspension.

In another incidence of aesthetic tragedy so common in the borough of Queens, this is what replaced the Howard Johnsons.

mid century line art

 

Several images above from my copy of the New York Art Directors Club Annual for Advertising and Editorial Art 1952. Anonymous ad for Davis Delaney Printers, David Stone Martin, Ben Shahn from Love and Joy About Letters, Arden Poole for Lucien Lelong, Pat Prichard, Miroslav Sasek from This is Paris 1959, Ben Shahn book jacket 1962, "Andrew Warhol" for CBS Radio, Ronald Searle, Olle Eksell drawing on the cover of a Swedish magazine 1949, Ben Shahn, Arno Schuele book jacket

Somewhere around mid century a style of spidery line art emerged and went on to become ubiquitous in commercial art. Hand lettering too— some of it influenced by the rediscovery of 19th century ornamented wood type (see the Shahn book cover above). The pen and ink style was spindly and almost brittle— sometimes the lines incorporated ink blobs as though the pen scratched and stuttered its way across the paper. As you can see from the few samples above, big names like Ben Shahn and Ronald Searle worked in it, and relatively unknown illustrators like "Andrew Warhol" adapted it too. I recall a few Bugs Bunny cartoons from the 1950s that had some of it going on, and even Edward Gorey, in his early book jacket work, seemed to be influenced by it. It lasted organically as a popular style through the 1960s with some holdouts (like Searle and Saul Steinberg) simply continuing into the 70s and beyond in what had always been their personal style. I wish I understood better where it came from...

Dead|Sexy

At your leisure, please check out my new site.

I know this “Sexy Dead Guys” meme is completely pervasive and zeitgeisty right now (viz. Bangable Dudes in History, My Dageurreotype Boyfriend, et al.), and it may be difficult for you to believe, but my first flicker of this idea began a few years ago. Way back when I still bought the newspaper I came across an image of Anton Chekhov. “That is one surprisingly appealing dead author,” I thought and reflexively cut out the photograph. I felt sort of odd and shallow because I’d never actually read any Chekhov, but here I was saving his photo like he was Rob Pattinson and I was Sweet Sixteen. That led me to keep a clipping file of truly attractive men so I could recognize someone like that if he ever came along. (Read about my pivotal "all the guys I like are dead or fictional" self-realization here!).

I never did much with this guy file save for a couple of related posts on this very blog. So, getting my act together a bit late, I missed out on bringing this to book form (congratulations Bangable Dudes). I might as well put up that tumblr now, right?//

Everybody Apache Dance

Apache dancers, c. late 1920s?

This couple look really hard core. I'm guessing early 1950s but I could be wrong.
Above and top from French CanCan

"Prada Candy....pure pleasure wrapped in impulsive charm... a new facet of femininity
where more is more and excess is everything."
She's doing the Apache Dance.

You can see how they filmed the commercial here

Le Bateau Lavoir, a ramshackle area in Montmartre, 1900——> Apache territory!

"The Apache is the plague of Paris", 1907

Krazy Kat as an Apache dancer, 1930.
watch the cartoon at Uncle John's Crazy Town

Apaches, 1911

 "A Tough Dance"-- 1902

 La Danse Apache - Alexis Et Dorrano 1934

Prada's got a new perfume: Candy. Normally I wouldn't rush to post about that but when I heard they'd hired gnomish photographer-director Jean Paul Goude to create an over-the-top visual match for the perfume's "excess is everything" PR I thought I'd investigate. (I liked some of his work with Grace Jones and loved that iconic Chanel Egoiste commercial....) In the new video, a French ingenue music student jumps her piano teacher and launches into an exuberant terpsichorean frolic. The acrobatic dance sequence is a revival of the Apache Dance.

Pronounced “ah-PAHSH” (remember, it's French!) the Apaches were a late 19th century Parisian street gang—or rather, they were reputed to be "as violent as wild Apaches" and they thought that sounded pretty good and the name stuck. Later, "Apache" became a general reference term for a thug or a pimp. The Apache Dance—became popular just after the turn of the century. By 1908 they were doing it on stage at the Moulin Rouge (it was revived and adapted in movies and by teens up through the 1950s). Part tango, part stage combat—the original Apache Dance fit in perfectly with the other "rough" and "degenerate" dances so popular in those years: Grizzly Bear, Turkey Trot, Boston Dip. The whole schtick is that it mimicks a violent encounter between pimp and prostitute: he "slaps" her, tosses her around, and drags her by the hair. Actually, it all sounds rather like an old Snoop Dogg video...