What Were They Thinking?

(Above) My vote for the worst.




I HAVE TO TELL YOU, some of these ads from the 1950s and 60s are so-o wrong, I almost feel bad showing them. Still, I think it is good to see just how far we have come in one lifetime. As for the ads that denigrate women, to think there are still women today who think “equal rights” for women are bad— or that heroes like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinhem were somehow not patriotic Americans.

As for the tobacco companies, they have been censured and fined but they will still look for creative ways to sell their death sticks—if not for Americans, then to the rest of the world.

As for the last image of the pig cutting himself up, just gross.

Via fotosup.

A Bad Victorian

ALL I CAN SAY, I wish I knew her. An independent, strong woman in a time when women were anything but. Susan B. Anthony—move the hell over.

I found this image somewhere, and can't remember where. Owner, my apologies.

Gibberish Rap

EVERY WORD YOU HEAR IN THIS VIDEO IS SUNG BY AN ITALIAN by the name of Adriano Celentano, and it is gibberish. Yep. According to Celentano, these words were “Americanized gibberish.”

The name of this song is “Priscencolinensinainciusol” (I don’t think it can be pronounced) and was performed by Italian singer Celantano and Raffaella Carra. When I first watched this, I actually kind of liked the surreal funky-ness of it. And this was 1972??? WTF? Have we discovered the origins of rap?

This music is fun, weird, insane. So where was I in 1972 while this was going on? On Friday and Saturday nights you might have found me at The Elbow Room, a college bar at East Carolina University drinking 10¢ draft beer and singing Don Mclean’s “American Pie,” with dozens of my friends—lamenting the end of freedom, or whatever. Yet, across the world in Italy, crazy, nutty Prisencolinensinainciusol is someone’s version of bad acid trip. Hmmm, I’ve changed. This song and video was about 40 years ahead of it’s time.

Prisencolinensinainciusol was first released as a single on November 3, 1972, and later on his album Nostalrock. The lyrics are pure gibberish, often described as sounding like American English as heard by a non–English-speaker.

In an interview, Celentano explained that the song was about “incommunicability” because in modern times people are not able to communicate to each other anymore. He added the only word we need is prisencolinensinainciusol, which is supposed to stand for “universal love.”

Celentano’s rationale for the song was that, after releasing albums about ecology and social issues, “having just recorded an album of songs that meant something, I wanted to do something that meant nothing”.

The song was recorded at least twice for television broadcast.

The factual information above is from Wiki. So, what do you think?

Play Tattoos

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LONG BEFORE TATTOOS BECAME THE CURRENT RAGE BY THE KIDS OF soccer moms all over America, there were these play tattoos for kids in the 1950s. Play tattoos, usually made in Japan, were real tattoos on training wheels. Yes, you too could look like a skid row bum, gang member or sailor, but only as pretend. I tried these kind of tats as a kid. They were always blurry and sucked, but occasionally I got one to reproduce OK. With my rolled up white T-shirt exposing my play tattoo and candy cigarette hanging outta my mouth, I was one tough dude.

Via ebay.

An Archive of Children’s Scribbles

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(Above) The Kellogg Classification System of 20 styles of children’s scribbles.


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(Above) The use of squares, angles.

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(Above) The emergence of the human form, alone.


(Above) Advanced drawing, the animal kingdom.

(Above)The human, interacting (relationship with) other things.

IN 1967, RHODA KELLOGG PUBLISHED AN ARCHIVE OF OVER 8,000 DRAWINGS MADE BY CHILDREN ages 24-40 months. (See Kellogg, R.: Rhoda Kellogg Child Art Collection. Washington, DC., Microcard Editions, Inc., 1967; now available at LexisNexis, Reed Elsevier, Inc..) Up to that point, no other archive of early graphic expressions was ever published, including a large sample of pictures and presented according to a classification system. Thus, the archive has historical status.

Rhoda Kellogg was a psychologist and a nursery school educator. Here investigations focused on the art of young children, that is, on early graphic expressions. From 1948 to 1966, she collected approximately one million drawings of young children of ages two to eight. More than half a million of these drawings are filed in the Rhoda Kellogg Child Art Collection of the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association in San Francisco, U.S.A.. Of these half-million and more drawings, some 8,000 are available, in microfiche form (see above). Some 250 paintings and drawings, selected as outstanding examples of children’s work, are reproduced in full color. (See Kellogg, R. and O’Dell, S.: The Psychology of Children’s Art. Del Mar, California, 1967.)

I made a selection of a few drawings—believe me, you could spend an entire day going through 8,000 drawings.

Kellogg describes the very first development of children’s drawings as a sequence of basic shapes or forms and their configurations: starting from twenty basic scribbles, which can be observed at the age of two, children develop placement patterns, emergent diagram shapes, diagrams, combines, aggregates, mandalas, suns, radials, before humans and early pictorialism appear. Kellogg understands this sequence as a manifestation of Gestalts, according to the Gestalt theory.

Ms. Kellogg is also one of the rare authors who presents an extensive classification system related to early graphic expressions, combined with an attempt to give empirical evidence for the picture attributes of the system and their role in the development of drawing and painting.

Go to the Kellogg site here.

1930s Cardboard Masks

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HERE ARE SOME NICE COLOR LITHOGRAPHED CARDBOARD MASKS FROM THE 1930s.
These would be a nice collection framed, on a black background.

Find them here, via ebay.

Pleasantville

Above: “Peeping Tom.” Click any image for larger view.


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VIOLENCE AND DEBAUCHERY IS COMMONPLACE IN PHOTOGRAPHER JONAH SAMPSON’S WORLD. In Sampson’s “Pleasantville,” everyday is not so pleasant. This is because of an abundance of peeping tom’s, sex in public places, ax murders, bear attacks and other everyday, mundane things.

Via Jonah Sampson.