As with all D+R posts, click photo to enlarge.
From the ever-lovin' ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive.
Esquire magazine was one of the top publications of its time. It was to the first half of the 20th century what Playboy was to the last half. The pinups of George Petty and Alberto Vargas made the magazine famous. Al Moore painted the Esquire girls and the annual calendar in the late 40s and early 50s. I'm sorry to say, I don't know much about him. His fame has been eclipsed by his predecessors. But his wide eyed blondes have a lot of charm. Here are a couple of fold-outs from the pages of Esquire and the 1950 Esquire calendar...
Following earlier posts about dressed cats from Alfred Mainzer and Harry Whittier Frees, I thought an entry on Louis Wain's work was in order. Wain was a British artist whose art focused heavily on images of animated, big-eyed cats in scenarios very similar to Mainzer cats. His work took increasingly abstract turns as he suffered from schizophrenia later in life, resulting in kaleidescopic and fractal-like paintings of cats. Oingo Boingo fans might recognize a Wain cat featured on the sleeve of an early EP.
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When I was a little girl, taking piano lessons from sweet old Mrs. Bean, she would reward me for having practiced my lessons (which was not very often) with a post card from Alfred Mainzer of cats dressed as people, getting into all sorts of shenanigans. Colorful, slightly violent and totally engrossing to study in detail, I still love these cards. The artist who painted these imaginative scenarios was Eugen Hartung, but Mainzer Inc., NYC, published the cards from the 40's through the 60's. They've been re-published as a complete set of 126.
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Many years ago I found this really charming vintage water-slide decal at a flea market in Paris of some très naughty Parisiennes making off with a gendarme's scooter. I saved its application for a long time, waiting for a permanent residence where it wouldn't be left behind in a move. It's lived in the corner of the kitchen window over my sink ever since, but is finally starting to deteriorate. I wanted to capture these playful badgirls before they suffer la removal-by-razor-blade finale.
Boris Artzybasheff's long out-of-print book As I See is available as a reprint from Ken Steacy Publishing. The work is something like Basil Wolverton meets Stanislav Szukalski. I especially love Artzybasheff's anthropomorphic renderings of industrial machines and manufacturing processes. They're beautiful, eerie and playful all at once.
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Jim Sedgwick! Imagine my surprise and delight when I found that beautiful image in my inbox. Jim did a fantastic job! I can picture an embroidered patch of this magpie on my shop coat.
Except for one little thing...It appears my zeal for the wooden puzzle project may have run into the wall of reality. The puzzle was made by Simplex which, it turns out, is a Dutch brand that is still in business! I suspect they will take a dim view of our turning these images into t-shirts. Though they are still producing wooden puzzles, the images have been updated to "present-day standards".
From WPM Toys:Times change. A good concept deserves a contemporary approach. That's why we have adapted our complete range to present-day standards.
Contacting Simplex now.
Without losing sight to the educational value and pleasure for the children.
After all, that approach is timeless.
Almost every issue of Mechanix Illustrated from the early 1950s featured an end of America type apocalypse article with a fantastic 2 page illustration by Frank Tinsley. Tinsely was an illustrator of aviation pulp in the 1930's and by the 1950's he was doing some really fantastic space exploration related illustrations for MI and certainly others.
Ah, nukes and nature, staples of fearmongering for generations!
Here are a pair of lovely red catastrophes for your enjoyment.
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