Modern Pulp | Mar 16 2013 |
![SOMETIMES A CRATE NOTION](/images/headline/2009.png)
Last year we shared some unusual pulp influenced crate paintings from a French artist named Jacques Puiseux, and this morning we received more scans of his Marxist themed pieces via email. Last time we shared Puiseux’s work, we mentioned that we avoid posting modern art, and that’s true, but we didn’t want to leave you with the impression that we find it inferior to vintage art (if that were true we wouldn't bother to have a "Modern Pulp" category on the website). What we find inferior is modern promotional art—e.g., book covers, movie posters and the like. And obviously we find modern movies inferior, but then who doesn’t? However modern fine art is something we very much like, and more to the point, we like the relationship it has to the viewer. We aren’t art majors or anything, so bear with us while we try to explain ourselves.
Vintage Pulp | May 26 2011 |
![CLOUD ON THE HORIZON](/images/headline/1296.png)
Above is an unusual war-themed cover of The National Police Gazette from May 1953. In addition to stoking up a little Soviet fear with an A-bomb photo illustration, editors play the Hitler card, telling us at upper right that Der Führer is still alive. They made this claim scores of times after the end of World War II, and it never seemed to get old (we documented that phenomenon here). And since the U.S. was embroiled in a proxy war against China in Korea when this issue appeared, that conflict gets a mention too, in the banner at the bottom of the cover. All in all it's three enemies for the price of one—and a small insight into the nuclear fears that shaped the post-war generation. Do you ever wonder what fears shape us that they'll study in the future? We could take a guess, but then we might get real scared, so let's not think about it.