Pixel Harbor

Peter Blaskovic brings us Fluid Painter.

CLICK HERE to visit the web page and have some creative fun.

Tokyo/Glow, a short video in which an illuminated figure from a Walk-Don’t Walk sign strolls the city.

CLICK HERE if you don’t see the Video imbedded above.

Hugh J War, cover art for the April l938 issue of Spicy Western Stories.

Pulp magazines, named for their low quality pulpwood paper, were a popular form of leisure reading in America from the 1920s until the late 1940s. Sold mainly at newsstands, their covers were carefully designed with bold primary colors and dramatic compositions to seduce passers-by with a glimpse into the sensational stories within. Over fifty oil paintings on which these flashy covers were based are included in this exhibition. Like the pulp magazines themselves, the original pulp illustrations were considered of no value and the majority of them discarded in the decades after their production. They have since becomes the objects of great devotion among collectors and fans. The works in this exhibition are from the collection of Robert Lesser, on loan to the New Britain Museum of American Art. Mr. Lesser is one of the most avid collectors of pulp memorabilia.

The paintings in this exhibition date to very grim times in America, the years of the Great Depression and World War II. As cover art, they were crucial to pulp magazines’ appeal as a cheap escape from harsh day-to-day realities, a thrilling journey away from the mundane. They were an alternative to the more mannered mainstream publications, the “slicks,” with their soothing vision of apple pie America in the vein of Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post covers. In the pulps, gratuitous sex and violence prevailed, as the paintings illustrate.

With the proliferation of specialized pulps beginning in the 1930s, readers were invited to “pick their poison”: westerns, science fiction, mystery, fantasy, and horror among others. Genre-oriented pulp publications helped form visual and narrative conventions that carried into later pop cultural phenomena such as B-movie science fiction, film noir, comic books and Hollywood renditions of pulp heroes Tarzan and Zorro. For example, Dime Detective was instrumental in establishing the formula for the “hard-boiled” detective in fiction and film. The publication of Amazing Stories was critical in the formation of science fiction as a recognized literary and pictorial type.

Aside from the popular romance genre that targeted young women, the majority of pulp magazines catered to male audiences. Their covers featured dramatic moments in the adventures of square-jawed heroes, brutish villains of every type, and young damsels at the pinnacle of distress and in various states of undress. To a contemporary viewer, some imagery translates as delightfully na?ve while other depictions reflect deep-seated racial prejudice and misogyny. In either case, the paintings provide fascinating insight into the fantasies and fears consumed by millions during a period of great turmoil in America.

The paintings in this exhibition are on loan from the Robert Lesser Collection of Pulp Fiction Covers, a promised gift to the New Britain Museum of American Art.

CLICK HERE to visit the Robert Lesser Pulp Art Collection

My thanks to University of Connecticutt and The Benton for bringing this collection to our attention. – Robert

Have you wanted a fine art poster to celebrate your favorite Scientist? If so, Megan Lee Katauskas’s collection is for you. Individual or Complete Set – your choice.

CLICK HERE to visit the actual web site store.

Thanks to Karl M. for passing this link along.

Take a minute. Remember how to “play”, be creative, have fun, surprise yourself.

Tip: Click your mouse to change colors.

CLICK HERE to visit (and interact with) JacksonPollock.org

Thanks to Brooks H. for passing this link along to us.