Mid-century replications of sex, violence, and horror!
Before television, Americans consumed great amounts of ‘pulp art’ through genre magazines and dime paperbacks for entertainment. The artist intent was to stoke the imagination, often with seedy environments and checkered characters – all caught up in acts of sensation.
Vaguely speaking, women were either victims, vixens or the vulnerable, while men were authoritarian, macho, or just dead. Gender roles and attitudes then…. would get an artist ostracized now. I have put some study into the genres era, and have reworked some of the subservience out of the women and the dire situations they find themselves in. A role reversal, the femme fatale. But only in some. I am not trying to rewrite the history or the culture of the time, just trying to emulate it.
As mentioned, each collage has an aura of tension. How does it arrive? I start by collecting elements of the thousands of illustrations available online or in thrift stores. I then consider scenarios, and comb my photo vault for locations that can stage a dark calamity. Then I populate the location with my collected characters and seed a story line similar to the outrageous headliners of the day.
The last step, after the designs completion, is to print it out for painting. I don’t paint it all, just the characters to rebuild their constitutions after undergoing ‘scale’ pixelation. To do this, I have to coat the print with a substrate so it can host the applied oils. It’s not hard, just messy.
Thaak you for visiting the Pulp Art Noir page of John Linthurst. Sort of frightening, sort of educational. Be certain to check out some of my other ‘theme’ pages on this rather large site containing most of my work over the years.Studiovistadelmar.com
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