Ernst Haeckel and the Unity of Culture via the Public Domain Review
Posted by Art at 2:58 pm
Sep
29
2011
Renegade Darwinist/zoologist and truly “mesmerizing” illustrator Ernst Haeckel may have caused quite a stir when he posited organic matter as originating from inorganic matter through spontaneous generation. However, he’s most surely better known for his incessant visual chronicling of our planet’s oddest lifeforms and their myriad variations of form and color. In his article on the Public Domain Review, Dr Mario A. Di Gregorio, professor of the History of Science at the University of L’Aquila and author of From Here to Eternity: Ernst Haeckel and Scientific Faith, offers insight into the origins of Haeckel’s theories and the mind-bending art that came from his obsessive depictions of the Kunstformen der Natur, or “the Art Forms of Nature,” which Haeckel published in 1904. You’ll stumble upon copies of this book in just about every format (Dover paperback with CD-ROM, for example, since its contents are in the public domain) in almost any new or used bookstore and should be a staple of your visual junk collection if there ever was one.
Also, keep your eye out for a documentary fill made in 2004 called Proteus, about the life and work of this strange and gifted man.
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Letterheady – Vintage & Not-So-Vintage Letterhead Designs
Posted by Art at 12:49 pm
Jul
29
2011
Click on over to Letterheady, a one-page scroller featuring letterhead designs for such notable figures as Nikola Tesla and Adolph Hitler to obscure companies like the Liverpool-based Robot Salesmen Ltd. They appear to be legit, with sources linking to other sites from which the examples were culled. Some seem to have been Photoshopped to give them an empty, unused state. Who cares. They’re fun to browse and fit right in here with my love of Visual Junk.
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Bobo the Clown & Boy via These Americans
Posted by Art at 3:59 pm
Jul
22
2011
The tagline for the These Americans website is “American Art, History and Culture Through Pictures” and, while this image of “Bobo the Clown and Boy (1951)” portrays the selflessness and compassion that embodies the American spirit, the website does tend to highlight some of the more colorful aspects of the Home of the Brave. Take, for example, their gruesome collection entitled “American Lynching” that contains photos featuring crowds of smiling white folks (including children) squeezing into frame around bare-chested black men tied, hung by their necks and often burned.
Just glance at the sub-menu navigation buttons and you’ll get an idea of just what types of art, history and culture pictures are in store: FSA, slavery, mug shots, lynching, Los Angeles, child labor, civil rights, studio, death, civil war, injury, racism, native american, prison, guns, war, great depression, exteriors. That’s quite a list of keywords for one website and yet it doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of tagged photos found here. In addition to what appear to be fortuitous thrift store/garage sale acquisitions (Polaroids & snapshots), you’ll find works by such accomplished photo-documentarians as Weegee, Dorthea Lange, Walker Evans, Bernice Abbott and Ben Shan, just to name a few.
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Bap-Tizum
Posted by Art at 9:41 am
May
25
2011
The home page on Bap-Tizum.com contains two lines of text. The first of which reads: “Bap-Tizum.com is an archive of Black-American Christian spiritual music & sermons from the 1930s to the 1980s.” ‘Nuff said. Nothing about the drab, gray background or the poor quality Polaroid image that embellishes this page would clue you in to the fact that the site is a goldmine of forgotten audio recordings, ripped from the original vinyl records and organized by record speed: 33 (1/3), 45 and 78 RPM. Being a fan of old gospel music I’ve been loyally listening to Kevin Nutt’s Sinner’s Crossroads show on WFMU for years and I discovered this site from its contributions to the Free Music Archive.
But what pulled me into this site was its rather humbling collection of album cover and record label designs, which make up the entire user interface for listening to the audio tracks. Clicking on 45, for example, in the top navigation bar reveals an ever-expanding page displaying small-ish images of 45 label scans, each a link to their respective audio recording. I wish there were larger images available for us lovers of visual junk, but that’s just me wanting more of an already good thing. Spread the good word, Bap-Tizum.com is an inspired feast for the eyes and ears.
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vinylclockwork – Handcrafted vinyl record clocks
Posted by Art at 9:49 am
May
6
2011
I just received my handmade vinyl record clock from vinylclockwork and love it! Mine was carved out of a Roger Williams LP on the classic and colorful Kapp Records label. I opted for the free-form version that I thought added to the uniqueness of the piece, though there is a ringed version with abbreviated (3, 6, 9, 12) numbering and a cool dot pattern fill. As a vinyl record collector I can assure you that no listenable albums were harmed in the making of these clocks. I applaud these folks and others who find a creative way to deal with the mountains of corny, cheesy, syrupy goo that our parents and grand parents listened to and that now collect dust by the crate-load.
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Abandoned Yugoslavia Monuments
Posted by Art at 1:36 pm
May
3
2011
I stumbled upon this blog post containing some remarkable photographs of cold war era monuments that seem right out of a post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie. My favorite is this one located on a hilltop in Podgarić, Croatia and also immortalized on this Yugoslavian postage stamp. From what I can dig up it appears to be a WWII memorial made of concrete and aluminum and was possibly erected in 1967. I remember seeing some similarly powerful Soviet-era monuments while travelling in Vietnam, but none as striking as these. What’s probably most eerie about them to me are the photographs themselves. The monuments certainly don’t seem contemporary, but instead rather futuristic and they appear more like relics of a lost civilization situated in uninhabited landscapes much like Inca and Mayan monuments must have looked to early bushwhackers. Days of Future Passed!
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MoMA Collects Lustig (Alvin, that is) via The Daily Heller
Posted by Art at 11:56 am
Apr
28
2011
Steven Heller posted this piece on Elaine Lustig Cohen’s recent talk at MoMA’s Library and Museum Archives on the museum’s collection of works by her late husband, legendary graphic designer Alvin Lustig (previously lusted over on this website). Cohen is, of course, a superb graphic designer in her own right and probably too often overshadowed by Mr. Lustig’s high-profile body of work. My favorite piece of hers I discovered years after acquiring it. Huh? Picked up for a song in an NYC used book store, Jose Ortega y Gasset’s On Love: Aspects of a Single Theme sat on my bookshelf of design fetishes for years before I’d ever bothered to look up who’d designed the cover—even though her signature was plainly visible.
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Western Swing on 78
Posted by Art at 3:14 pm
Apr
26
2011
Got a yearnin’ or a hankerin’ to hear some scratchy 78rpm goodness? Then listen no further than Wester Swing on 78, a blog chock-full of freshly-ripped vinyl and acetate just waiting to turn your computer into a dusty ol’ Texas dance hall. Consisting of mostly ZIP archives of MP3 song collections, the blog entries contain historical information, publicity photos and playable sample songs of such iconic western swing artists like Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys as well as flour-pushers like the Hillbilly Boys and the Light Crust Doughboys. Click, download and two-step the afternoon away.
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Select Font. Copy and Paste “RADIOHEAD.”
Posted by Art at 2:30 pm
Apr
19
2011
I like Radiohead. I’ve always liked them. From the earnest songwriting of their youth to the rejection and gradual acceptance of their own fame to their continued exploration of what “music” is. I also appreciate the attention they have always paid to the visual component of their works having hired numerous designers, animators, illustrators, filmmakers and artists to create their albums’ packaging, videos, posters, websites, t-shirts and more. And that is precisely why I was a bit perplexed to see the masthead on the website for their new album, The King Of Limbs.
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200 Years on the Grid – via AIGA.org
Posted by Art at 3:32 pm
Mar
28
2011
Love it or hate it, the “grid” has been a fact of life in Manhattan for 200 years. I spent 21 years of my life alternately bragging then complaining about this marvel of city planning that was once probably quite useful to those traversing the long, narrow island. Of course with any grid comes “grid-lock” and anyone who’s ever tried to cross Manhattan on four wheels has certainly experienced the fatal flaw in this boro’s design: human beings. Phil Patton’s article here provides a good historical overview along with the cultural impact the grid has had over the centuries. Interested in viewing more old drawings and maps? Check out Vincent Virga’s Historic Maps and Views of New York
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45 RPM Record Labels are Back!
Posted by Art at 4:09 pm
Mar
22
2011
By popular demand, my ever-growing collection of 45 RPM Record Label Designs is back online with a new and improved gallery widget. I’m currently updating the images so that they’re as large and beautiful as possible and I will eventually get around to populating them with all of that delicious meta data about the artists, labels, songs, etc.. Enjoy!
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Enter World War 3 at Exit Art – via Print Mag
Posted by Art at 1:12 pm
Dec
3
2010
I wish I could fly to New York to see this exhibit more than is possible to describe here. I’ve been a fan of World War 3 Illustrated since I first landed in NYC in the summer of 1988. It wasn’t more than a week before I had seen a striking hand-drawn poster plastered to an abandoned building in Alphabet City showing proletariat fists rising in defiance of police-like figures holding back barking dogs. I remember thinking that I had to meet the person who made this poster. Well, I did. His name was Seth Tobocman and he was an illustrator/artists living in the East Village who was highly involved in social and political movements, something that came through clearly in his art. I was a big fan of Frans Masereel and immediately saw a resemblance in Seth’s work in both style and motivation. I tracked him down after having recognized his bold, graphic style in a local comic/art/zine called World War 3, which I soon found out was published by Seth and his friend and fellow illustrator, Peter Kuper.
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Vintage Beer Bottle Labels via Collectors Weekly
Posted by Art at 4:32 pm
Nov
19
2010
As much a gallery as it is an one-stop-shop for lovers of Visual Junk, Collectors Weekly has an impressive interface which pulls relevant auctions from eBay of just the stuff you’re looking for. Take, for example, their Vintage Beer Bottle Labels page, which lists several external websites that exhibit vintage beer labels from around the world—including NoRelevance.com’s Bock Beer Labels exhibit—and also displays 60 current auctions for all sorts of delicious vintage breweriana as well as related events happening around the country. There goes the rest of my afternoon!
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45 RPM Record Label Designs – Facebook album
Posted by Art at 6:25 pm
Nov
9
2010
This is a cross-post between Crate Digger’s Gold and NoRelevance.com, the original repository for my collection of scanned 45 RPM Record Label Designs, for now at least, residing on Facebook. There’s still plenty of work I need to get done to make the complete collection live here on NoRelevance.com, so I thought I’d post these on FB since it was a fairly simple task. The labels were selected for their designs, not their music. Hope you enjoy them!
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Iconic Branding of a Bunny Kind – via The Selvedge Yard
Posted by Art at 4:23 pm
Sep
15
2010
From the waaaaay-back machine comes this post from July of 2009 on The Selvedge Yard blog featuring some vintage looks at the various incarnations of one of the most recognizable logos in the history of brand I.D.: the Playboy “bunny.”
The images immediately brought back a vivid memory from my childhood: my mom and dad sitting up in bed one lazy Sunday morning each having a leisurely read–mom with a check-out aisle, crafting mag and dad with a Playboy. No, I did not grow up in a hippie commune or a swinger household devoid of morals. But, my parents–both naturalized citizens–were probably feeling out the recent relaxing of tightly wound, nuclear family values of the previous few decades and, well, Playboy magazine must have seemed like a rather innocuous part of the discovery process.
This was circa 1971-or-2 and a man was definitely still a MAN. But things were changing rapidly and, as women were becoming increasingly independent, self-reliant and gaining control over their reproductive destinies, the sexual ideal of a woman was apparently also in need of an upgrade.
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Newspaper Blackout Poems
Posted by Art at 7:08 pm
Aug
31
2010
I’m just getting around to this aptly named Austinite’s clever manipulation of trash into treasure. Newspaper Blackout is the creation of Austin Kleon, “a writer and artist living in Austin, Texas” who has presented his Sharpie-saturated works at such notable events as Pecha Kucha Night, TEDx and SXSW 2010, the latter I most likely missed due to being lost between the 3rd and 4th floors of that stupidly designed convention center. I can’t imagine what his studio/workspace must smell like as the marker coverage area on these pieces is considerable. Like torn scraps of notes or letters, the context of his poems evolve with each word one reads creating narratives far beyond what their original author intended. And like Andy Warhol’s re-purposed newspaper photos there’s no end to Kleon’s source material.
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Cover Browser – 450,000+ Covers of Comics, Books & More
Posted by Art at 6:40 pm
Aug
30
2010
Does this really require any more clarification or editorialization? Seriously, any link on the Cover Browser home page could be its own entry here. Well, when you’re done drooling over the cover art wishing you’d saved every mint issue of your childhood, click the “Labs” link in the upper-right-hand corner of the page. This will be a real time-killer for sure. Like the “Color Search” was for me!
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Record Envelope – The little library of factory sleeves
Posted by Art at 1:30 pm
Aug
24
2010
Those of you familiar with NoRelevance.com and perhaps my other blog, CrateDiggersGold.com, know of my love, er- lust for 45 RPM records and their label art. Well, I’ve had to practically be medicated to prevent myself from starting another collection: 45 RPM factory sleeves. I thank Ms Kavel Rafferty for taking on this task and doing such a swell job of it. Design is certainly part of the allure of collecting paper ephemera, but process is also part of my curiosity. As modern printing goes digital it’s nice to have on hand several references of one and two color printing that look great despite their age and the cheap papers and inks most of these sleeves consisted of. I still consider the large hole 45 RPM record label and sleeve to be among the more difficult design challenges. Good think vinyl’s making a come back!
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The Label Man – Fruit Crate Labels & More
Posted by Art at 5:46 pm
Aug
13
2010
Firstly, no, I am not affiliated in any way with The Label Man, but I do LOVE the original vintage labels featured (and for sale) on this website. The collections are broken down into several categories for your browsing pleasure and the website also features plenty of info on the history of crate labels as well as “Tips on Building your Collection of Vintage Fruit Crate Labels.” The hundreds of labels on the website provide a cornucopia of hand-drawn typography from around the ’30s through the recent past and should be a great source of inspiration for any creative persons’ pursuits.
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Successful Move..Again!
Posted by Art at 5:48 pm
Aug
12
2010
So, I’ve been a rather quiet these past several months while I tried to figure out the best solution for hosting NoRelevance.com and I’ve finally arrived at our current home, which will hopefully serve my needs for several years to come. Along with the previous switch to WordPress as a blogging platform we’re now all set to start publishing on a regular basis. Lord knows I have tons of bookmarked sites that I want to share with you all as well as that 45 RPM Record Label Art exhibit that is long overdue for a re-launch. Thanks and apologies to all who’ve emailed asking about it and missing it–It won’t be long now and I’ve got loads of new labels to display!
BTW, this is bitmap image is not a NY Times crossword puzzle, it’s our QR Code–a bar code readable by Android, iPhone and other mobile devices that takes you directly to this website. It’s handy for sharing NoRelevance.com with folks who look over your shoulder at a coffee shop and go “Cool site, what’s the URL?” Just have them point their phone at our QR code (they’ll need to download a free code reader app) and they’ll be here before you can say “no relevance dot com.”
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