Virginia Rogers

The anti-social media of a century past. LIFE, December 23, 1926

Let’s start off with more Fleischer promotional art. Why do I find these so fascinating? Perhaps because they echo a time that is so definitely over, yet through these ads, it speaks, it winks, it’s going about its business, like the 1930s never ended.

I mean, place the ads in context: Marilyn Monroe is a little kid. World War II hasn’t started yet. Amelia Earhart flies from Honolulu to Oakland, Ca. The board game, Monopoly debuts.

These ads are like insects encased in amber.

More HERE, and HERE.

Jucika And The Modern Storefront. Published in Ludas Matyi on the week of November 12th-18th, 1962. (Dated November 15th)

Illustration’s by William Wallace Denslow(1856-1915) for his book Denslow’s Mother Goose.He’s probably best known as the illustrator for L.Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” .Denslow is such a fascinating artist to me for his time his drawings look pretty modern the limited colors,minimalist backgrounds, bold choices like just having a shape as a background,and his cartoonish thick outlined designs are pretty graphically ahead in kids book illustration for the early 1900s shame he didn’t illustrate the other Oz books don’t get me wrong I love John R Neil but Denslows art just has a odd charm to it I want to see in the other Oz books.

Beautiful covers by kinda forgotten cartoonist Don Herold an early master of minimalism in cartooning a lot of his drawings take whatever is being depicted and boil them down to the simplest shapes to near stick figure proportions but you can tell he knows how to exaggerate the simplicity to make good gags.

William Edward Frost, 1810-1877

A Siren, n/d, oil on panel, 23.5x17 cm

Private Collection

Anne Anderson, The Mammoth Wonder Book, The Travelling Companions, 1930s

Earl Moran - "Nude in the at the Dressing Table" - 1960s Painting - Original art sold by Heritage Art Gallery

H. M. Bateman, cartoon in the 1916 book Burlesques, presumably originally published in a London periodical in 1915.