The work of art that got the artist the sack. Currently anonymous - for now.

All artwork is valid. What is and what is not meritorious and meaningful art should not be decided by the sleek and smug bureaucratic elites of the art world!! I hope that this work now sells for millions and that the currently unknown artist achieves lasting fame just to spite the museum that sacked the artist for hanging it there without permission. (If Duchamp's urinal can be celebrated as art simply by being placed in a museum literally anything can be).

'Damp Towel Hanging' by Frank Frazetta.

Interior illustration from the Midwood paperback series, published in 1963/4.

Rubinstein 936VWB (c) Kotaro Chiba 2024

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The time is past when I could repay her for all that I received.

Her night has found its morning and thou hast taken her to thy arms;

and to thee I bring my gratitude and my gifts that were for her.

For all hurts and offences to her I come to thee for forgiveness.

I offer to thy service those flowers of my love that remained in bud when she waited for them to open.

Rabindranath Tagore: "Fruit-Gathering" XLVI

(1916)

Curious Fact of the Week: When Dental Work Came with Song, Dance, and Cocaine

Before local anesthesia could manage the pain, one early 20th century dentist distracted his patients with showgirls and brass bands. Painless Parker — or Edgar Parker as he was born in 1872 — found that a bit of the old razzle dazzle not only added enough commotion to keep a person from focusing too much on a tooth pulling, it drew an audience of prospective patients.

According to Ann Anderson’s book Snake Oil, Hustlers and Hambones: The American Medicine Show, Parker proclaimed himself “the greatest all-around dentist in this world or the next,” and at the Flatbush Avenue office he set up in Brooklyn, his sign crowed: “Painless Parker. I am positively IT in painless dentistry.” The staggering “IT” loomed four stories tall. Yet even in a respectable, permanent location, he just couldn’t give up the lure of a crowd and would sometimes hit the streets with a brass band or hire tightrope walkers and “human flies” to climb his building. Later he opened a chain of dental parlors on the West Coast and even bought a circus in 1913, so his carnival included acrobats, magicians, jugglers, and even Parker riding atop an elephant himself. 

At one point, his “Painless Parker” moniker was maligned as false advertising, so in 1915 he legally switched his first name to “Painless.” He could then keep his catchy brand until his death in 1952.

For more on this week’s curious fact, keep reading about Painless Parker, or visit the Historical Dental Museum, on Atlas Obscura!

William Garratt

Long live Navalny and Navalnaya and all they stand for!!

Fernand Fonssagrives

Betty Biehn, NYC 1940s

A person claiming to be an "A I artist" has as much right to call him/herself  an artist as I have the right to call myself a confectioner when I press the buttons on a vending machine to obtain a chocolate bar. Even worse - it wouldn't even be real chocolate. 

“Emile Corsi” is not real. anything claiming to be done by an artist named Emile Corsi is ai generated art, it does not exist. what’s worse is that the person behind this “artist”, these “artworks” is that they are falsifying the historical record. these images are not from the 1800s; they were not generated until just a few weeks ago… this is intentional misinformation folks

here’s an article that talks about it and gives some tips on how to identify ai, beyond the member’s only wall it goes on to tell us that research is the biggest tool in pinpointing misinformation from ai art to radical claims in the news cycle. even just simply looking something up is enough to help counter misinformation

yu maeda

Qi Baishi (1864-1957)

Grasshopper