The final volume of this trilogy is the only one in print. The other volumes go for tons! If you’re not familiar with any of the books in the series, the deal is that they’re tattoos done with crude resources by Russian prisoners on each other, and they’re collected by this lifetime security guard Danzig Baldaev (his name is Danzig, heh heh hehheh). The KGB supported his collection! It was important to them to be able to establish facts about convicts by reading the images (both pictoral and text) on their bodies. You don’t need to have either of the other books in the trilogy to get into this one. Devils, penises (peni?), swords, SS cats, barbed wire, anti-party tatts — whether you’re an ink freak, photography nut, sociologist, political maverick (are any politicians really mavericks, I mean really?) or lowbrow art collector, this is the book for you. I particularly like the captions for many of the drawings that translate the meanings. Just as an example, dig the caption explaining the drawing of a rat with Russian text that translates to ‘Tightwad filcher’ for a convict sentenced for hooliganism: “He stole three packs of cigarettes and some sweets from the lockers of his fellow inmates. He was discovered and beaten up. It was decided by a group of ‘authoritative’ thieves that this tattoo should be forcibly applied as punishment.” Thazwutchoo get for stealin’ candy and smokes! These books have even influenced a movement in these parts where the youngins have actually started replicating these drawings on themselves by professional tattoo artists — would they get their asses kicked in a Russian jail?
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Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia
This is no ordinary reprint. This version of The Wizard of Oz is an artbook illustrated by Graham Rawle, author of Woman’s World (a novel created entirely from fragments of found text from 60s womens mags, now being made into a movie). The text is the same — hence it being almost 300 pages long! There’s illustrations on almost every page, and they’re crazy. Collage-y type of stuff with dolls and toys and beads and doll slippers and bottles and things cut out from other things — like he cut up magazines and newspapers and then went crazy at American Science and Surplus. Kids would love this but adults may love it more. Even some of the font is spicy with cursive and italics and who knows what else. There’s little graphic surprises on almost every page. A lot of work went into this thing!
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Baum,
Graham Rawle,
Wizard of Oz
Yes, that Mark Mothersbaugh — the lead singer of Devo. Beautiful Mutants is the show catalog for the 2007 exhibition of the same name at CSUF Grand Central Art Center Project Room in Santa Ana, CA. It has lots of old timey photos of interesting people (Carmen Miranda, the Del Rubio Triplets, various circus-y freak people, just to name a couple, even a few pugs! I’ve seen the artist with his pugs. Awesome!) halved and then resewn to show the same half as the opposite side. What do I mean? OK, so let’s say you took a picture of me. Oh, and let’s say I’m a sad-eyed perfumier in Brecksville, Ohio in like, the forties. In one hand I’m holding some flowers. And in the other hand I’m holding lace. So then you take the side where I’m just holding the flowers and make a replica of that side, except that you reverse it. Now both sides are facing each other, totally symmetrical. You cut away the side with the lace, and you attach the side with the reversed image of me holding the flowers. And voila! I look like a very mutilated version of myself. And my sad eyes are way too close together. Or way too far apart so I look freaky like Jackie O. Does this make any sense? Some of the photos in the book the eyes are so close together that it makes one eye, so it’s like a cycloptic magician or something. Crazy!
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Beautiful Mutants,
Devo,
Mark Mothersbaugh
We got all the books you need for the high holidays.
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Spring is in the air and so is impending arty madness. Its the time of year coked out art vampires don sunblock to go out of their bat caves once again and the smelly art kids return to the streets to fight the man and their boredom with a mix of dance moves and wheat pasted stickiness. In a dark void somewhere in between these two groups Version >08 is taking place. So check out the website for full schedule and to make sure you don’t miss any of the fun!
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be easy,
chicago,
lumpen,
smelly art,
version,
versionfest
