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Have you ever seen a cover from Amazing Stories, Spicy Detective , Weird Tales or Scientific American and thought "Cor, this is the real shit, why do I not know who did this? Why are galleries and modern book covers are full of trash when there are such guiding lights to follow?
Well I can't answer the second question (my suspicion is the world is vast engine of suffering) and because I phrased it badly I can't answer the first one either, But what I can do is point you towards this website:
http://www.pulpartists.com/
Which has a metric fucktonne of artists listed, with extensive biographies and examples of their art.
It took me about 8-10 hours to look through them all and that was with mostly ignoring all the cowboy and sports adventure art.
I assume most of these are now public domain , but more importantly some of the pieces I've seen around with no credit can have a name , and more works can be easily be found of that artist.
The creator and maintainer of this website have done THE WORLD a massive service with this site.
I am so in awe of the amount of art and artist that could of been forgotten or at least unknown to me , had it not existed.
The rest of this post is going to be featuring some of my favourites from the site.
This selections is due to them having at least one of the following qualities:
"goofy charm" , "endearingly deranged" "breaks all the rules but, by god, it works", "craftsmanship at sublime level" "delightfully imaginative" "Amazing Style)
(In case you though pulp art could only be one of those)
(Goofy Charm)
(nothing crazy but craftsmanship at sublime level)(but also the trumpet and the alien noses are a mix of goofy charm / delightful imaginative)
(Breaks all the rules but , by god, it works)
(this depiction of a vampire is interestingly corrupt so Delightfully Imaginative)
(Amazing Style)
(the last picture is also from the story At The Mountains of Madness. The first picture is of the Great Race of Yith)
(Endearingly Deranged)
Can we just have a moment to reflect on the body language and poise of this character and how it shows their temperament , age, and degree of skill with the blade? And how much coiled energy exists in its depiction of stillness?
Like Western as genre has basically zero appeal for me , but I recognise art when I see it
(That's the story that became the movie THE THING by the way. Also Hannes Bok is an artist you might be more familiar with their weird block geometry monsters from rpg blogs that love weird pulp artists. This sites collection shows a transition of Bok from more conventional (but still striking ) to their own distinctive style.
(Craftmanship at a sublime level and also I did check out some of the cowbow art)
I grew up reading art books full of pulp science fiction magazine and book covers. Much of the art came from the private collection of Forrest J. Ackerman, a literary agent and the editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Pulp art is a vastly rich source of inspiration. Thanks for shining a light on it and the great artists who created it.
ReplyDeleteWhy are the Lovecraft monsters so cute?!
ReplyDeleteHey ! I don't know if you will read this, but to let you know you are a huge inspiration for me as a artist ! I found you art years ago while typing pokemon fusion and i was mesmerize with the art and your monsters i found in this blog !
ReplyDeleteVipallegoria