'Priestess' By Erte, (1892 - 1990)

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.

Hmm.. maybe this is a little too much..

Men Sep 1962 (interior illustration)

Samson Pollen

1925 “Automobile Number” of Life Magazine.

Virginia Rogers

Franz Felix, The Dance, March 1931

Scanned from Taschen's "All-American Ads of the 30s".

"In the Arms of the Arctic Ocean. An Essay from the Life of Fishermen" by Pyotr Dobry, cover art by E. Lvov (1924)

Concept drawings by Mel Shaw for Disney’s THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE (1986).

I was 10. Across the street from us lived two beautiful twins. Dark hair, eyes as blue as robin’s eggs, long legs. They were older and usually hung out with my brother, but maybe he was sick that day or something, because it was just the twins and me in the theatre—two ravishing girls and in between them a kid with the biggest grin in the history of mankind on his stupid face. I was glowing radioactively. Jackie Wilson’s “I Get the Sweetest Feeling” was a hit I remember. Everything aligned, and the universe sang to me a little.

Gasoline Alley ( Walt and Skeezix)

Frank King

Cross-section of a Parisian house, 1885. From LA NATURE—REVUE DES SCIENCES ET DE LEURS APPLICATIONS AUX ARTS ET À L’INDUSTRIE.