the high art of low-fi visual culture

Art Chantry.We would like to welcome Art Chantry as a contributor to the Madame Pickwick Art Blog. Art is  renown in graphic design work, and is what could be termed a unique, singular personality and a compelling figure who happens to express himself well. Probably the best intro would be from a Lonnie Stacatto interview:

Art Chantry played pool with Ted Bundy. “He was a terrible pool player”, says Art,”a real sore loser.” At the time,of course, Art was oblivious to the curly-haired Republican’s habit of secretly mutilating women. “He was just some pretty-boy jerk who hung around the pool hall. We didn’t exactly socialize.” This is just one of a million true-life Art Chantry anecdotes and he will tell you each and every goddamn one if you let him. He truly has the gift of gabola. He is a walkin’ talkin’ historian of all things grand and trivial. The undergroundman’s Alex Trebek. He’s been around. You could learn something. Chantry is an artist-anti-establishment to the core, bitter, slightly scarred and rumpled, yet wise around the edges with plenty of downtown swagger to back it all up. He don’t wear no beret. Read More:http://www.estrus.com/interviews/hothead.html

Read More: http://www.artchantry.com/

By Art Chantry: This strange little magazine is from 1944 – the height of the second world war. the world was dark and scary. fighting men wanted escapism (so did non-fighting men). comic books were all the rage. comic artists were all in the war effort. There was money to be made. so, what’s a businessman to do?

Necessity is the mother of invent…ion.Here was one solution that was tried -“photo funnies”. except these weren’t funny. they’re pretty grim. these are basically a cross between a comic book, a detective thriller and a ‘how-to’ manual.It’s not a real “comic book with photos” (like the work tried in 1960’s magazines like Harvey Kurtzman’s “help!”, called ‘fumetti’) but a breakdown step-by-step of imagined crimes and their erstwhile solutions by crime fighters.

The creators hired a photographer to take LOTS of pics of the crime, the crime scene, the evidence and the solving of the crime. Actors and models were hired, costumes supplied, props gathered. under each shot was a caption telling the story and YOU had to figure out the solution! the actual solutions of these crime stories are supplied in the back, so you can see if you figured it out properly (or you can cheat and just go read it). Try to imagine how many photos were taken to just tell this one little story reproduced here. and this is just part one of ONE story!. there are twenty-six different stories in this little saddle-stitched magazine. no ads, just stories. there’s barely a title or a contents page. it’s crammed full.

Art Chantry:here's an interior spread of that 'photo crimes" magazine, just so you can see how it worked. Read More: http://www.artchantry.com/

This one story spread i show you has fully fourteen photos that were sued to tell just this part. now (conservatively) multiply that by twenty-six different stories and you get, what… 324 photos? and this story I show you has two sections (and it’s not the only one with multiple sections.) that’s almost twice as many to tell this one short tale. If you include all the out-takes and bad images and ruined shots, that’s thousands of photos taken to do this one cruddy little magazine. and this is all darkroom work, no digital nuttin’!

So, this was one photo-HEAVY publication. There’s no price tag on it, but, you know it had to complete on a news stand with both comic books and magazines. so, it was CHEAP. I wonder how much per image the photographer was paid. How many issues were published before that guy starved to death?

It’s also interesting that the cover wasn’t using a photograph, but a rather contrary sort of illustration – almost like a pulp cover. it may even be a cover illustration made for another magazine and simply transfered over to this thing. I dunno. Anybody know anything about the illustrator? his name seems to have been “A.K. Bilder”. It’s a great picture.

This is a strange artifact from a beleaguered period in American graphic history. A peculiar and failed dead end experim

in mass entertainment. It’s as dead as a victim in one of it’s lame stories.

"My love for poster art started when I was in school, my favourite part of art class was designing layouts and hand-painting posters, and lino-printing. My fascination started a few years ago with a documentary called HYPE! The movie is about the seattle grunge scene in the 90’s, and features one of my favourite designers, Art Chantry." Read More: http://jonzedesign.com/2009/09/15/poster-art-movies-links-and-more/

Art Chantry can be reached at art@artchantry.com

ADDENDUM:
Lonnie Stacatto: You’ve created thousands of mostly ANGRY images for us to behold and I know you’re aware of that, so my question is: What is pissing you off?
Art Chantry: What pisses me off? Well,you,for starters(laughing). What pisses me off (reflective), well, I had a misspent youth that left me feeling betrayed and forlorn. Forlorn is a good word. Spell that right,would you? I don’t know, maybe it was because I grew up poor. I mean isn’t that your excuse?
L: I guess.
A: I mean, I grew up REALLY poor. We were so poor that people on welfare used to give us their extra food. We lived in a house that was once a chicken coop.
L: Are you saying you were raised in a chicken coop?
A: No, it used to be a chicken coop. I actually started off in a really wealthy family. My dad was actually a Harvard lawyer…
L: Art, hate to interrupt you, but I found a better question: You’ve described yourself as “a complete asshole, like some guy you’d want to punch out if you met him on the street.” Barbara Walters would ask: Does Art Chantry like himself?
A: That’s all show biz. Actually, if you create an air of pretense around yourself you perform nicely when meeting people you don’t know. They expect an asshole, but end up meeting a nice guy. They’re confused. And thats nice.

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