What a better way to celebrate the announcement that almost 150,000 items from our Government Printing Office (GPO) are now "discoverable" at the Digital Public Library of America then by jumping in to find some treasures. Here's a selection of posters from the late 1980's - early1990's issued by the National Archives and Records Administration to get you creating, organizing and preserving. Enjoy!
The Novel That Writes Itself is finished
Allen Ruppersberg began The Novel That Writes Itself in 1978. The plan was to create a "fictionalized autobiography where he would talk of his adventures as a young artist." The main characters were slated to be the artist’s friends including Ed Ruscha, his gallery owner, Rosamund Felsen, and the collectors Elyse and Stanley Grinstein. Amazingly, Ruppersberg exhibited a Kickstarter mentality 35+ years before crowdsourcing became the rage by offering the Grinstein's places in the story for 300 dollars. He also offered the opportunity to become a supporting character for 100 dollars or to be an extra in the book for 50 dollars. A decade later,...
Rapper’s Delight: A Strong Vocabulary
click here for hi-res version Matthew Daniels has created a pretty nifty flow chart with Pop Chart Lab ranking the size of the vocabulary of today's leading hip-hop artists. Daniel explains the project: Literary elites love to rep Shakespeare’s vocabulary: across his entire corpus, he uses 28,829 words, suggesting he knew over 100,000 words and arguably had the largest vocabulary, ever. I decided to compare this data point against the most famous artists in hip hop. I used each artist’s first 35,000 lyrics. That way, prolific artists, such as Jay-Z, could be compared to newer artists, such as Drake. 35,000 words covers...
A Dave Eggers menagerie to help send kids to college
Before the ascent of his writing career, and his publishing career as the founder of the one and only McSweeney's, Dave Eggers pursued the life of an artist. Eggers returns to the realm of art with an exhibit of drawings to benefit ScholarMatch, an a amazing new program that matches donors with students needing funds for college tuition. The 40 posters, in the vernacular of political propaganda posters, will be on display from Electric Works at ArtMRKT which takes place in San Francisco, May 15-18. Here is a look at all of the posters, including an archive of the sold pieces.
In the Stacks: World War I propaganda posters at the Harry Ransom Center
War bonds. Feed the guns! Thomas, Bert, 1915 It was supposed to be the “the war to end war” but unfortunately it wasn't. And in addition to the horror of the battlefield (ten million men killed) WWI also featured a battle of propaganda. Thanks to its newly digitized collection of over 100 propaganda posters from WWI the Ransom Center gives us a front row seat to the battle to win the hearts and minds of the American people and its allies as well as the enemy attempts to do the same. Keep these off the U.S.A. Buy more liberty bonds. John Norton, ca. 1917 The...