“Flash” is the name for the sheets which tattooists have used to display their designs to prospective customers. Flash From the Past assembles in full color the Old-School designs from the pre-Stray Cats and Modern Primitive era when sailors were still the primary market. Cobras, hula girls, Old Glory, butterflies, “Mom”… could this kick off the retro era in tattooing? The introduction does a good job of associating names and places with the otherwise anonymous designers of this important American folk art. SS

Publisher: Hardy Marks
Paperback: 106 pages
Illustrated

“It’s Alive,” the banners cried from the flapping tarpaulin walls of the circus midway. They lured patrons to shell out for erotica (teasing) and exotica (foreign); two-headed creatures, human artworks tattooed from head to toe; short, tall and fat freaks; chicken-eating geeks and strange, bearded girls. “Sideshow banners document an aspect of our culture that we don’t all want to face: People would (and will) flock like flies, they’ll pay good money to see freaks—aberrations of nature and culture—representations of the grotesque, real or fabricated…” This is the midway as folk art, saved from destruction by artists and other admirers of the crudely painted banners’ strong graphics, humor and lusty garishness.” JM

Publisher: Hardy Marks
Paperback: 169 pages
Illustrated

Born in Quezon City, the Philippines of well-educated journalist parents who published their child’s cartoons in their local newspaper, this self-taught artist developed an acute awareness of the world through the eyes of history and his Filipino upbringing. In Virgin Destroyer, his 66 paintings blend history, economics, greed, lust and genocide turning each of their elements inside out. One of Ocampo’s first stints in art was painting false religious relics (have they ever been anything else?) that jaded art dealers would buy from his boss, a Catholic priest, and sell off as authentic originals. Ocampo lifts the rug that history has swept a multitude of isolated torturous moments under, exposing an iconographic militant parade of “hybrid figures”: a hooded klansman priest, crosses replaced by swastikas, amputee children, faceless victims, devils, skeletons celebrating an apocalyptic jubilee of punishment and perversions. In his 12 religious paintings focusing on the Stations of the Cross, Ocampo strips each one of its content, symbolism and illusory mythical power, converting the Virgin Mary into a giant roach, and mockingly reincarnating Jesus in the form of a street dog. OAA

Publisher: Hardy Marks
Paperback: 95 pages
Illustrated