Los Angeles art director and photographer Marc Shur has posted a stunning set of outdoor advertising signs that date from about the Forties through the Sixties on his Flckr set. The photo here shows a sign that incorporates a clock, located on Ventura Boulevard in Encino, California, and is just one of a collection of dozens of photos of outstanding retro signs you can spend the better part of a hour or so enjoying.

Marc Shur, Time to Buy (2012). Copyright: Marc Shur.

“The American Look: Fashions and Furnishings of the Arts and Crafts Era” features selections from the Sue Genet Costume Collection at Syracuse University and from Dalton’s American Decorative Arts. The show opens at the Warehouse Gallery in Syracuse, NY on October 15, 2011 and runs through November 11, 2011.

Thanks to Scott Beale of laughingsquid.com for sharing a link to Daniel Feral’s diagram below and the link to a very interesting resource related to the street art of Graffiti. Graffiti Archaeology takes an evolutive look at Graffiti, specifically how art on particular urban exterior walls changes over time. The Graffiti Archaeology website describes itself as “a project devoted to the study of graffiti-covered walls as they change over time. The core of the project is a timelapse collage, made of photos of graffiti taken at the same location by many different photographers over a span of several years. The photos were taken in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and other cities, over a time span from the late 1990’s to the present.”

The Graffiti Archaeology project showcases the work of over sixty artists and photographers. Caution: The Graffiti Archaeology website can be addictive, and once you start looking, you might find it hard to stop.

Daniel Feral, GRAFFITI & STREET ART (2010).  In celebration of the 75th Anniversary Alfred H. Barr’s CUBISM & ABSTRACT ART diagram.
Source: http://www.fadwebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/photo_1.jpg

Conformists die, heretics live forever.— Elbert Hubbard

In the documentary, “Elbert Hubbard: An American Original,” which first aired on PBS in 2009,  director/writer Paul Lamont presents Hubbard, a major figure in the American Arts and Crafts Movement, as a man of contradictions. Hubbard was devoted to art, yet motivated by business; interested in the welfare of the common man but his Roycrofters created exquisite items only the wealthy could afford; family played a central role in his life, yet he was involved in a long-lived extramarital affair.

Hubbard’s early life is the stuff of Horatio Alger lore.  He began selling soap at the age of 16 for the Larkin Company of Buffalo, New York. With a keen mind for business, and perseverance, young Hubbard quickly rose up the ranks in the company by introducing “from factory to family” direct catalog sales. In 1880, Hubbard married Bertha Crawford and began a family. Three years later the Hubbards moved to East Aurora, a village outside of Buffalo.

Elbert Hubbard, photographer unknown.
Source: http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1216826209p5/114059.jpg

Yet with all his success Hubbard felt unfulfilled and began to question the direction of this life. The works of Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman deeply moved and influenced him.  Later on Hubbard would repackage many of these writers’ ideas as catchy mottoes in order to promote his ideals.

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Thank you to Aqua Velvet for bringing the work of French-American designer, artist, colorist and muralist André Durenceau to our attention.  View more examples of this artist’s work and read his biography on Aqua Velvet.

André Durenceau (circa 1928). Two geometric compositions from “Inspirations.”
Source: New York Public Library Digital Gallery http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?102141

Thank you to illustrator Stephen Kroninger for sharing his remarkable collection of Gebrauchsgraphik: International Advertising Art Magazine covers from the 1950’s. According to the Delicious Industries blog, Gebrauchsgraphik “Commercial Arts’ Magazine was a German design and graphics publication founded in 1923 by Professor H. K. Frensel.” More covers from this publication are available for view on their site.

Artist unknown. Gebrauchsgraphik Magazine Cover, February, 1953.
Source: http://www.drawger.com/kroninger/images/3673008821.jpg

If you know more about Gebrauchsgraphik: International Advertising Art Magazine or have more graphics from this magazine to share, we’d love to hear from you.