Year of the Monkey Postcards

About a week ago Amy at Aqua Velvet posted some remarkable Japanese Postcards from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Here are more Japanese postcards from the same collection, all related to the Year of the Monkey ( ).


Monkey Trainer from Towa shinpo, Ogawa Usen, 1908

"Born 2004, 1992, 1980, 1968, 1956, 1944, 1932, 1920, 1908. People born in the year of the Monkey are the erratic geniuses of the Zodiac cycle. They are clever and skillful in grand-scale operations and are smart when making financial deals. They are inventive, original and are able to solve the most difficult problems with ease." -Namiko Abe, about.com


The Monkey in Morning Suit of New Year's cards, unknown artist, 1932


The Monkey Celebrating with Ozoni of New Year's cards, unknown artist, 1932


The Monkey's Baseball of New Year's cards, unknown artist, 1932


The Monkey's Rugby of New Year's cards, unknown artist, 1932


The Monkey Pounding Rice (Osaru no mochitsuki) of New Year's cards, unknown artist, 1932


The Monkey's Playing Ball (Osaru no hogan nage) of New Year's cards, unknown artist, 1932


Monkey and Crab, Takahashi Haruka, 1932


Three Monkeys with Spade Shape Motifs, Takahashi Haruka, 1932


Monkey in the Guise of a Shinto Priest, Takahashi Haruka, 1932


Takahashi Haruka, 1932


Takahashi Haruka, 1932


Takahashi Haruka, 1932


Takahashi Haruka, 1932


Takahashi Haruka, 1932 [?]


Three Monkeys: See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, Takahashi Haruka, 1932

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Boston's Museum of Fine Arts Japanese Postcards Collection [link]
Information about the Year of the Monkey in the Japanese Zodiac @ about [link]

Collages of Wilfried "Sätty" Podriech

I first saw the work of Wilfried "Sätty" Podriech a few weeks back at the California History Museum, which was showing his collages of Gold Rush illustrations. They were surreal and fantastic and I went hunting for more. Here are some of my favorites of his work (that I couldn't already find online) from his books Time Zone and The Cosmic Bicycle.




"Sätty (Wilfried Podriech) was born in Bremen, Germany, in 1939. As a child he played in the ruins of the city, which was heavily bombed during World War Two. After three years of apprenticeship in mechanical engineering, he worked in Canada, then moved to San Francisco in 1961. For a few years he worked as a steward on the Pacific cruise ships of the Matson Line, and later as a heating and ventilating systems designer.

In San Francisco he lived in North Beach, and associated with artists and bohemians of the Beat Generation. Since childhood he had demonstrated artistic potential. In 1966, inspired by the openness and creativity of San Francisco’s emergent Hippie culture, he began making pictorial collages. Some of these were sold as poster size prints, which were then very popular. He became a prolific artist, concerned with fine technique and with expression of the broadest range of human experience. He intended his art to engage the imagination and counteract the pernicious stimulus-response programming of media advertising.

Sätty created many colorful artworks and lithographic prints, and hundreds of black and white collages. During the 1970s many were used as illustrations in both the counter culture and establishment periodicals. He produced two collage books, The Cosmic Bicycle and Time Zone, a pictorial allegory. He created illustrations for the comprehensive treatise, The Annotated Dracula and for The Illustrated Edgar Allen Poe, a book of stories he selected. During the late 1970s until his death in 1982, he produced numerous collages inspired by events in San Francisco’s often dramatic, unruly history, from the Gold Rush to the 1890s. Many of these occasionally bizarre images have recently been published in Visions of Frisco, by Regent Press, Berkeley.

In a review of Sätty’s art, S.F. Chronicle art critic Thomas Albright stated, “His work evidenced his Germanic roots with a somber, dreamlike realm of utopian, surrealist fantasy spiced by disarming accents of the bizarre and grotesque.” His art has been exhibited in many galleries and museums, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; the National Museum of Art, Belgrade; and the National Museum, Warsaw."
-by Walter Medeiros, The Archive of Counter Culture Art. (via I Want You Magazine)

from The Cosmic Bicycle (1971) -

from Time Zone (1973) -

not a collage, but an illustration from The Annotated Dracula (1975) that I can't help but post -


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Information, interviews, articles, and exhibition at zpub [link]
John Coulthart has writen about Sätty on his great blog feuilleton and in Strange Attractor Journal Vol. 2, which you can buy here.
Sätty @ I Want You magazine [link]
posters of/by Sätty @ Wolfgangs Vault [link]
album covers by Sätty 1, 2, 3, 4
more Sätty at the excellent blog The Cabinet of the Solar Plexus [link]
Prayer and Ode for Satty by Alan Cohen [link]
Sätty is Dead essay by Michael Bowen [link]
Visions of Frisco @worldcat @amazon; The Cosmic Bicycle @worldcat; Time Zone @worldcat; The Illustrated Edgar Allan Poe @worldcat @amazon; The Annotated Dracula @worldcat, @amazon

George Cooke Caricatures

George Cooke was a caricatures artist who drew Edwardian music hall performers for the Grand Theatre of Varieties, in Hanley Worcestershire. He compiled them in a series of albums.


This is the frontispiece for the first of several albums of caricatures of music hall performers by George Cooke. The Dame figure in a roundel is probably a caricature of Cooke himself. The performers below represent the comedian Edwin Boyde, right, and the mimic Leo Tell, left. [link]


Carl Hertz, or Leib Morgenstern, when he was performing at the Grand Theatre of Varieties, Hanley, during the week of 9 January 1905. He was billed as ‘The Famous Carl Hertz. In his gigantic show of Marvellous Illusions and Surprises. The most elaborate and sensational conjuring show ever presented. Assisted by Mlle. Dalton’. His acts at Hanley included making a birdcage and canary disappear and discovering the canary in the pocket of an audience member. He also performed there the ‘mystifying movements of a clock dial, which stops at any time spectators may desire, and records the numbers of a throw of a dice before the dice have actually been used’. [link]


Juno Salmo, ‘The Golden Mephisto’, when he was performing at the Grand Theatre of Varieties, Hanley. This was either during the week of 2 January 1905 or 16 April 1906. The contortionist Juno Salmo was known as the homme grenouille or ‘frog-man’ when he performed in Paris with the Nouveau Cirque in a frog costume. He dislocated his shoulders, hopped around the aquatic part of the ring and did acrobatic contortions on a trapeze that appeared to be made of bamboo. He is seen here doing a similar act, but balancing on a pole dressed as a yellow devil. [link]


Comedian Edwin Boyde performing the sketch ‘Bread and Jam’ at the Grand Theatre of Varieties, Hanley, during the week of 12 December 1904. He was billed enthusiastically as ‘London’s Greatest Comedian’. From all the principal London music halls’. [link]


The Three Meers when they were performing at the Grand Theatre of Varieties, Hanley, during the week of 17 October 1904. They were billed as ‘An Eccentric Wire Act. Fifteen Minutes of Continuous Laughter’. [link]


Woody Kelly as a whiskered tramp character. He was performing at the Grand Theatre, Hanley, during the week of 10 June 1907. The act was billed as ‘Kelly and Gilette in the sketch “Fun in a Billiard Room”’. [link]


Dr Carl Hermann when he was topping the bill at the Grand Theatre of Varieties, Hanley, during the week of 26 February 1906. He was billed as ‘The Man who Tamed Electricity! The Human Resistance Coil! The Modern Miracle Worker! Hypnotist! Electrician! Scientist! Performs the Feat of Passing over 10,000 Volts of Electricity Through his Body! The Sensation of the Century! Doctor Amazed! Scientists Puzzled!’. [link]


Comedian Will Manning of Manning’s Entertainers. He was performing at the Grand Theatre of Varieties, Hanley, during the week of 19 December 1904. The company had appeared there the previous March, and now they were billed as ‘The Welcome Return of Manning’s Entertainers in the Convulsing Carnival of Uproarious Mishaps’. [link]


Comedian George Gilbey when he was performing at the Grand Theatre of Varieties, Hanley, during the week of 26 December 1904. He was billed as ‘Mr George Gilbey. From the Principal London Variety Theatres’. [link]

Caricature of the contortionist George Antill, who performed at the Grand Theatre of Varieties, Hanley, during the week of 15 August 1904. He was billed as ‘Comedian. The Evening Shadow’. [link]

Morris & Morris when they were performing at the Grand Theatre of Varieties, Hanley, during the week of 1 August 1904. They were billed as ‘a pair of real good comedians’. When they appeared previously at the Grand in September 1903, the review noted that, ‘Their fun in the trapeze is equal to anything that has been seen here’. [link]


Comic duo Burns & Evans performing spoof acrobatics at the Grand Theatre of Varieties, Hanley, during the week of 8 August 1904. They were billed as ‘American comedians, as Alfonso and Gasten in "Funnambulism" [link]


Caricature of the American performer Wieland when he was topping the bill at the Hippodrome, Stoke-on-Trent, during the week of 24 July 1905. He was billed as ‘The Great Wieland. America’s Foremost Comedy Juggler’. [link]


Sam Mayo, ‘The Immobile One’, when he was performing at the Grand Theatre of Varieties, Hanley, during the week of 29 May 1905. He was billed as ‘the Original Immobile Comedian’. [link]
And here is a 1922 song that I very much enjoy by Sam Mayo, called Things Are Worse In Russia

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all of these come from the Victoria and Albert Museum [link]