Tag: circus

Fred G. Johnson’s Contributions To The World: Sideshow Banners

The Picasso of circus art.

Fred G. Johnson’s (1892 – 1990) banners were used to illustrate A Century of Progress for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair His artwork also advertised the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey and Clyde Beatty circuses.

Hired by banner painter Harry Carlton Cummins to clean equipment and stick up banners, Cummins taught Johnson how to paint them, which he did, producing as many as four a day. The art is fast, subjective and made to deadline.

Not to be confused with the great Fred Johnson, bass singer for The Marcels.

[Images and story found here, via here. ]

There’s a huge bug in the tent.

Or not.

Continue reading “There’s a huge bug in the tent.”

The .Gif Friday Post No.99 – Fish attack Circus

Fish Chases Kid_Aardvarks&A 090926

“Fishy gon’ getcha, gon’ getcha!”

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Circus_Morbid Anatomy 090826

[Top one found here. The last three, with the description below,  are from here (and the first of the three is not an animation).]

“The Musée Mécanique is a museum that houses scores of mechanical toys ranging from Victorian penny arcade toys to automata to early 20th Century fortune tellers to pioneering forays into animation to 1980s video games, all collected by San Francisco resident Edward Zelinski. Within these walls you can see: an opium den’s inhabitants luxuriating in their lair, a drunkard’s delirium tremens-inspired dreams, both a French and an English execution scene (!!!), a sultan’s harem, dancing monkeys, the famous “Laughing Sal,” and an epic, ambitious 1930s fairgrounds scene rich in colloquial detail complete with freak show and a angry caged gorilla (see above). And all this to the creepy sounds of tinny carnival music fading in and out from the activated amusements surrounding you.”

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