For Us, Cutaway Cars Are Always Worth a Closer Look, Here’s an Amazing See-Through 1970 Ford Torino

For 1970, J. Walter Thompson, Ford’s longtime ad agency, came up with a clever tagline for the midsize Torino: “New clear through!” And it was an honest boast, as the Ford intermediate platform was all indeed all-new with radically restyled sheet metal from front to rear, a longer wheelbase, and a fresh slate of powertrain choices, including a 429 cubic-inch Cobra Jet V8. To help drive home the “new clear through” theme, the JWT crew conceived an equally clever selling tool: a see-though Torino.

Built from a standard production 1970 Torino two-door hardtop in Acapulco Blue with a 351 two-barrel V8 and an automatic transmission, the car featured a score of see-though body panels vacuum-formed in plexiglass by Creative Industries. At the time, Creative was a leading builder of specialty vehicles for all the Motor City carmakers and the experts on plastics and new materials.

To complete the Illustrated Car effect, the undercarriage and all the interior panels and components were show-prepped and painted in bright, contrasting colors, the better to show them off, and an elaborate network of miniature electric lamps was hidden inside to illuminate the inner body and simulate the flow-through ventilation system.

The see-though hardtop was featured in Ford’s 1970 Torino sales catalog and treated to a full spread for Motor Trend (the Torino was the magazine’s Car of the Year for 1970). The Torino also starred in a 1970 Ford television commercial, demonstrating in action shots that despite the presumably flimsy body panels, it was fully functional and roadworthy. At some point, the car was updated to 1971 exterior trim, and it also appears as a ’71 in the ’71 Torino sales literature.

(This original article was published on Mac’s Motor City Garage)

30 Humorous Comic Fat Lady Postcards by Donald McGill From the Early 20th Century

Donald McGill (January 28, 1875 – October 13, 1962) was an English graphic artist whose name has become synonymous with the genre of saucy postcards, particularly associated with the seaside (though they were sold throughout the UK). The cards mostly feature an array of attractive young women, fat old ladies, drunken middle-aged men, honeymoon couples and vicars. He has been called “the king of the saucy postcard,” and his work is collected and appreciated for his artistic skill, its power of social observation and earthy sense of humor. Even at the height of his fame he only earned three guineas a design, but today his original artwork can fetch thousands of pounds.

McGill spent virtually the whole of his career creating the distinctive color-washed drawings which were then reproduced as postcards. He ranked his output according to their vulgarity as mild, medium and strong, with strong being much the best sellers. His family, however, was steadfastly respectable. He said of his two daughters, “They ran like stags whenever they passed a comic postcard shop.”

During the First World War he produced anti-German propaganda in the form of humorous postcards. They reflected on the war from the opinion, as he saw it, of the men serving, and the realities facing their families at home. Cards dealing with the so-called “home front” covered issues such as rationing, home service, war profiteers, spy scares and interned aliens. Recruitment and “slackers” were other topics covered.

In 1941, author George Orwell wrote an essay on McGill’s work entitled “The Art of Donald McGill”. Orwell concluded that in spite of the vulgarity and the low artistic merits of the cards, he would be sorry to see them go.

Approaching 80, McGill fell foul of several local censorship committees, which culminated in a major trial in Lincoln on July 15, 1954 for breaking the Obscene Publications Act 1857. He was found guilty and fined £50 with £25 costs. The wider result was a devastating blow to the saucy postcard industry; many postcards were destroyed as a result, and retailers cancelled orders. Several of the smaller companies were made bankrupt, as they had traded on very small margins.

In the late 1950s, the level of censorship eased off and the market recovered. In 1957, McGill gave evidence before a House of Commons select committee set up to amend the 1857 Act.

McGill produced an estimated 12,000 designs, of which 200 million copies are estimated to have been printed. He died in 1962 with all his designs for the 1963 season already prepared. He was buried in Streatham Park Cemetery in an unmarked grave. Despite their wide circulation, McGill earned no royalties from his designs; in his will, his estate was valued at just £735.

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Top 10 Most Expensive Jean-Michel Basquiat Paintings

In his short life, Jean-Michel Basquiat was a pop icon, cultural figure, graffiti artist, musician, and neo-expressionist painter. He was a precocious child, and by the age of four, he could both read and write. By the time he was eleven, he was fluent in English, French, and Spanish. And by the time was fifteen, he ran away from home, living for less than a week in Washington Square Park, after which he was arrested and sent back home to live with his father. He dropped out of school in tenth grade, after which his father kicked him out of the house, leaving the young artist to live with friends, supporting himself by selling T-shirts and homemade postcards.

Most expensive Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings

In the 1970s Basquiat began to spray painting buildings in Lower Manhattan, using the pseudonym SAMO, earning him notoriety and a certain amount of fame. He appeared on television in 1979 on the sow “TV Party,” and that same year formed a rock band called “Gray,” which performed all throughout New York. During this time, he also appeared in the music video “Rapture” by Blondie.

By 1982, he was regularly showing his work and had many high-profile friendships, including a brief relationship with Madonna, a brief involvement with the musician David Bowie, and long-time collaboration with the artist Andy Warhol. He worked on his paintings in $1,000 dollar Armani suits, in which he would appear in public, spattered in paint. He also appeared on the cover of New York Times Magazine in 1986.

Although he was a successful artist, Basquiat became addicted to heroin, and after the death of his friend Andy Warhol in 1987, his addiction became worse. Be became increasingly isolated, and died of a heroin overdose in 1988. Posthumously, many exhibitions of his works have been held, and biopics, books, collections of poems and feature films have all been inspired by his work and life.

Here is top 10 most expensive Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings.

1. Untitled (1982) - $110.5 million (2017).

Untitled (1982)

2. Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump (1982) - $100 million (2020).

Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump (1982)

3. In This Case (1983) - $93.1 million (2021).

In This Case (1983)

4. Untitled (Devil) (1982) - $57.3 million (2016).

Untitled (Devil) (1982)

5. Versus Medici (1982) - $50.8 million (2021).

Versus Medici (1982)

6. Dustheads (1982) - $48.8 million (2013).

Dustheads (1982)

7. Flexible (1984) - $45.3 million (2018).

Flexible (1984)

8. Warrior (1982) - $41.8 million (2021).

Warrior (1982)

9. Untitled (1985) - $37.2 million (2021).

Untitled (1985)

10. The Field Next to the Other Road (1981) - $37.1 million (2015).

The Field Next to the Other Road (1981)

Candid Photographs of Alberto Giacometti at Work in His Studio in Paris, 1958

Alberto Giacometti was born in Switzerland to an artistic family in 1901. His father was post-Impressionist painter Giovanni Giacometti; his father’s second cousin was Symbolist painter Augusto Giacometti; and his godfather Fauvist Cuno Amiet. In addition to his three younger siblings, two of Alberto’s cousins were raised in his family home after they became orphaned. His brothers Diego and Bruno also worked as artists.

Giacometti was famously extremely self-critical, which motivated his prolific and wide-ranging career: “The more you fail, the more you succeed.” The 100 Swiss franc note features a portrait of Giacometti on one side, and a reproduction of his 1961 sculpture, L’Homme Qui Marche, on the other.

Giacometti began working in various media at a young age. He sent pencil drawings to his godfather beginning in 1911, and began oil painting in his father’s studio in 1913. By 1914 he began modeling the heads of his brothers in plasticine. He moved to Paris at age 21 to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, under Antoine Bourdelle, who had worked and taught with Auguste Rodin.

From the late 1920s until 1935, Giacometti’s work reflected the ideals of the Surrealists and appeared in exhibitions alongside the work of Joan Miró, Hans Arp and Salvador Dalì. He quickly became a leading Surrealist sculptor.

Until his death in 1966, Giacometti occupied the small, shabby Paris studio he bought in 1926, despite the commercial, critical, and financial success he experienced during much of his life. His American biographer James Lord referred to the studio as a “dump” and a tree branch famously grew through one of its walls.

In the last weeks of his life, Giacometti vacillated between losing his will to live or work after hearing an undesirable prognosis, and renewed hope and a zealous undertaking of working from his hospital room. He died of heart complications from years of suffering from bronchitis and chain-smoking. His funeral in his hometown of Borgonovo was attended by family, residents of nearby towns, members of Swiss authorities and the French government, and countless museum directors, art dealers and artists from around the world.

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Jane Russell Sketching a Portrait of Marilyn Monroe on the Set of ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ (1953)

On the set of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Marilyn Monroe sat and posed while co-star Jane Russell drawing a portrait of her. When told she was not the star of the film, Marilyn was quoted as saying: “Well, whatever I am, I AM the blonde.”

This was Jane Russell’s only film with Marilyn Monroe. They got along well. According to Russell’s 1985 autobiography, she called Monroe “Blondl” and was often the only person on the set who could coax Monroe out of her trailer to begin the day’s filming.

In her very last interview (10 years after making Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), Monroe recalled the lack of respect studio execs had for her, but made a point of mentioning co-star, Jane Russell: “I remember when I got the part in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Jane Russell, she was the brunette in it and I was the blonde. She got $200,000 for it, and I got my $500 a week, but that to me was, you know, considerable. She, by the way, was quite wonderful to me.”

Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell spent much of this film walking, singing, and dancing in absolute unison. For this film Gwen Verdon coached they in both their dance and walk – Monroe with less sex, Russell with more.

During a story conference for this film with Darryl F. Zanuck, director Howard Hawks suggested to Zanuck that the studio change Marilyn Monroe’s look and screen persona a bit, so that Marilyn would be more of an actress and less of a blonde bombshell type. The results in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes made Marilyn a massively huge film star in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Homes of the Future: A Look Back at Charles Schridde’s Stunning ‘60s Ads For Motorola

Charles Schridde was born in 1926 and grew up in rural Illinois. He was an artist from an early age and received a scholarship to the Chicago Art Institute when he was age 17. He began at the institute, but was then enlisted in the Navy for two years. When he returned from the Navy, Charles began his career as a free-lance commercial illustrator. His major clients included The Saturday Evening Post, Life magazine, Motorola and Chevrolet.

In 1961, Motorola asked  Charles Schridde to envision the homes of the future centered around Motorola’s most recent line of electronics. The ads created by Schridde ran in Life Magazine and The Saturday Evening Post from 1961 to 1963 and depicted an optimistic future made of lavish, elegant, dream-homes, where domestic technologies and serene landscapes coexisted harmoniously. Through his stunning drawings, we were offered a fascinating glimpse of what the past thought the future would be like, and how home technology companies capitalized on their consumers’ minds by swaying them in the direction that these electronic products were relevant to that ultimate future.

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Rebecca Horn – White Body Fan (1972)

Mechanical Body Fan consists of a metal frame, designed to be placed over the shoulders of a female performer, which extends down her front and back, and is held in pace by straps passing around her waist and between her legs. Axels attached to this frame extend at right angles to her body in front and behind her, onto which are attached two fabric wings. When the performer is at rest, the wings hang down, but by shifting her weight, the performer can swing or fully rotate each of these fabric fans so that, viewed from either side, they form an infinite number of shapes between a half and a full circle.

“The fan is adjusted to the proportions and dimensions of my body ... head and shoulders are the centre, the axel of the circular movements ... one half of the fan rotates in front of my body, the other behind my body. My body becomes the fixed axel of the rotational movements. Through the slow rotation of the two fan halves, parts of my body become visible, others become hidden. In the constantly changing angle of the circle the two fan halves spin faster, closing to form a transparent circle.” – Rebecca Horn explained.

Emerging onto the art scene in the late 1960s, the German artist Rebecca Horn was part of a generation of artists whose work challenged the institutions, forces and structures that governed not only the art world but society at large. In art, this meant a renewed critical focus on the human body, contesting the commodification of art objects by foregrounding the individual. This focus on the human body took on a particular personal resonance for Horn, who was confined to hospitals and sanatoria for much of her early twenties after suffering from severe lung poisoning while working unprotected with polyester and fibreglass at Hamburg’s Academy of the Arts.

Horn has made work in a variety of media throughout her career, from drawing to installation, writing to filmmaking. Yet it is with her sculptural constructions for the body that she has undertaken the most systematic investigation of individual subjectivity. Her bodily extensions, for example, draw attention to the human need for interaction and control while also pointing to the futility of ambitions to overcome natural limitations. Similarly, her constructions, despite their medical imagery, are deliberately clumsy and functionless, while other works attest to the unacknowledged affinities between humans, animals and machines.

(via Tate)

23 Brilliant National Lampoon Magazine Covers From the 1970s

National Lampoon was an American satirical pop culture magazine that ran from 1970 to 1998. Founded by Doug Kenney and Henry Beard, the magazine started out as a spinoff from the Harvard Lampoon, where Beard and Kenney used to work as editors.

National Lampoon magazine reached its height of popularity and critical acclaim during the seventies, when it had a far-reaching effect on American humor and comedy. The satirical magazine spawned films, radio, live theatre, various sound recordings, and print products including books. It also helped jump start the careers of many of the comedic heroes of the 1980s, including many of the original writers and cast members of Saturday Night Live.

During the magazine's most successful years, parody of every kind was a mainstay; surrealist content was also central to its appeal. Almost all the issues included long text pieces, shorter written pieces, a section of actual news items (dubbed “True Facts”), cartoons and comic strips. Most issues also included “Foto Funnies” or fumetti, which often featured nudity. As co-founder Henry Beard described the experience years later: “There was this big door that said, ‘Thou shalt not.’ We touched it, and it fell off its hinges.” The magazine declined during the late 1980s, and ceased publication in 1998.

Take a look through 23 fascinating and brilliant covers of the magazine from the seventies:

August 1972

March 1971

May 1971

June 1972

January 1973

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Audrey Hepburn by Richard Avedon, New York, January 1967

Richard Avedon created this fanciful image of the actress Audrey Hepburn for the first issue of Famous Photographers magazine in January 1967. After photographing Hepburn in the studio, he made a collage of several images printed to scale; an airbrushed sheet of Mylar laid over the collage concealed the visible seams.

In the accompanying article, Avedon explained that his interest in photocollage grew from “years of looking at contact sheets and being limited by the reality of what was in front of the camera.”

(Collection of The Richard Avedon Foundation, New York)

Amazing Illustrations by John Bauer in the Early 20th Century

Born 1882 in Jönköping, Swedish painter and illustrator traveled throughout Lappland, Germany and Italy early in his career, and these cultures deeply informed his work. He painted and illustrated in a romantic nationalistic style, in part influenced by the Italian Renaissance and Sami cultures.

Illustrations by John Bauer in the 1900s and 1910s

Bauer’s work is concerned with landscape and mythology, but he also composed portraits. He is best known for his illustrations of early editions of Bland tomtar och troll (Among Gnomes and Trolls), an anthology of Swedish folklore and fairy tales.

Most of Bauer’s works are watercolors or prints in monochrome or muted colours; he also produced oil paintings and frescos. His illustrations and paintings broadened the understanding and appreciation of Swedish folklore, fairy tales and landscape.

When Bauer was 36, he drowned, together with his wife Ester and their son Bengt, in a shipwreck on Lake Vättern in southern Sweden in 1918.

A set of amazing illustrations is part of his work that John Bauer painted in the 1900s and 1910s.

Dag and Daga, and the Flying Troll of Sky Mountain, 1907

Dag and Daga, and the Flying Troll of Sky Mountain, 1907

Dag and Daga, and the Flying Troll of Sky Mountain, 1907

Dag and Daga, and the Flying Troll of Sky Mountain, 1907

Dag and Daga, and the Flying Troll of Sky Mountain, 1907

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