Art prints & text: Scream if you want to go faster! with Pop Art hot dogs

Hot Dogs, RTomens, 2017

"I won't go on anything that goes 'round 'n' 'round and up and down!" I told LJ as she tried to get me to go on things that went 'round 'n' 'round and up and down whilst we walked through the funfair on Sunday. the Giant Octopus? No! the Hurricane Jets? No! no, no, no! what a wimp I am - the dodgems (or 'bumper cars' as we always called them back in the day), however, were a joy. we had two goes.

loved Carters Steam fair - proper retro rides all the way & it felt like a thoroughly 'English' experience just because it was retro right down to the 50s & 60s music being played which, by the way, was mostly American due to the Anglo-American Pop marriage of the time - talking of which, Ken Russell's film, Pop Goes The Easel sprang to mind, featuring as it does British Pop Art stars of the day visiting a funfair...&, you might have noticed - & I might say, Pop Art's pretty influential in my work, some of it anyway...

Derek Boshier, Pauline Boty & Peter Blake

we can argue which side of the pond Pop Art started til the moo cows come home but you know Paolozzi and Hamilton were early birds, so too was Ray Johnson in the US, I suppose. American culture (pulp, film, comics, commerce) influenced the Brits but as usual the Americans did it bigger & in greater volume (well, it's a bigger country...& they're louder!)

So regarding these images, they're sort of a Pop art homage to the funfair & the artists of olde (including Sigmar Polke, as you can see, although I've treated them my own way, I like to think). all created from photos I took on the day..................

Scream if you want to go faster, RTomens, 2017

Chairoplane, RTomens, 2017

we even ate hot dogs, which I hadn't done since we used to emerge from Soho's Wag Club early Tuesday morning in the 80s full of beer (and Jazz) in need of food, any food, so hot dog vendors were a blessing. the ones we ate on Sunday were tasty too. 

hot dogs in Pop Art...

The Lines were Etched Deeply on the Map of her Face, James Rosenquist, 1962

Five Hot Dogs, Wayne Thiebaud, 1961

here's Ken Russell's film. well worth watching...