Customer Reviews

Just Above the Mantelpiece: Mass-Market Masterpieces

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Flipping through this book one day, I was shocked, or rather, surprised to finally look at a painting I'd seen featured in two favorite films: Performance (1970) and Frenzy (1972) and also used on the first Sound Gallery CD cover. I remembered this painting growing up yet never knew who the artist was. So naturally, I bought the book.

The English have a habit of fondly holding on to the past, at least when it comes to pop culture. This book certainly does that. Crammed full of incredible artwork form people once considered disposable, yet now highly reveered. The text is somewhat hard to read and not particularly extensive, but its almost irrelevant. What matters are the gorgeous reproductions of the art. And many of them are printed twice so you can peel them off for future framing - what a great idea!

If you can appreciate 'trash' for what its worth and have a passion for some truly amazing art, this book is absolutely worth buying. Within time, I predict some of these artists will be considered downright hip and adored by the right people, but still, this book is great. Take a look in the attic, one of these paintings may be there...

Neat treatment of the subject that mercifully ISN'T loaded with campy, "hip" contempt or irony. Hemingway genuinely likes this stuff and so do I. American readers will be entertained because much of this is British or European mass-market art that wasn't as popular here, but should have been! I'm amazed at the selection British big-eyes paintings that are such odd relations to their Keaney American cousins. The book has a great design with several of the lithos duplicated "post-it" style over their pages in the book so you can take them out and frame them yourself while keeping the book intact. Unfortunately they're not necessarily the ones I would have picked, like the Tretchikoffs, probably for copyright reasons. Come on, manufacturers, take a tip from Hemingway's book and let's bring back the days of saucer-eyed kidz, bright oil-painting colors and .... as accents for the living room!

'Just Above The Mantlepiece' is a weird journey through your childhood that will bring back good and bad memories of the art prints that adorned your quirky Aunt & Uncles house or your sisters room. This art is fast becoming highly collectible again through the resurgence of the 'Big Eye' art movement made famous by Margaret Keane. Remember those sad big-eyed animals,the misfit and street urchin paintings,the crying children, Tretchikoff's Green Lady and 50's exotic women, the voluptuous South Sea Island brunettes of JH Lynch, the cute Maio girls with cats or mandolins, and those little Go Go kids by Eve or Lee. You do? Well this book is full of such mass market art memories, a popular art genre never before acknowleged or given respect in such a glorious way. This book even has some pages printed with an extra copy of the art for framing, as it was meant to be. A true Celebration of our popular culture, and a great reference guide for the lounge art collector. Robert Rechter.

Andy Warhol understood the conflict between the tastes of the masses and what's considered "Good Art" by the cognoscenti. His soup can and Marilyn Monroe took common icons and created pop icons instantly. This was one of the 20th Century's most brilliant comments on "us" and the world of art. The conflict between the rarified world of fine art and popular art is really fascinating, and this book hits the mark.

King of Kitsch Hemmingway does a great job here of describing various popular artworks and why they've made the transition from "bad" to "beloved." A fun book, and a great concept, complete with peel-off art for your very own.

You'll be wide-eyed with amazement at the comprehensiveness of Wayne Hemingway's book. Page after page of real pop art. This stuff sold in the millions and some of it probably still is. Mainly seen from a British and Continental perspective, so no poker playing dogs by CM Coolidge, the book rightly kicks off in the fifties with the king of kitsch Vladimir Tretchikoff and his painted ladies and then meanders through crying boys, street urchins, doe-eyed pets and ends with what I thought was nice touch, the British poster company Athena in the late eighties.

Despite the fact that these paintings were very popular with the working class as far as I can see very few of the artists are particularly good. Being popular does not equate with professionalism for this market segment. None of them seem to have the draughtsmanship of, for example, Norman Rockwell or Charles Wysocki. These pop art reproductions probably sold in their millions because they displayed the right sort of sentimental image and were pre-framed and cheap, obviously the perfect buy.

The book is a pop art production itself I thought. Many of the pages use eighties wallpaper as a background for the text and paintings and someone had the bright idea of tipping in several of the paintings as removal prints (though I wonder how many book owners removed them?) so you'll be able to have your own gallery above the mantelpiece.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.