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New Coney Island Freak Show Banners Pay Homage to Past

Posted in art, tagged Coney Island, Dick Zigun, famous freaks, Marie Roberts, sideshow banner, Snap Wyatt on May 18, 2011| 4 Comments »

New Bannerline by Marie Roberts for Coney Island USA. May 14, 2011. Photo © me-myself-i/Tricia Vita via flickr

Artist Marie Roberts, whose sideshow banners have adorned Coney Island USA’s building since 1997, has painted a new bannerline that pays homage to the landmarking of the building by acknowledging artists of the past. CIUSA artistic director Dick Zigun’s idea was “Marie Roberts channels Snap Wyatt.” Marie explains….

We chose Snap Wyatt – I always think of his forms as more Platonic and Piero like. We based the designs on his banners.

The central “Sideshows by the Seashore” banner depicts a stage with actual stars of the past… Bobby Reynolds, Jack Dracula, Sealo, Albert/Alberta, all performed in our building. The General Tom Thumb is for Dick’s past, Lionel is for mine.

The color is deep and rich recalling the polychroming on the Parthenon, the figures frieze-like, like Egypt perhaps.

The first time I wrote about Marie was more than a decade ago as part of a travel story for Islands Magazine. This third-generation Coney Islander spoke so vividly about her Uncle Lester, who had been a talker with the Dreamland Circus Sideshow in the 1920s, that I felt as if he were alive. Photos of him working and socializing with Lionel the Lion-Faced Man and other famous freaks left an indelible impression on Marie and continue to inspire her work.

Other sideshow stars portrayed in the frieze include…

–General Tom Thumb, who was 25 inches tall and weighed 15 pounds, found fame and fortune touring Europe with PT Barnum. He was born in 1838 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which is also Dick Zigun’s hometown.

–Bobby Reynolds, sideshow legend and self-proclaimed “greatest showman in the world,” brought his museum of curiosities to the now-demolished bank building across from Coney Island USA in the 1990s. He returned to Coney to perform this spring at the Congress of Curious Peoples.

—Jack Dracula was first tattooed by Coney Island’s Brooklyn Blackie in the 1940s. He had over 400 tattoos on his body, including his face, and was famously photographed by Diane Arbus. One of the shows where he found work was Dave Rosen’s Wonderland Circus Sideshow, which occupied Coney Island USA’s building in the 1950s and ’60s.

Weird Women Banner by Marie Roberts for Coney Island USA. May 14, 2011. Photo © me-myself-i/Tricia Vita via flickr

The first time I wrote about David “Snap” Wyatt was in the late ’90s, when I chronicled the movement of sideshow banners into high-art venues for Art & Antiques, New Art Examiner and other magazines. Wyatt was a virtuoso who was snapping up work with traveling shows long before he attended Cooper Union and became one of the few banner painters with an art school education. During his 40-year career in the world of midway art, he also created figures of zombies and other creatures for several of his own sideshows.

My favorite Snap Wyatt banner is his Strange Girls gaff banner in the book Freaks, Geeks & Strange Girls, which Marie has reinterpreted as Weird Women. Strange Men and the new banners of individual performers have yet to be hung.

Marie is teaching a banner painting workshop at Coney Island USA’s Sideshow School in August. She is also a tenured professor of art at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her painting student at FDU, Justina Cena, assisted with the pieces.

Up for Auction: Sideshow Banners by Johnny Meah

Posted in art, Auction, tagged Johnny Meah, sideshow banner, World of Wonders on May 8, 2011| 5 Comments »

Two Sideshow Show Marquee Banners Painted by Johnny Meah for Hall & Christ's World of Wonders. Size: 94 inches long, 35 inches tall. Mosby & Co Auction. May 14, 2011

ATZ is a fan of word banners and if we had wall space in our apartment we’d try to win these beauties. Painted by Johnny Meah for Hall and Christ’s World of Wonders Sideshow, these two marquee banners are among the circus and sideshow items in Mosby & Company’s Spring Auction. The live auction is on Saturday, May 14, in Frederick, Maryland, but the catalogue is online and you can bid now or in real time during the auction. A couple of other banners by Meah, including a Half Man, Half Woman act (shown below) and a Bed of Nails act depicting “Tortura High Priestess of Pain” came directly from World of Wonder’s C.M. Christ and are also in the sale.

The name “Meah” takes me all the way back to my childhood days traveling the New England carnival circuit with my concessionaire parents. Hal Meah, a sketch artist who set up his easel at the Connecticut fairs on our route, taught me how to draw. His son, Johnny, began his career at age nine as “The World’s Youngest Portrait Artist,’ but I remembered him as a 20-year-old who hopscotched from carnival to circus to fairgrounds, snapping up sign painting jobs. Since a showman has to play a variety of roles in order to make a living, Johnny augmented his repertoire with sideshow lecturing, fire eating, and swallowing swords.

Strange Change Sideshow Banner featuring an image of a Half Man, Half Woman. Art Work by Johnny Meah. Size: 84 inches tall, 94 inches wide. Mosby & Co Auction. May 14, 2011

I first encountered Johnny Meah’s gloriously gaudy advertisements for World of Wonders at New Jersey’s Meadowlands Fair in 1996. As I wrote a few years later in an essay for Raw Vision …

Twisted Sister, Minnie the Mermaid, the Electrifying Voltara and other Strange Girls–Alive and on Stage–were seen by hundreds of thousands of people. The artist used every trick of the banner painter’s trade to pull in a crowd –vibrant colors (“flash,” in the lingo of the midway), bold lines, eye-catching exaggeration, and tantalizing wordplay.

Fairgoers were razzle-dazzled into spending two bucks to go inside, where what they actually saw was a contortionist, a girl in a goldfish bowl, an electrocution-proof woman, and other classic sideshow acts. The artist’s disclaimer appeared in small script near the entrance: ‘Fantasy art scenes are not intended as a true depiction of illusions presented in the inside of this show.’ At the same time, his hand-lettered signature proudly took credit for his creations: ‘All ‘Banner Art’ by Meah Studios, Riverview, Florida.’

Sideshow impresario Ward Hall, whose midway shows have flown the artist’s banners for more than thirty years succinctly explained to me the drawing power of Johnny’s art: “Because he has been in the sideshow, he understands what is required to sell tickets. And that’s what his banners do.”

Visit Johnny Meah’s website- The Czar of the Bizarre–to view his new work, read his writings, and download a font in his idiosyncratic handwriting style.

Mosby & Co Auctions, Spring Americana, Toy & Circus Sale. The auction catalogue is currently online for the May 14, 2011 Sale.

Rare & Vintage: Major Debert the Tiniest Man’s Sideshow Banner

Posted in art, Auction, tagged advertisement, Coney Island, Major Debert, Millard & Bulsterbaum, sideshow banner, Sideshow Freak on May 4, 2010| 1 Comment »

Vintage Sideshow Art: Major Debert Tiniest Man by Millard & Bulsterbaum, 2894 W 8th St. Coney Island

This circa 1920s banner from Coney Island is among more than a dozen sideshow banners offered in a Mosby & Co. online auction that begins on May 5th. We first set eyes on the mysterious “Major Debert Tiniest Man” in Freaks Geeks & Strange Girls: Sideshow Banners of the Great American Midway. The 1996 book catapulted this unusual genre of American art from fringe culture into the mainstream. “Major Debert” was one of the prized Millard & Bulsterbaum banners from Coney Island owned by Jim Secreto, whose collection we got to see “Alive and On the Inside” when we profiled him for Art & Antiques.

This extravagant advertisement for Major Debert is 12 feet tall by 7 feet wide, a size that readily lends itself to hilarious exaggerations of scale. The Tiniest Man does indeed look tiny beside the gigantic faces of the “normal sized” man and woman who are oohing and aahing over him. Algernon Millard and John Bulsterbaum established their Coney Island shop around 1915 at 2894 W 8th Street across the street from Luna Park. Their ads proclaimed “We Paint Banners That Get Top Money for Carnivals and Circus.” The studio was credited with introducing liberal use of orange paint and bold lines that made their banners visible from clear across the midway.

This is the third Mosby auction featuring sideshow banners from the collection of the late Bob McCord. Back in the 90s, Bob began buying or trying to buy every sideshow banner in sight. He got quite a few from Johnny Meah, whose banners are also featured in the current auction, as well as some vintage pieces from the Secreto collection. Last year we wrote about the sale of an orange-hued “Armless Wonder” banner by Dan Casola from the same Coney Island studio.

Mosby & Co Auctions, Auction # 3 Closing May 20th, 2010 at Midnight, Lot #438, Opening Bid $850