Commercial “fine artists” like SHAG have made a big business out of motifs from a bygone era, as have cultural heroes such as overly-happy Charles Phoenix who seems to exist solely in a self-involved kitschy bachelor pad world circa-1957. Some of the art and historical finds that have come out of this mind-set are beautiful, but so much of it simply builds on visual catch phrases (goatees, swizzle sticks, martini glasses, Cadillacs and Las Vegas 1962-imagery) – but I guess it must all be big business, and people seem to love the 1950s – especially when filtered through 3-D printing technology and modern Photoshopped templates.

Cliche’s aside, Playboy magazine was likely the most influential player in this era. The scene is something like you’d find there.

Yaniger and Alexander’s art (above) is cute, but cliche’ ridden (smoking jacket, jazz LP, nifty HI FI) – I guess the clever part of it all is the fact that’s all cut-outable. Art like this is similar to art that tries to capture the Be Bop era of the mid-40s by depicting krazy kats in berets and krazy kittens in stilettos smoking mad reefer. Art does have to simplify, but it doesn’t have to sink to bland depths.

Oops, gotta go. There’s an episode of “The Jetsons” on cable I need to catch!