6/30/12





Jack Palance




Pajorita Matta in "Witch's Cradle", 1944

Filmed after hours in Peggy Guggenheim's Art of this Century Gallery by Maya Deren with Marcel Duchamp and Pajorita Matta.








Mummified head of Tutankhamun
Photo by Sandro Vannini

6/29/12





NAGA TRIBE: HEAD HUNTING HUMAN TROPHY SKULL #7
DECORATED IN BOVINE HORN AND HAND CARVED WOODEN KNIVES
HUMAN SKULL, FEATHERS, WOOD, FIBER, RATTAN 

-from the astounding website:
http://www.tribalartasia.com






The Gorgon (1964)







Henning Lederer

6/28/12





Pasqual Pinon (1889–1929), The Two-Headed Mexican

Photograph from 1917, Sells Floto Circus.







vintage postcard




Raoul Hausmann
Postcard to IK Bonset (Theo van Doesburg's alter ego) of rival theorist Herwarth Walden
1921






A Crested Quail (Either a Gambel's Quail or California Quail)
-image originally from a wildlife encyclopedia found via the internet.

6/27/12






Set of sixty miniature heads used in phrenology, Manchester, England, 1831


Wooden case containing sixty small phrenological heads made by the phrenologist William Bally of Dublin, Ireland, to illustrate the theories of phrenology promoted by the Viennese physician Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828). Gall proposed that the contours of the skull followed the brain's shape, with each region responsible for an aspect of personality or behaviour. Feeling the lumps was like reading the mind. He called his system organology, but it later became known as phrenology, derived from the Greek word 'phren' for mind. Phrenology never achieved the status of an accredited science, although the principle that many functions are localised in the brain is now widely accepted.


Phrenology originated with Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828), a German physician, assisted by his colleague, Johann Kaspar Spurzheim (1809-72). Phrenologists believed that the shape and size of various areas of the brain (and therefore the overlying skull) determined personality. Gall and Spurzheim eventually disagreed and went on to promote rival systems of phrenology. These heads are numbered according to Spurzheim’s classification. The heads may have been used to teach phrenology but were probably made as a general reference collection. A wide range of different heads are present. For instance, head number 54 is that of a scientific man; head number 8 is recorded as the head of an ‘idiot’. The heads were made by William Bally, who studied under Spurzheim from 1828 onwards.


6/26/12







Australopithecus Africanus (southern ape of Africa), as reconstructed by paleoartist John Gurche.

Australopithecus Africanus lived about 3.3 to 2.1 million years ago.The first skull (the Taung Child) was found in 1924 and it took more than 20 years for the scientific community to widely accept Australopithecus Africanus as a member of the human family tree.  Often found alongside animal bones, Australopithecus africanus was once considered a “killer ape.”  Now we know that members of this early human species were sometimes eaten by predators.  Living together in groups helped these early humans protect themselves.  This reconstruction by Gurche is based on Sts 5 and 53Sts.
  
  - Sts5 was nicknamed Mrs. Ples (although the skull is now thought to belong to a male) and it was discovered in 1947.
- Dynamite once was used for excavating sites to speed up the process and Sts 5 was blown in two at the time of its extraction from the breccia (a cement-like rock).

Smithsonian Institute's Human Origin Program

6/25/12





Lonesome George

The last known individual of the Pinta Island Tortoise, subspecies Geochelone nigra abingdoni.
 Died June 24th,2012






Sycosis
A Practical treatise on diseases of skin
By John Vietch Shoemaker, 1890






Gummatous Syphilide, with ulceration and necrosis of frontal bone (from Nature)
A Practical Treatise on Diseases of the Skin. John V. Shoemaker, 1892






ROSACEA.
Acne rosacea, brandy or wine nose.

-A chronic inflammation of the skin of the face, more especially of the nose, cheeks, and chin, characterized by the presence of diffuse redness, dilated blood-vessels, and inflammatory papules and pustules, and ending in hypertrophy of the integument of the part."

Illustrated Skin Diseases- An Atlas and Text-Book With Special Reference To Modern Diagnosis and the Most Approved Methods Of Treatment- By William S. Gottheil
Second Edition, 1902






Impetigo Contagiosa

"Definition.- An acute inflammatory contagious disease, marked by the appearance of one or more isolated vesicles or pustules, drying up into yellow adherent crusts."

Illustrated Skin Diseases- An Atlas and Text-Book With Special Reference To Modern Diagnosis and the Most Approved Methods Of Treatment- By William S. Gottheil
Second Edition, 1902


6/20/12






Ray Milland
X, The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963) 

6/19/12






Heads 
by David Osborn
Bantam Books 1985


cover artist unknown






FORCE 
 SET ME FREE... (FROM THIS PAIN INSIDE MY HEAD) 
1984

6/18/12





The Shadow magazine
January 1943 cover
Death's Masquerade

6/17/12





Cover of John Halkin's "Slime" (Hamlyn, 1984)
Artwork by Terry Oakes





Silent Night Deadly Night 4: Initiation

6/16/12





Geek Maggot Bingo (1983)

6/14/12




Kodak 1960s - Shattered Reflection Photo







vintage postcard portrait

6/13/12





Tippi Hedren
MARNIE (1964)








Judy Garland
The Wizard Of Oz (1939)

Despite her professional triumphs, Garland battled personal problems throughout her life. Insecure about her appearance, her feelings were compounded by film executives who told her she was unattractive and manipulated her on-screen physical appearance. She was plagued by financial instability, often owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. She married five times, with her first four marriages ending in divorce. She had a long struggle with alcohol and drug use during most of her career, dying of an accidental drug overdose at the age of 47.

-Wiki


6/12/12






Elizabeth Montgomery







Gunther von Hagens
Horse's Head
Body Worlds of Animals



6/11/12







Plain Pouched Hornbill

6/10/12






“His Unlucky Day” by James Mangrum

An Interview with Mangrum on how this 1:1 replica bust of Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter came to be:

http://www.fridaythe13thfranchise.com/2011/03/interview-james-mangrum-shows-jason-his.html

6/5/12






Maurice Tillet, The French Angel (1903-1954)

-Diagnosed at the age of 17 with acromegaly - a syndrome that results when the anterior pituitary gland produces excess growth hormone (GH) after epiphyseal plate closure at puberty.

-Tillet had a successful career as a professional wrestler from 1937 - 1953.

-He competed against Tor Johnson, who was billed as The Swedish Angel, on several occasions.

-Known as "The French Angel" and “Freak Ogre of the Ring”,

-The computer-animated cartoon character Shrek was modeled after him.




6/4/12






Head of a Mummified Cat 
Egyptian Late Period to Ptolemaic
c. 664–30 BCE

The Egyptians viewed their gods not as spirits but as intelligences that could be personified in a body. The earliest evidence of cats as deities comes from a 3100BC crystal cup decorated with an image of the lion-headed goddess Mafdet. The goddess Bast was originally depicted as a fiercely protective and warlike lion, like Sekhmet, but as Bastet's image "softened" over time she became more strongly associated with domestic cats.
As cats were sacred to Bast, the practice of mummification was extended to them, and the respect that cats received after death mirrored the respect they were treated with in everyday life. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that in the event of a fire, men would guard the fire to make certain that no cats ran into the flame. Herodotus also wrote that when a cat died, the household would go into mourning as if for a human relative, and would often shave their eyebrows to signify their loss.

A colossal tomb at the temple of Bast was discovered in 1888. This tomb, outside of Beni Hasan, held more than nineteen tonnes of animal mummies and remains, the vast majority being cats..
The farmer who made the discovery sold most of the tomb's contents to be ground up as fertilizer.
-wiki







Lucian Freud, Self Portrait; Reflection, 2003-2004
Height: 17.78 cm (7 in.), Width: 12.7 cm (5 in.)

Freud was 82 years old at the time this painting was completed.


6/3/12






Vincent Price 
publicity photo for The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)