fueling the imaginations

by Art Chantry:

twin brothers george jerome rozen and jerome george rozen were born in 1875. they both entered art school and became professional illustrators – often working together on projects as well as solo. they became hugely popular pulp magazine cover artists, specializing in crazy futuristic massive art deco machinery bulldozing and grinding the world around them. they did so many covers for pulps like the shadow, modern mechanics, true crime and fictional science, that they actually supported themselves throughout he entire depression with this extremely low-paying work.

after WW2, with a healthier economy and a peacetime robust culture, they didn’t do so well. work dried up. eventually george jerome died. jerome george rozen managed to hang on another ten years before he died. apparently, jerome lived until  the late 50′s – long enough to paint this amazing image for shell oil in 1959. he must have been in his middle 80′s when he did this.

the image is naive and rather evocative and poignant and darkly funny. a businessman/worker meld (a classic ‘oil man’ look) trying to ensnare the entire planet in a cardboard box for ‘safe keeping’. the text is about a huge paper-making machine owned by the st.regis company that uses shell oil lubricants to grind up trees to make cardboard boxes strong enough to protect everything (apparently even the entire planet, i guess). this is the ‘good stuff’ the oil companies are doing for all of us – protecting us.

never mind that in the process they get to have the entire planet to keep for themselves (protect?) in a box. who’s the gatekeeper of that box?

so, it’s sort of sadly prophetic that they hired jerome george rozen – the creator of so many fantastical massive earth eating (thus destroying) machines in the fantasies of the past. rozen’s images fueled the imaginations of the boyhood engineers of the future, the ones who now make the very machines that are destroying the entire planet. the gatekeepers, indeed. the irony here has so many levels.

some paranoid souls may even go so far as to say that shell oil’s hubris with this ad is so blind that they are accidentally ‘spilling the beans’ about their plans for world domination.

‘letting the cat out of the box’ ???? you be the judge.

ADDENDUM:

(see link at end)…Jerome was the first to enroll in the Art Institute of Chicago, Jerome followed a year later and had George as an instructor! Jerome was the first to paint covers for The Shadow, but George did them later. Both were in GREAT demand for their pulp magazine illustrations … However, even though the pair of brothers painted their way through the depression, they could not paint their way through the technological progress of the camera, and not long after WW2 the glory days of pul

ere over. Between the two, hundreds of pulp covers, from True Crime to Fictional Science were produced. These are six simply incredible examples of George #1′s talent. Never mind they didn’t quite come true.Read More:http://dulltooldimbulb.blogspot.ca/2009/03/george-jerome-rozen-and-his-brother.html