Post #432670 by Zeta on Thu, Feb 5, 2009 9:01 AM

Aloha Amigos! This is where I will show my collection of Antique Prints. I found them trough the years in old bookstores in Barcelona, Madrid, Morocco, Mexico and France... This are OLD. I guess there's not many prints like this in the U.S.A. since the country didn't even existed when the prints were created. They are extremely rare because most of them are in collections and libraries already so it's difficult to find them "in the wild" These were not cheap, but are worth every cent, they have so much detail that it's a pleasure to look at the lines, sadly, it's hard to appreciate it on a computer screen. Another great thing about antique prints is that you can scan them in high resolution and reprint them in any size and they don't loose their crispiness, don't get pixelated, blurry or anything like that. But most important, they are the first document of the clash between the two worlds, the cultural shock, "the civilized and the primitive" "the illustrated and the savage" The first impression of "the other" The birth of the modern... This are the images that started Polynesian pop and the fascination with the exotic. This is what the Avant garde artists like Gaugin, Picasso, Max Ernst etc, etc... saw that blew their minds and made them forget about representative art and start drawing from imagination... This is as Tiki as it gets. Enjoy! If you have some, please share!

Look at the Tiki (New Caledonia) smiling to the horror! Scary and beautiful!