Hunter Stamp

tart card - Ian Wright

Tart cards are the means by which many London prostitutes advertise their services. Step into almost any central London phone box and you can contemplate up to 80 cards inviting you to be tied, teased, spanked or massaged.
Even if a police crackdown, the internet and the increasing use of mobile phones suggest their days are numbered, tart cards are still so pervasive they are now regarded as items of accidental art and have something of a cult following. Once on the periphery of design, tart cards have influenced the work of many mainstream artists such as Royal Academician Tom Phillips and Sex Pistols designer Ray and Nils Stevenson.

Kees van Dongen, La Femme au canapé, c. 1930

Kees van Dongen - Buveuse d'absinthe, 1902

Kees van Dongen, Masque articulé, "Les oiseaux bleus", 1920s

the beauty and sensuality of Saida, by Kees van Dongen ca 1913

this girl looks like she might be getting married. *the conventions of marriage* 

Salvador Dalí, The Ship, 1943

The Ship is Surrealist Salvador Dali’s watercolor reworking of renowned maritime artist Montague Dawson’s classic painting forged with his own enigmatic imagery. Dali (1904 – 1989), using a technique called Paranoiac-Critical , portrayed these objects and scenarios in meticulously realistic detail, depicting a dream world in which commonplace objects are juxtaposed and transformed in a bizarre and irrational fashion. Blazing innovative trails in Surrealism, Dali used his exceptional imagination to fuel his contributions to sculpture, theater, fashion and photography.