Magazine-clipping pop art and Dada: real photos, not cartoons, each piece cut out of a printed page. Every animal is a kind of market — the bear is the bear market, the bull the bull market, the minnows the small holders, the whales the big ones, the dolphins the quick traders.
Three rules these were built to. One ground per scene: one photograph is the setting, the building is already in it or is one building pasted on, and everything else — the animals, the revolvers, the hats, the money bags — sits on top. Real cutouts from real public-domain photographs, never generated imagery. Text only in the operator’s exact words, or exact historical titles and quotes — nothing invented.
Bank robbery
The ground: Grafton Bank (LCCN 2014713884) — a real 1920s bank on a real intersection, crowd and cars already in it
Cut out and pasted on: bears, Angus bull, Colt SAA + Iver Johnson revolvers, bowler + top hat, $ neon sign on the bank, money bag, gold, 1925 Model T, Thompson gunman, 1905 police dog, bills, Iver Johnson ad
Dogs Playing Poker
The ground: C. M. Coolidge, A Friend in Need (1903), public domain — the card table is the setting
Cut out and pasted on: bear heads, Hereford bull head, dolphins, breaching humpback, shiba, pasted over the dogs; money bag, Colt, gold, bills
Guerrilla art action
The ground: New Orleans, 1920 — posters on the wall of old St Anthony church; one real wall of pasted bills
Cut out and pasted on: bear in a beret with a real paste bucket and brush, cubs, dog, the 1965 Acid Test flyer and an Iver Johnson ad going up on the wall, $ sign
Words in the scene: WE ARE LOOKING FOR PEOPLE / WHO LIKE TO DRAW
After the Guerrilla Art Action Group (1969) and the Guerrilla Girls: unsanctioned art actions, not protest marches.
Freemason / Illuminati
The ground: Knights Templar near their St. Anthony Lodge on 5th Street Southeast — one real street, one real lodge, the regalia already in the photo
Cut out and pasted on: bear in a real Masonic Master apron and top hat, cubs in a second apron, Eye of Providence, the dollar-note pyramid seal, Melek Taus, bull, $ sign
Guerrilla theatre — the Yippies at the Stock Exchange
The ground: New York Stock Exchange traders floor (LC-U9-10548-6) — one real trading floor
Cut out and pasted on: bear/bull/dolphin heads on the traders, eight 1907 five-dollar bills raining down, a dollar note on the floor
After Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies throwing dollar bills from the gallery onto the NYSE floor, 24 August 1967.
The Acid Test
The ground: Dreamland roller skating rink, Seattle, c. 1909 — one real hall packed with people
Cut out and pasted on: bears, bull, dolphins, the real 1965 Acid Test flyer, a real psychedelic light-and-sound-show poster, tie-dye, bubbles, a star
Words in the scene: CAN YOU PASS THE ACID TEST? · bus sign: FURTHUR
Words exact from the Fillmore Auditorium poster of 27 November 1966 (Grateful Dead Archive). The words, not the copyrighted poster image.
Every source photograph above is public domain, taken from Wikimedia Commons; provenance for each scene is kept with the build. Made on our own servers.