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.
Duchamp’s Fountain
The ground: Sydney Art Gallery interior — one real sculpture gallery
Cut out and pasted on: a 1928 Standard plumbing-fixture ad as the readymade, bear in a top hat, bull, Automaton of a Friar, dog statue, stamp, invoice
Words in the scene: FOUNTAIN
Duchamp’s exact title. No urinal exists in the library; the 1928 Standard plumbing-fixture advertisement stands in.
Heartfield — money behind the back
The ground: Interior of Hamilton National Bank, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Cut out and pasted on: bear in a top hat in front, a breaching whale behind passing a money bag, gold and bills; $ sign, bull
After John Heartfield’s photomontage of the hand taking money behind the back.
Automatons
The ground: Center Street, Provo, Utah — one real downtown street
Cut out and pasted on: bear mechanical head wearing Hausmann’s actual objects (ribbon tin, tape measure, folding rule, watch movement, pipe, case, a TWENTY TWO card), blank top-hatted automaton, Automaton of a Friar, 12 mannequin heads, clockwork, chess automaton, bull, ball bearing
After Raoul Hausmann’s Mechanical Head (The Spirit of Our Time), 1919, and George Grosz’s Republican Automatons, 1920.
Cyborg veterans
The ground: Manufacture of prosthetics and orthopedic shoes, 1910s — one real 1910s limb workshop
Cut out and pasted on: scarred bear with prosthetic and robot hands, Johnson-Norton + Peerless 1915 limb ads, The Disabled Soldier 1919 figures, 3-D printed hand, robot arm, microcontroller board, Elizabethan prosthetic arm, dental prosthesis, bull
After Otto Dix and Max Ernst’s veterans with mechanical limbs — 1918-style prosthetics alongside more advanced cyborg parts.
Black Panthers
The ground: Black Panther March — one real march
Cut out and pasted on: bear in a black beret with a black leather jacket, raised fist, The Black Panther masthead, the Party Platform, the Free Breakfast flyer, cubs, bull, dog
Words in the scene: UP AGAINST THE WALL
Cut with the Kitchen Knife
The ground: Main kitchen, Shanley’s, New York — one real working kitchen
Cut out and pasted on: scissors, knife and board, meat grinders, typewriter, rotary phone, flat-iron stove, bulb, ball bearing, turbine, gauge, Stuart Davis egg beater, chimp at a typewriter, bears, bull, bills
After Hannah Höch’s Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch (1919). Density is the point of this one theme.
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.