Aug 1971: Posters appeared around Stockholm showing U.S. President Richard Nixon drinking a cup of coffee. They appeared to be ads for Gevalia coffee — though it seemed odd that Nixon would do an ad for Gevalia.
image source: moderna museet According to Google Translate, "Gevalia dricks mest" means "Gevalia is drunk the most"
It turned out that the posters were the work of artist Kjartan Slettemark. He had combined an image of a hand holding a coffee cup, taken from an actual Gevalia ad, with a photo of Nixon distributed by the U.S. embassy. The posters were apparently a satirical commentary on the recent acquisition of Gevalia by an American company.
In 1971, Kjartan Slettemark came across a campaign poster featuring Nixon's portrait, innocently sent out by the American embassy. It hung on the studio wall for a few weeks when one day he asked for an advertisement poster for Gevalia coffee that he had seen at his local shop. The advertisement image showed a smiling woman lifting a coffee cup. When he cut out the woman's hand and placed it on the Nixon image, the size, colour, and lighting matched perfectly. He immediately wanted to print the work as a poster but could not afford the printing himself. He added the text "Moderna Museet - Open every day 12 - 22" and submitted it for printing at the press used by Moderna Museet. The poster was printed, and the bill was sent to Moderna Museet. The next morning, Stockholm's advertising pillars were filled with Nixon posters. Moderna Museet reacted and wrote a letter to the artist prohibiting him from selling or distributing the image. Despite this, the image continued to appear around the city. Kjartan Slettemark continued to work with the image, cutting away the museum's text and making it even more similar to Gevalia's campaign image. The fake Gevalia poster was political art. A protest against the US war in Vietnam and against American imperialism. In 1971, the Gävle company Gevalia had been acquired by the multinational corporation General Foods – thus finding itself on the enemy's side. The story continues as the advertising text is cut away and gradually develops into the collage series "Nixon Visions," where the president's face is distorted in various ways.
Three years later, Slettemark returned to Nixon as a subject. Slettemark applied for a new passport, but instead of submitting a picture of himself he used an altered picture of Nixon. The passport authorities accepted it. Images and text below from Cabinet magazine (Spring 2009):
Inspired by peanut farmer Jimmy Carter becoming President, in 1977 Owensboro artist C.G. "Moose" Morehead used peanut butter to paint a picture of a barn — mixing the peanut butter (Jif) with oil colors. Morehead called it the "Peanut Butter Painting."
It's believed that this was the first time peanut butter was used as the medium for a painting. Jimmy Carter later signed the painting. And due to the interest in the painting, 2000 limited-edition prints were made of it, some of which can now be found on eBay. Though the prints obviously contain no peanut butter.
The Peanut Butter Painting
Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer - Feb 24, 1977
Posted By: Alex - Wed Oct 23, 2024 -
Comments (2)
Category: Art, 1970s
The "Ghost Parking Lot" was the 1978 creation of artist/architect James Wines. It consisted of twenty cars, placed in a mall parking lot, then buried to varying degrees, and finally covered with tarmac.
Wines explained: "this fusion of typically mobile artifacts with their environment takes advantage of people’s subliminal connections with the rituals of shopping center merchandising and the fetishism of American car culture."
But over the years the tarmac peeled off the cars and no repairs were made. So in 2003 the city decided to remove the cars. They were replaced by a Starbucks drive-thru. Wines commented, "If (the sculpture) was in a museum, it would've been preserved."
Photograph by Patrick Ward from Wish You Were Here: The English at Play. Gordon Fraser (publisher), 1977.
You can check out Ward's book of photograhs at archive.org, although the metadata incorrectly lists it as "Once a year: some traditional British customs." (which is the book I was looking for, though I enjoyed Ward's photographs also).
The exact same thing happened to Claudine Rossi of Caderousse, France in 1971. She left her house to go shopping, slammed the front door shut, and the whole building fell down.
If I can find one more example of this phenomenon, I'll classify it as 'no longer weird'.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.