{"product_id":"1970s-freak-brothers-style-folk-art-diptych-hand-painted-comix","title":"1970s Freak Brothers Style Folk Art Diptych | Hand Painted Comix","description":"\u003cp\u003eHere we have a two panel set of hand painted folk art, done in marker, ink, and colored pencil on vintage Crescent illustration board, clearly channeling the underground comix world of Gilbert Shelton's Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. Someone sat down sometime in the 1970s with a serious love for that psychedelic outlaw aesthetic and went to work, and the result is loud, funny, and unmistakably of its era.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first panel is the showstopper. Bold red block letters spell out FLASH across a golden yellow ground, flanked by three separate freak brother style faces, each rendered as a nose, a pair of round tinted sunglasses, and a stubbled or afro'd head of hair peeking in from the edges. Above them, the full Freak Brothers tagline is lettered out in stencil type, \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDOPE WILL GET YOU THROUGH TIMES OF NO MONEY BETTER THAN MONEY WILL GET YOU THROUGH TIMES OF NO DOPE, \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ewhich was practically scripture for that whole underground comix crowd. A rainbow arcs across one corner, comic sound effects like CLANG, HONX, TWEET, and AHHH burst out in hand lettered balloons, and one especially wild caricature face stares out with wide painted eyes and a long crooked nose that would not look out of place in a Robert Crumb panel.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe second panel is a standalone character study, a shirtless long haired freak in a wide brimmed green and orange banded hat, throwing a peace sign with one hand while gesturing with the other, bell bottom jeans riding low on a striped belt. Loose, confident linework, funky proportions, and that same unmistakable yellow ground tie it directly back to the first panel as a matched set.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFlip the boards over and the history gets even better. One board still bears the ghost image and staple holes of prior taped down artwork, and the other has a full hand lettered GUESSING GAME list running one through twenty one, items like tray, golf ball, guitar pick, sunglasses, roach clip, and hot dog picker upper, the kind of party game prop list that places this firmly in a real, lived in decade. That carnival game backing is honestly part of the charm here, it tells you this board had a whole life before it became art.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is unsigned folk art, clearly done by an admiring hand rather than a name brand underground artist. What you are buying is a genuine period piece of hippie era outsider art, dense with the visual language of that specific counterculture moment, not an attributed Shelton original.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe vintage psychedelic folk art panels comes out of an old Chicago estate. The panels were created in the early 1970s. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Freak Brother panels measure 32” x 22 1\/2” and 32” x 17” respectively. The panels show wear consistent with age and handling, including edge and corner wear, a small chip to one upper corner, old tape and adhesive residue on the reverse of one panel, and light surface scuffing. All wear is cosmetic and adds to the honest, well loved feel of the piece. Please study all photos closely as they are part of the description.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA pair of panels like this, loud, funny, unapologetically stoned on their own aesthetic, do not turn up. And here they are in all their glory.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mad Van Antiques","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43236921704525,"sku":null,"price":450.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0116\/3637\/5610\/files\/IMG_9731.jpg?v=1783908646","url":"https:\/\/madvanantiques.com\/products\/1970s-freak-brothers-style-folk-art-diptych-hand-painted-comix","provider":"Mad Van Antiques","version":"1.0","type":"link"}