A few weeks ago, The Wife, The Baby, and I visited a friend in Bushwick for a BBQ. About three minutes into this lovely summer event, The Baby made it known that she would not be satisfied with the selection of toys we’d brought with us. So The Wife went off to a local dollar store to get some crayons and a coloring book.
But she didn’t just come back with a coloring book. Oh no. She came back with a goldmine of surrealistic art treasures. She came back with one of the straight-up weirdest things I have ever set eyes on. And it was a mere 99 cents, shoved between expired Tuna Helper and off-brand Malta.
Why was it so weird? The ultra-cheap production is a factor. “Cheap” is actually charitable for the care and attention that went into this publication. Needless to say, none of the art is very good. It was obviously cobbled together from various sources, with little regard for aesthetic unity or copyright issues. Many images have been blown up a thousand times, so the borders are way too thick and pixelated.
But that’s not why this thing is so bizarre. Oh no, that doesn’t even scratch the surface. If David Lynch, David Cronenberg, and Werner Herzog collaborated on a coloring book, it wouldn’t look one-tenth as weird/disturbing as this thing.
Context is key. Keep in mind, this is meant to be a coloring book for children. That’s what makes it so insane. At least I assume it’s a coloring book. There is no text in this book except for what you see there on the cover. I’m not even sure what language this is. Italian? Romanian? Esperanto?
I hoped to investigate the origins of this weird, weird thing, but I can’t figure out who published it because it has no ISBN. The only publishing info is a bar code and a note that says MADE IN CHINA (which means it’s probably made of ground-up plastic pellets and lead paint). But it might as well say MADE ON NEPTUNE, because I can’t imagine a human mind putting this thing together. I just can’t!
Why? Oh, you’ll see. Don’t worry, you’ll see.
Continue reading The Long Lost Works of Salvador Dali, Coloring Book Edition