The Fattest Woman in the World
Print
1956 (made)
1956 (made)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
Printed by the celebrated Curwen Press, this was the first lithograph poster of six in a series commissioned by Guinness in 1956. Made to celebrate the 'Guinness Book of Records' in the second year of its publication, the project was led by Freedman as he was employed as an advisor to Guinness Breweries in their creative advertising campaigns. Carel Weight, Bernard Cheese, and Edward Ardizzone were among the other artists, each given a copy of the first Guinness Book of Records from which to choose their subjects. Designed for display in pubs and cafes, these large lithographic prints proved popular and a second series was made in 1962.
Object details
| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Title | The Fattest Woman in the World (assigned by artist) |
| Materials and techniques | Colour lithograph |
| Brief description | Print by Edward Ardizzone entitled 'The Fattest Woman in the World', for the Guinness prints series, 1956. |
| Physical description | Colour lithograph depicting an imposing man in top hat and tails gesturing to a large poster behind him advertising a 'freak show' with 'the fattest woman in the world'. Smaller posters down the left hand side of the hoarding depict illustrations for 'the giraffe necked woman', 'the elephant man', 'the bearded woman', and 'tiger man'. Two young children gaze up at the man and one clutches the other as they listen to his spiel of the extraordinary persons to be found within the circus tent. |
| Subjects depicted | |
| Summary | Printed by the celebrated Curwen Press, this was the first lithograph poster of six in a series commissioned by Guinness in 1956. Made to celebrate the 'Guinness Book of Records' in the second year of its publication, the project was led by Freedman as he was employed as an advisor to Guinness Breweries in their creative advertising campaigns. Carel Weight, Bernard Cheese, and Edward Ardizzone were among the other artists, each given a copy of the first Guinness Book of Records from which to choose their subjects. Designed for display in pubs and cafes, these large lithographic prints proved popular and a second series was made in 1962. |
| Bibliographic reference | The following excerpts are from 'FREAK SHOWS. OTHERNESS OF THE HUMAN BODY AS A FORM OF PUBLIC
PRESENTATION', by BARBORA PŮTOVÁ in Anthropologie, Vol. 56, No. 2, Special Issue: Papers dedicated to the
memory of Eugen Strouhal Part 1 (2018), pp. 91-102 (published by the Moravian Museum):
'Organizers of freak shows - impresarios, usually focused on shows presenting primarily physical differences of individuals that could be accompanied by acrobatic or other artistic abilities. Freak shows took places in zoological gardens, circuses, museums, rented buildings and halls, provisory wooden huts, tents in squares or at places intended where funfairs or markets were usually held.
Showmen took people who were culturally and ancestrally non Western and made them into freaks by casting them as bizarre and 'exotic'... The cultural category of freak shows is historically, ideologically and socially determined and grounded in Eurocentric cultural norms and values. Every oddity and otherness of the body presented in freak shows became a subject that was visually consumed, which decreased the authenticity and humanity of the person exhibited.' |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | C.21091 |
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| Record created | November 24, 2017 |
| Record URL |
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