BART OF THE MONTH CLUB
BART OF THE MONTH CLUB IS CURRENTLY AT CAPACITY!
THE BART OF THE MONTH CLUB MANIFESTO
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” -Aristotle, Athens, Greece, 348 BCE
“I’m Bart Simpson. Who the hell are you?” -Bart Simpson, Springfield, USA, 1989 CE
From Shakespeare’s Puck through Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, the canon of Western arts contains a wealth of mischievous rascals. These “Barts”, if you will, have not only provided us with comic relief but exposed our vulnerabilities by sewing hijinx and mayhem. They wreak chaos for joy without any particular malice. The charms of these “Barts” rely on the ambiguity of being both naive innocents and cunning saboteurs.
For many, the ur-Bart is Bart Simpson, the perennially 10-year-old animated prankster that has come to define the archetype. Since premiering on the Tracey Ullman Show in 1987, Bart’s signature style has influenced scamps everywhere. He has inspired generations of prank callers to inject a little absurdity into the everyday to reveal our basic contingencies, to remind us that our ordinary lives could be otherwise. The traps they lay can teach us about ourselves. Confronted with Bart’s singular visage, we have to face that inquiry that has plagued humanity since we first skateboarded up from the primordial muck: “who the hell are you?”
Which begs the question, why a hand-drawn Bart? If Bart’s image can evoke such existential pondering, why not just pull up his picture on your phone? Or easier still, just imagine him. Go on, you can do it. The sawtooth hair, bulging eyes, button nose, mischievous smirk, a scant comma for a chin—you can see him when you close your eyes. And, yet, try to draw him, and you will end up with a monstrosity.
Not us. Here at the Bart of the Month Club our growing fleet of artisans have been trained by the world’s finest Bartographers to create only the most vivid and evocative iterations. The plain fact is that the Bart we know has been duplicated by machine, broadcast through the air on television waves, pumped under our homes through cable and ethernet lines for over three decades. Such dilution has dulled his energetic potential. It is only through a return to cruder forms that we can again channel the great power this image once held.
In the past, such totems were obtainable only by the most devoted supplicants. For the first time in history, we are making these potent icons available to the layperson for a monthly payment of merely $10 Are you ready to say cowabunga to life? Are you ready to tell your sorrows to eat your shorts? If so, then you’re ready to join the Bart of the Month Club.
- Rebecca Giordano (Master of Visual Culture), Colin Atrophy Hagendorf (Former Bart)
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