The pin-up – an idealised painting or drawing of the female form designed for public display – is one of the key elements of 20th Century Americana, but can trace it’s roots back to the erotic portraiture of fine art. Nell Gwynne, a mistress of Charles II, posed for numerous half-naked publicity paintings, and Francois Bouchet’s Rococo painting of a spreadeagled Marie-Louise O’Murphy (another royal mistress, this time of Louis VX) could be straight from the pages of Playboy. The 20th Century brought the pin-up out of the museum and onto the garage wall through mass-printing and distribution, with photography making the process a whole lot easier, but a niche remained for the painters of fantasy women, who were able to let their imaginations take the pictures in directions that photography at the time could not.
In recent years, the genre has undergone a surge in interest from collectors of original pin-up art. Work by the likes of Alberto Vargas, George Petty and Gil Elvgren that sold for $2,000 in 1996 is going for $200,000 and more today, and the legitimisation of the “cheesecake pic” as an art form has prompted the release of a comprehensive volume on the topic from TASCHEN. Large in scope and size, The Art of Pin-up looks at the period from 1920 to 1970 and contains in-depth chapter-long profiles of the top 10 artists in the field, as well as shorter biographies and example work from 85 others. Vintage calendars, original model photos and studio ephemera feature, including material from the world’s largest calendar archive kept by Brown & Bigelow Company. A collector’s treat.
By George Petty,
courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York,
and the George Petty estate
By Earl Moran
Zoe Mozert painting Jane Russell
for The Outlaw film poster
By Alberto Vargas
© the Max Vargas Collection
By Earl Moran © Brown & Bigelow
All images courtesy of TASCHEN
