Pin-up
Related: erotica - nudity - poster - beefcake
Camille Clifford (1885-1971) as the Gibson Girl (photo: Bassano, London, 1906)
Camille Clifford as she sang 'Why Do They Call Me a Gibson Girl?' with Leslie Stiles (b.1876) in The Belle of Mayfair, Vaudeville Theatre, London, 1906.
Gibson Girls are attractive yet independent young women as drawn by illustrator Charles Dana Gibson in the Victorian era. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson_girl [Nov 2004]
unidentified photo of Rosalba Neri
sourced here. [Mar 2005]
Definition
A pin-up girl is a woman whose physical comeliness would entice one to place a picture of her on a wall. The term was first attested to in English in 1941; however the practice is documented as going back at least to the 1890s. The "pin up" images could be cut out of magazines or newspapers, or be from postcard or chromo-lithographs, etc. Such photos often appear on calendars, which are meant to be pinned up anyway. Later, posters of "pin-up girls" were mass produced.One of the most popular early pin-up girls was Betty Grable, a poster of whom was ubiquitous in the lockers of GIs during World War II.
Many "pin ups" were photographs of celebrities who were considered sex symbols. Others were artwork, often depicting idealized versions of what some thought particularly a beautiful or attractive woman should look like.
An early example of the latter type was the Gibson girl, drawn by Charles Dana Gibson. The genre also gave rise to several well-known artists specializing in the field, including Alberto Vargas and George Petty, and numerous lesser artists such as Art Frahm. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin-up_girl [Jun 2004]
Gil Elvgren (1914 - 1980)
A pin-up illustration by Gil Elvgren
Gil Elvgren (1914-1980) born as Gilette Elvgren was an American painter of pin-up girls, advertising and illustration. Elvgren lived in various locations, and was active from the 1930s to 1970s. Today he is best known for his pin-up paintings for Brown and Bigelow.
Elvgren was one of the most important pin-up and glamour artists of the twentieth century. In addition, he was a classical American illustrator. He was a master of portraying the feminine, but he wasn't limited to the calendar pin-up industry. He was strongly influenced by the early "pretty girl" illustrators, such as Charles Dana Gibson, Andrew Loomis, and Howard Chandler Christy. Other influences included the Brandywine School founded by Howard Pyle.
Elvgren was a commercial success. His clients ranged from Brown and Bigelow and Coca-Cola to General Electric and Sealy Mattress. In addition, during the 1940s and 1950s he illustrated stories for a host of magazines, such as The Saturday Evening Post and Good Housekeeping.
Although best known for his pin-ups, his work for Coca-Cola and others depicted typical Americans — ordinary people doing everyday things. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Elvgren [Jun 2005]
Nudity [...]
Glamour [...]
Celebrity [...]
A celebrity is a famous person. The etymological origin of the word is "one who is celebrated." An alternative definition of a celebrity is a person who is famous for being famous (regardless of what first brought them to fame). What it takes to be a celebrity depends on the cultural context and the historical time. The advent of mass media increased the public interest in celebrities, and has even developed into a self-substantiating circuit (the 'cult of celebrity' i.e. being famous for being famous and not for having achieved anything else). Some ordinary people volunteer to become known on television (e.g. in reality television shows) for a taste of celebrity, though celebrity from a reality show is usually called "fleeting celebrity" or "15 minutes of fame" (a term coined by Andy Warhol). --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celibrity [Jun 2004]Angelo Asti
While the Gibson Girl captivated Europe at the turn of the century, the creations of an Italian artist had a similar phenomenal success in America. Angelo Asti captured much of the new American calendar-art market when "Colette", his first published picture, was reproduced in 1904 by Brown & Bigelow. The first "pretty girl" subject ever accepted by the firm, this image of a long-haired lady in the Art Nouveau style sold a total of more than one and a half million calendars. (Within five years, "Pretty girl" and "glamour" illustrations would become major categories in the calendar-art business.)Angelo Asti bio from 'The Great American Pin-Up
Pirelli
Pirelli 1963 - 2001 [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
In 1963, the Pirelli tire company created a calendar featuring pin-up models as a promotional piece. Each year since, the company has called upon the photographer of the moment to portray "the beauty of the world" through images. For over thirty-five years, the calendar has been the talk of Italy and Europe because it is available only to a privileged list of corporate customers and VIPs, giving it an air of exclusivity and contributing to its success. In addition, the subtlety of the images and the quality and creativity of its photographers have established the calendar as a paradigm of its genre and a coveted collector's item.
Never before have these images been published in such an affordable and accessible format, or been available to such a wide audience. This book contains the full calendar for all of the years through 2001. The years 1999 and 2001 have never been published in their entirety before, and the 2001 edition is by Mario Testino, one of the most celebrated fashion photographers of today. Past photographers include Norman Parkinson, Bert Stern, Joyce Tenneson, Arthur Elgort, Herb Ritts, Richard Avedon, Bruce Weber, and Annie Leibovitz. The book is a must for fashion aficionados, photography buffs, and advertising and design professionals.
Alain Aslan
I always felt out of place in 20th-century abstract expresssionism Art, which negates all the well-established rules agreed upon over milleniums. Art was born universally figurative, 35,000 years ago, without consensus or other possible influence. Throughout the ages, painters and sculptors have used nature as a means of expressing their feelings, their emotions and their thoughts. Abstact expressionism surfaced in the aftermath of WW II, in 1945, and lasted only 50 years. It was art for greed, the ludicrous art of the "Nouveau riche" and of the "Snobs" (contraction of "Sans" (without) Noblesse"). It was the era of paintings and sculptures sold as investment, often over the telephone ! As for my contribution to this half-century, I would describe myself as an "intimate hyper-figurative" painter and sculptor. I am in love with nature and its laws; I paint and sculpt "woman" the most beautiful subject ever given to artists, because it is inexhaustible and eternal. I am neither a sculptor nor a painter of my time, but of all time ! Alain Gourdon Aka "Aslan", January 2000 --http://www.aaslan.comA Brief History of the Pin-up
In order to bring some context to the Mutoscope world, I'll give a sketchy review of "pin-ups" and information on selected pin-up artists. Keep in mind, this is neither exhaustive nor scholarly. For more expert discourse, I invite you to consult with the sources I've cited in my credits page and following each biography. Since the term can encompass other media, be sure to check out my new pages on photography and comics.
The modern antecedents of the pin-up can be traced to the Gibson Girl in America, who made her debut in 1887, and the Art Nouveau posters of Alphonso Mucha and Jules Chéret in Europe. The prototypical pin-up postcard artist of the nineteenth century, Raphael Kirchner, contributed to the establishment of the "pretty girl" format. Also becoming publicly acceptable was such mainstream popular art as 'Psyche at Nature's Mirror' by Paul Thumann, first seen in Munsey's December 1893 Issue. White Rock beverages then adopted it as their trademark and, by 1947, the demure Psyche was attending parties topless! Two popular Glamour icons to follow the Gibson Girl, were those of Howard Chandler Christy and Harrison Fisher.
At the turn of the century, the calendar was the most prominent form of pin-up material, especially the early "glamour girl" formats by Angelo Asti. In 1913 the controversial nude 'September Morn' by Paul Chabas was censored by the New York Society for the Supression of Vice. Still, the image was subsequently printed on literally hundreds of thousands of calendars, in addition to candy boxes, postcards and more. The Art Deco period also made respectable any art featuring Romantic nudity, such as that of Mabel Rollins Harris, Maxfield Parrish and Hy Hintermeister.
By the 1920s, the golden age of illustration had begun. The new film industry fueled the public's appetite for magazines devoted to their celluloid heroes. In the 1800s, a glimpse of a woman's bare ankle could be considered scandalous. Compare that with the blatantly sexual girls of the Roaring Twenties by Enoch Bolles, George Quintana and Earle K. Bergey just a generation later! Corporations and advertising agencies were likewise vying for the services of talented artists to create identities the public would respond to. A significant pre-war American advertising icon was the Arrow Shirt man, portrayed brilliantly by J.C. Leyendecker. Although Leyendecker is primarily known for his depictions of men, he had a profound influence upon popular illustrators such as Norman Rockwell and many who followed.
As popular culture devoured its forbidden voyeuristic fantasies in pulp magazines, and later paperback books, another trend had begun to legitimize the pin-up as a serious art form: Higher brow fare offered by such slick periodicals as Esquire (an important predecessor of Playboy), Cosmopolitan, The Saturday Evening Post and others. Art Deco depictions of the female form were considered tasteful enough for inclusion in these magazines. Alberto Vargas makes for a convenient figure as we watch his style evolve from coy to more explicit. The fact that he started at Esquire and ended up at Playboy also makes for a barometer of trends within pin-up.
While Vargas was refining the centerfold concept, a contemporary of his was pursuing an even higher profile venue - that of superstar commercial artist. George Petty had worked for Esquire (Vargas replaced him after a dispute over salary), but the 'Petty Girl' was a fixture from the 1930s until the 1950s. The Petty Girl pitched a dizzying array of products to a national audience. She became so firmly entrenched in the public's consciousness that a movie was actually made about her - a fictitious airbrushed icon.
During World War Two, pin-ups accompanied G.I.s in the form of movie star photos like Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth. Vargas pin-ups were also very much in evidence in the barracks and as nose-art of the Airforce. Additionally, the Louis F. Dow Calendar Company produced special booklets of pin-up art created by their star artist Gillette Elvgren to be mailed overseas. Check out the cool new Collector's Press Military Pin-Up Kits for example.
After the war, Christian Dior introduced his 'new look', war restrictions on luxury items such as nylons were lifted and undergarments finally made the transition to two separate pieces, the bra and the girdle. Society had moved past the androgynous flappers and the economically depressed 1930s to a new age of prosperity. The move towards commercialization was well under way. If a pretty, wholesome girl-next-door could be utilized to sell a product, why not a girl in stockings modestly flashing some skin (But she's always a 'good girl' - Its not her fault that playful puppy pulled her skirt over her head!). If anyone is responsible for the explosion of vibrant beautiful pitchwomen, it is Chicago artist Haddon Sundblom.
Sundblom's lush oil technique influenced a roster of important pin-up artists. The most famous pupil was Gil Elvgren, who worked at Sundblom's Stevens-Gross advertising agency along with such notable artisans as Al Buell, Harry Ekman, Bill Medcalf and Joyce Ballantyne. Their technique of using thick layers of paint to achieve a warmth and glow was dubbed 'the mayonnaise school'. Other descendants of this style of luminous illustration included Donald 'Rusty' Rust, Art Frahm, Peter Driben, Edward D'Ancona, Edward Runci, Vaughan Alden Bass, Al Brulé and Pearl Frush.
Independent of the national accounts for specific products and services, there were other fertile markets for pin-up art. Brown & Bigelow, for example, consider themselves in the 'rememberance advertising' business. They produce office supplies, playing cards and calendars, many of which are designed to be imprinted by small companies and then given away as promotions. They employed some of the best talent to design both generic and industry-specific artwork (See George Petty's Rigid Tools series for example). Although they, as well as other calendar publishers, occasionally produced nude or 'racy' product, they sought not to alienate their conservative or religious customers with such fare.
Brown & Bigelow also supported several styles of pin-up. In addition to the strait-forward realistic oil paintings of Elvgren and others, they also utilized pastel artists, such as Rolf Armstrong, Earl Moran and Zoe Mozert and originated the 'sketch book' genre pioneered by Earl MacPherson and used to great success by Ballantyne, T.N. Thompson, Fritz Willis, K.O. Munson, Freeman Elliot, Ted Withers and others.
Another arena that no 'respectable' artist would consider entering was the insatiable need for dramatic and titillating covers for the pulp magazines and paperback books of the 1950's. Although this too is an fascinating field (At least it is for me!), it falls beyond the intent of this site's focus. It should be noted that several artists with direct Mutoscope connections, such as Moran and De Vorss, as well as Bergey and Driben, contributed to this astounding art.
Playboy created a sensation with their centerfold of Marilyn Monroe in 1953. Until that time, it was primarily Esquire who provided opportunities for a generation of pin-up artists, including Ben-Hur Baz, Ernest Chiriaka, Mike Ludlow and J. Frederick Smith. Although Esquire had presented photographic pinups previously, they never contained overt nudity.
An interesting footnote to the Pop Art movement of the 1960's is the work of Mel Ramos, who combined nude pin-ups with recognizable corporate images for a satiric blend of cheesecake and commercialism. Another modern artist of mention is Patrick Nagel, who died tragically early in his promising career. Although I'm not a great fan of Nagel's work, the fact that his original paintings, and that of his modern contemporaries, commands incredible prices speaks to the current attitudes towards the subject of pin-up as a modern artform.
The introduction of explicit men's magazines (Penthouse introduced the world to pubic hair in 1970) made such innocent depictions seem quaint and old-fashioned. Photography was a quick and easy means to satisfy the pressures of monthly deadlines. Today's sex symbols seem to be comprised of pre-packaged teen sensations, silicone-enhanced quasi porn stars and anorexic 'supermodels'. Modern pin-up artists such as Olivia de Berardinis, Hajime Sorayama, Carlos Cartagena, Jennifer Janesko, Alain Aslan and John Kacere have turned their vision towards photorealistic fantasy or fetishistic subjects and lack the innocence of their predecessors. (Many also tend to specialize in airbrush, a technique that can leave a cold, hard and artificial look.)
Still there are those, such as Dave Stevens, who have not forgotten how to draw a good girl in a bad situation without showing us every anatomical detail of his subjects. We must thank Dave, not only for creating the Rocketeer character, but for reviving interest in the great photo pin-up gal of the 1950s, Bettie Page. I am also particularly fond of some modern European illustrators such as Milo Manara. (There's also Eric Stanton, who provided us with bad girls in bad situations, but that is the opposite direction of cheesecake!) To draw the line arbitrarily, I have created a page specifically for another interest of mine, comics. Although Stevens, Greg Hildebrandt, Jay Pike, Bill Ward and others have experience in the comic world (Which includes the sub-genres of 'good girl', 'bad girl', superheroine and Anime), their depictions do not follow my precepts of successful pin-up art. --Kevin Freeman , http://www.mutoworld.com [Jun 2004]
Cheesecake [...]
The classic pin-up genre - cheesecake - fulfills our definition perfectly. Cheesecake (Which Webster defines as "photography displaying especially female comeliness and shapeliness") is said to have gotten its name when, in September 1915, a newspaper photographer, George Miller, noticed a visiting Russian diva, Elvira Amazar, just as she was debarking her ship in New York. Miller asked the opera singer to hike up her skirt a little for the sake of the picture. Later, the photographer's editor, something of a gourmet, is supposed to have exclaimed, "Why, this is better than cheesecake!"--Kevin Freeman , http://www.mutoworld.com [Jun 2004]Books
- Playboy: Fifty Years: The Photographs (2003) - James R. Peterson [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Playboy celebrates its 50th anniversary with this lavish collection of the very best of the magazine's photography. More than 250 full-color photographs, chosen from the ten million images preserved in the Playboy archive, chronicle five decades of brilliant, life-affirming art. Playboy: 50 Years revisits the girl next door, the sex symbols, and the gods and goddesses who shaped our culture. It visually tracks the changing politics, fashions, and mores through the frenzied peak of the sexual revolution and beyond - from the almost nostalgic eroticism of the 50s bachelor, a martini his secret of seduction, to the highly charged images of modern sexuality. Celebrity models such as Raquel Welch and Cindy Crawford, along with interview subjects such as Mohammed Ali and Salvador Dali, and infamous bunnies such as Anna Nicole Smith and Pamela Anderson reveal all. Portfolios devoted to the bachelor pad, the perfect cocktail, fashion, and sports cars celebrate Playboy as the ultimate wish book. From the history-making red velvet shot of Marilyn Monroe, "posed with nothing on except the radio," to the highly charged images of such masters as Herb Ritts and Helmut Newton, this book is a breath-taking photographic tour de force. The definitive gift of the season, Playboy: 50 Years is also the only book being published in the fall to coincide with the launch of the magazine's 50th anniversary.--amazon.com
Pirelli Calendar 1963 - 2001
Pirelli 1963 - 2001 [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
In 1963, the Pirelli tire company created a calendar featuring pin-up models as a promotional piece. Each year since, the company has called upon the photographer of the moment to portray "the beauty of the world" through images. For over thirty-five years, the calendar has been the talk of Italy and Europe because it is available only to a privileged list of corporate customers and VIPs, giving it an air of exclusivity and contributing to its success. In addition, the subtlety of the images and the quality and creativity of its photographers have established the calendar as a paradigm of its genre and a coveted collector's item.
Never before have these images been published in such an affordable and accessible format, or been available to such a wide audience. This book contains the full calendar for all of the years through 2001. The years 1999 and 2001 have never been published in their entirety before, and the 2001 edition is by Mario Testino, one of the most celebrated fashion photographers of today. Past photographers include Norman Parkinson, Bert Stern, Joyce Tenneson, Arthur Elgort, Herb Ritts, Richard Avedon, Bruce Weber, and Annie Leibovitz. The book is a must for fashion aficionados, photography buffs, and advertising and design professionals.
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