DIARY - Pin-up; A Very Legitimate Art.
Date: 2007-02-10 16:16:29
Author: Pat Kent
Pin-up; A Very Legitimate Art.
I called this Pin-up: A Very Legitimate Art as a form of riposte to Jim Silke's excellent book, Pin-Up – An illegitimate Art. Jim is a fantastic artist whose work is of a quality beyond doubt, and if you want to know more about the history of the Pin-Up then search out his book. I wanted to express a view that I think Pin-Up and glamour art is one of the key drivers for the development and progression of popular Art over many centuries.
I suppose for years I harboured a love for pin-up and glamour art that didn’t quite match with the times, probably still doesn’t in some quarters. Granted, back then in the early 70’s there were a “bevy of topless beauties” on parade every day in the tabloids that were available here in the UK, but they were probably, unbeknown to them at the time and in my opinion, the start of the downfall of the portrayal of the true pin-up girl.
The Sun's Pge 3 girls were the first wave of a new acceptance of Pin-Up into the social fabric of th UK.
The art of pin-up is normally identified as having its birth sometime around 1850 to 1900 in France. This is taken as being the early photo or daguerreotype images of French maids in their underwear or sometimes even less. The resultant postcards sold in their thousands to troops during the wars that raged around the globe between the mid to late Victorian era. The images presented a severe contrast to the strict moral values that many of the armed forces experienced at home in the UK.
The image of the scantily clad girl was something that was a tonic for the troops, with many carrying the images to drive them on to desire to get home. Unfortunately and tragically many of the men didn’t get home and the dreams that they had of meeting or seeking the reality of sharing moments with their “paper women” never materialised.
But the art of Pin-Up, in my mind, goes back further than that and sees its base not in the daring and risqué images of Suzanne Meunier considered sedate and innocent by today’s standards.
The sometime innocent art of Suzanne Meunier - challenged the taboos fo the time
The art of taking what must be the most pleasing of shapes and form and committing it to paper or canvas [or to TFT screen these days] to please the eye has been going on since humans began doodling. The greatest of the Old Masters dabbled in their own experiments in pin-up art. The Mona Lisa is to me little more than Leonardo Da Vinci’s attempt to present, within the moral codes and bounds of acceptability of his day, a pleasing image of a women. It should be remembered as well that the image is likely to be one of a woman in a sexy or temptress pose, as most men would equate pleasing with attractiveness and desirability. The strictures placed on art by the moral codes of the time meant that what doesn't seem to daring today, may well have been quite cutting edge back then.
The notion of pin-up is in its best form the subtlety of sexiness, the girl-next-door. Whilst the girl next door normally took on the persona of the Madonna, a noble or a character from history of mythology like Helen of Tro, the basic essence was the portrayal of a woman who was real. They had curves, they were round, they were soft, they were rosy cheeked and most of all they could be seen, in the eyes of the painters, every day in their models. And in the eyes of the public they were the pin-up models of their day.
The artists that followed several decades or centuries later rediscovered the romanticism that the Old Masters lovingly put into their images of women. The likes of Alphonse Mucha, brought a refreshingly human aspect back to the art of the pin-up. His images, many for advertisements, showed simply attractive women, with curves and come hither looks, the expressionism that he achieved with a modicum of effort and simplicity of line and colour is incredibly superb.
Alphonse Mucha took the "ordinary" woman and made them the model for his paintings
If not for the artists like Mucha, we would not have seen the flourish of Art Nouveau and the strength of support that movement gave to the organic and particularly the female form. Similarly preceding that movement the emphasis on femininity accorded by the Pre-Raphaelites, such as Rosetti and Alma-Tadema, would have probably meant that Mucha’s work would have been languishing in Prague.
So we leap forward several more decades and we once again see the pin-up gaining resurgence in popularity as a spin off of war. The First World War saw the popularity of the French postcard and the influence that had on a new wave of artists such as Alberto Vargas, the years that followed WW1 saw the world move towards more decadent new boundaries lead in some respects at the forefront by the spin off in liberation from the women’s sufferance movement; yet despite what might have been seen as the early wake up call for women’s equality the swell of interest in pin-up art increased, particularly in the fields of advertising and the arts.
The work of artists like Vargas were to have a profound effect on many other artists and the increase attendance at the movies as well as more widely accessible paper publications boosted the image and draw of the glamour girl as a selling platform.
Vargas is seen by many as the father of the modern 20th Century pin-up movement.
The innocence of the “girl next door” was still there though and although a rougher image was being exposed through the not so innocent starlets like Mae West there was still a predominance of rosy-cheeked, big-eyed maidens in pony tails.
The allure of the starlet was taken up a notch or two when we enter the WWII era, the artist had discovered the air brush and the quality of the work began to excel. The fantasy element was added and all of a sudden the girl next door had suddenly grown up. She was curvier, she wore alluring clothes, she even risked losing more of those clothes than was previously thought acceptable with wider audiences. THE! PIN-UP was here and she was at the very top of her tree.
We were moving into Pin-Up’s golden age, Vargas, Petty, Elvgren, McPherson were the kings of the pin-up and they reigned supreme. These were my artistic heroes, their women were perfect, they looked and posed as you would expect a pin-up to pose, they were something special.
Petty's minimalist approach to the background or the accompanying items such as telephones focussed the observer on the quality of the work and the model.
They carried on for a couple more decades, even the advent of glamour photography and the men’s magazines in the 50’s didn’t eradicate them. They still vied for the centre pages in magazines like Playboy alongside nude images of the real starlets they used to portray.
And In my view that was the start of the end of Pin-Up. More explicit photography and the cult of celebrity and an all too eager willingness on the part of any Z-list celebrity to strip off to get to be a C-list celebrity for a day or two led to the flood gates opening and all of a sudden the girl next door had the opportunity and the desire to spread herself across every magazine in the land, staple in navel.
It went further and further downhill with all taboos being put up for challenge and pin-up was so tame that like the Windmill theatre it could not compete, and for a long, long time it shut up shop.
A few tried to resurrect it, particularly in the sixties, shops like BIBA wanted to promote glamour and did their bit to keep the tradition alive, but even that flagship sunk. In the UK a few newspaper strips tried to recapture the spirit of Jane the UK WWII heroine who constantly thwarted the Nazi’s by shedding her clothes. The best that springs to mind is Romero and his AXA creation.
As a boy I was lucky enough to be tutored in my art studies by a man who, working within the confines of a strict Catholic school, opened my eyes to the great works of art that lay outside the formal and stuffy corridors of art museums and the minds of well known art critics. He suggested I look up the works of artists like Mucha and then onto Vargas and Petty, who pretty much remains my favourite Pin-Up artist. In thiose days tracking down information on the 40’s and 50’s artists wasn’t easy,no internet, and few published works, I had to rely on trying to find references in old magazines. So, a big thank you to Peter Krumins a great art teacher and a true gentleman in the broadest sense of the word.
Petty is to me the epitome of the Pin-Up artist
Then several years later, to my amazement, and in the unlikeliest of place the pin-up re-emerged.....bigger with out doubt and so far removed in many circumstances from the girl next door that you would have now have real trouble separating your Diana Prince’s from your Wonder Woman’s!
Adam Hughes' Power Girl
This new wave was lead by a band of young artists from the US. Their medium? Comic Books. Their audience? Young kids brought up on male dominated stories of Superman, Batman and super villains.
Linsner's "Dawn"
All of a sudden the once discretely sexy Catwoman, became a towering amazon, with a figure to match any Reubens babe! Once Jim Balent had reconstructed Catwoman and the pin-up a whole new generation emerged. Not only the pin-up female comic heroines, but great pin-up artists to rival the golden age greats like Adam Hughes; Jim Silke; Frank Cho and Joseph Linsner.
Frank Cho turns the table and take nude model Tiffany Taylor and transforms her into a "Petty Girl"
I intend to try and put a little showcase of their work together sometime in the same way as this exercise has tried to paint my picture of pin-up history.
Pat K
© Pat Kent 2007 – All rights reserved. Pat Kent exercises his right to be identified as the author.