Shameless Art PDF
Preview Shameless Art
Unrepentant, unapologetic, unbridled and under-appreciated, genre art from the first half of the 20th century reflected the subconscious urges of sexually depressed generation. Shameless Art pulls a glorious collection of paintings from under the mattress and out of dad’s drawer for everyone to enjoy, reevaluate, and, ultimately, celebrate! Shameless Shameless UNDERWOOD BOOKS Nevada City, CA Properly Shameless Foreword by Edward Mason Unrepentant, unapologetic and under-appreciated, In aggregate these illustrations prefigured the art created for pulp magazines of the 1930s, pin-up expression of today’s more liberated and sophisticated calendars of the 1940s and ’50s, and paperback books of consumer culture. Though attempts to censor figurative the 1950s and early ’60s both shaped and mirrored the art of one sort or another are made from time to time subconscious urges of readers. At first appealing to an (depending on the political climate), the simple truth economically deprived and sexually repressed generation is that people enjoy looking at paintings of ... people, struggling through the depths of the Depression, the clothed or otherwise. art evolved from a wink-and-nudge sense of innocence Shameless Art showcases the work of a host of into a darker, sometimes tawdry cynicism that perhaps imaginative illustrators whose commercial art created compensated for the experiences (and deep-seated fears) the suggestive visual language for everything from of veterans of World War II and Korea. today’s paperback covers and comic books to current Though the pulps were often lurid (and blatantly magazine, television and internet advertising—and misogynistic) in their depiction of women as victims influenced the look of contemporary fashion, film, and of monsters and psychopaths, they also included their content of gallery shows. fair share of cute and joyful works, like those painted by Whether these paintings are seen as sensuous or sinful, Enoch Bolles for Film Fun, Pep, and Breezy Stories. High Art or Low-Brow kitsch, is for viewers to decide Idealized pin-ups by the likes of George Petty and for themselves: they can’t, however, be ignored. Recent Alberto Vargas were popular features in magazines such auctions have realized prices of $250,000 and more for as Esquire and True (and were subsequently copied on some of the originals that can be found on the pages the noses of bombers during WWII), while Gil Elvgren ahead. and Earl Moran made a fantasized girl-next-door This full color collection, beautifully reproduced from the star of countless calendars throughout the 1950s. the comparatively few paintings that survived years of Though nudity was common, it never seemed prurient; prejudice, neglect, and disinterest, is a modest visual not appropriate for church socials exactly, but not what history of 20th Century masculine fantasies. This is the was then called “dirty,” either. art that excited some and scandalized others; art that Rudi Nappi, Rafael de Soto, and James Avati captured helped us survive and cope with the after-effects of the another, less sunny view of sex and society in the post Great Depression, several wars, the Bomb, communists, war era with their noir-flavored paperback covers McCarthyism, and Rebels Without a Cause. This is art exploring alcholism, infidelity, drug abuse, and juvenile that reflects not only who we were, but who we are: delinquency. Shameless. And properly so. Shameless Art
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