A pin-up girl is a woman whose physical attractiveness 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 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, and so on. Such photos often appear on calendars, which are meant to be pinned up anyway. Later, posters of “pin-up girls” were mass-produced.
Many “pin ups” were photographs of celebrities who were considered sex symbols. One of the most popular early pin-up girls was Betty Grable. Her poster was ubiquitous in the lockers of GIs during World War II. Others pin-ups 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.
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 Cheret 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.
By the 1920s, the golden age of illustration was in full flower. 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.
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 Collector’s Press Military Pin-Up Kits for example.
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 Nagel’s work has the cool aesthetic of woodblocks and don’t invite the viewer into a realistic depiction, 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 art form.
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 continue to expand my precepts of successful pin-up art and are documented elsewhere.
