Vintage cowgirl of the day - classic pinup style
Posted by: Chris Hails in Art, Cowgirl Add comments
I’ve been looking for more vintage pin-up style western playing cards lately and have come across a whole host of great sites about this style of artwork that was so popular during the 30’s, 40’s and 1950’s.
There’s even a dedicated gallery for collectors, ‘Great American Pinup’ at the Louis K. Meisel Gallery in Prince Street, New York City.
The picture below I found on a recent eBay hunt and is at the tamer end of the pinup art spectrum:
I’ve no idea who took the picture but it’s in the style of the more risque art created by Joyce Ballantyne, Art Frahm and Gil Elvgren for Brown & Bigelow. It also features on the Home Brew Records website for rock-a-billy / hillbilly group The Ranch Girls - in fact they have a good selection of wholesome western pinup girls from the fifties.
Brown & Bigelow of course is the keeper of some iconic American art produced mainly for calendars for over 100 years by some seriously seminal illustrators:
The Brown & Bigelow Archive… includes the exciting westerns of Charles Russell and Frederick Remington; the sporting scenes of Philip Goodwin and Frank Hoffman; the humorous “poker dogs” of C.M. Coolidge; the wildlife of Sweeney; the landscapes of Maxfield Parrish and the work of America’s best known artist, Norman Rockwell. We also feature hundreds of pin-ups by Gil Elvgren, Rolf Armstrong, Earl Moran, Zoe Mozert and others.
As the Meisel gallery website states, this pinup style of illustration was everywhere in the first half of the 20th century:
Every business, restaurant, theatre, club, and locker room was decorated with these beauties. Feminism, multi-culturalism, and political correctness, and all other hindrances to the pleasures provided by the pin-up artists were nonexistent.
So has modern political correctness killed off pinup art? In World War II when fighter plane and bomber nose art was common was it only brave airmen who got away with this public display of glamour? I doubt it.
In fact I’m sure far worse can be found on the 21st century internet and probably in many modern day advertising campaigns too where sex sells is still the motto of the day.
More finds to follow…
For now buy a copy of Taschen’s ‘1000 Pin-Up Girls’ and celebrate the innocence of the American pin-up .
