Enoch Bolles

Happy New Year

2011-12-31T21:53:00.000-08:00

Today is Boxing Day!

2011-12-26T17:48:00.000-08:00

2011-12-24T11:54:00.000-08:00

December 14 is Monkey Day!

2011-12-14T20:04:00.000-08:00

I'm not kidding, it really is monkey day today. And our man Bolles, who was never shy about pairing his girls with denizens from the animal kingdom, helped out by painting not one but two covers featuring one of his girls cavorting with a long-tailed companion of the simian set. Sheena got her cover shot in 1936 and curiously the other monkey cover (saving it for next year's celebration) also appeared the same year.

Bolles in Esquire

2011-11-13T01:00:00.000-08:00

Boingboing generously linked the recent post in which I had proposed a connection between Bolles and a cover of Esquire channeled via Rihanna, and wow has this site gotten the extra hits. The typical daily average is around 200 but visits peaked over 1,200. The downside was all the comments on Boingboing were adamant that the Bolles cover had nothing, NOTHING at all to do with the Esquire cover, and others wagged a scolding finger about posting filthy, FILTHY cheesecake. Well, we Bolles fans are of a different mind, and connection or not the more significant point was Esquire's largely forgotten
contribution to the history of pinup, which spun a thread running back decades to the origins of genre, and how Enoch Bolles is a part of that original fabric.

In the previous post I mentioned the intriguing 'what-if' possibility of Bolles becoming Petty's replacement at Esquire. Aside from his growing health problems I think the fact he worked exclusively in oil militated against his chances. Petty's sleek airbrushed girls were unique and readers were raving about them (though many also complained about Petty's tendency to graft two different body sizes together at the waist). It would have been foolish for David Smart to hire a replacement whose work had a wildly different appearance. Vargas not only provided a sense of stylistic continuity but he amped up Petty's streamline look even further. Curiously their techniques were completely different; Petty's unique method to airbrushing involved laying on solid colors as if they were color plate separations. By comparison Bolles was a traditionalist and the idea of using an airbrush would have been
unconscionable.

That's not to say he didn't have his own debut of sorts in Esquire. In the December, 1937 issue the ad you see above appeared in its pages, featuring what came to be known as the Windy girl. Look closely and you'll see the painting was attributed to "Enoc Boles". The spelling is so derelict it makes you wonder whether the type setter was coached by David Smart, the co-founder of Esquire who later anglicized Alberto's sir-name as Varga. Smart somehow neglected to mentioned he owned the trademark for it. In Bolles' case the misspelling didn't matter so much because it was subsequently stripped out of the ad, never to appear again. Over the years the Windy girl image got updated now and then but eventually fell out of favor for other advertising campaigns. However, in 1993 the original image was back, embossed on a commemorative lighter--and retitled as the Varga girl! Being curious, to say the least, I inquired about it to the archivist at Zippo and the story went that the company founder, George Blaisdell was an admirer of Vargas but couldn't afford to hire him to bring Windy to life. Keep in mind the year was 1937. Vargas was strapped financially and would soon for Los Angeles to work in the movie industry as an illustrator and set designer, a career decision that didn't turn out well for him. Things had changed so little by 1941 that Esquire hired Vargas for a rate less than Bolles was getting for his Film Fun covers. So money wasn't the issue, it was George Petty. A Windy girl by Petty would have been the obvious first choice for Blaisdell, but Petty's rates were far above Zippo's budget, and our man Bolles stepped in. There was another factor in Bolles' favor. Unlike Petty, who was repelled by the image of a woman with a cigarette (his Old Gold ads all had the men holding the smokes), Bolles had no reticence at all. In fact he had depicted a girl smoking all the way back in 1914 on his second published magazine, a wildly popular image for Judge magazine which I think may have been the first magazine cover ever showing a woman with a lit cigarette (if you know of earlier examples please let me know). The image jump started his career and cigarettes would become a common prop for Bolles girls through the decades.

Bolles' cover for Judge was

so popular it was reprinted

as a poster.

To Zippo's credit the web-site now gives Bolles proper credit for creating the Windy girl and no longer refers to her as a Varga (threats from the Vargas estate may have had something to do with that). I also learned from the Zippo archivist that for years Blaisdell proudly displayed the original Bolles painting in his office, but sadly it has gone missing. Bolles thought enough of Windy to have carefully saved the proof of the image, which I found in stashed in a box in his grandson's basement. Now if that painting would just turn up!

Bolles by Esquire

2011-11-07T21:06:00.000-08:00

Is there any doubt here? Rihanna as a Bolles girl? In the past I've been guilty about making some dubious connections between Bolles and the work of others but this is just too darned close. Don't you agree? Alright I will concede Rihanna's dressed a bit differently (salad?), and I don't think espadrilles quite suit her. But that pose is no accident. So it's only too bad this connection will be lost on 99.999% of all Esquire readers. What's more ironic is that I seriously doubt the art director of this shoot has a sense of the major historical role the magazine played in the development of pinup, first with the work of George Petty and then Alberto Vargas.

Oh but what if it would have been Bolles who replaced Petty. The transition began in 1940 when Petty told Esquire he wanted a break. David Smart, the magazine's co-founder and all-around jerk, used it as an opportunity to quietly shop around for a cheaper replacement. Everyone from Alex Raymond to Zoe Mozert was considered before Smart hired Vargas on the cheap (Vargas later sued to get out of his contract), and then pulled that rude stunt with his name. The late Reid Austin, who wrote the definitive biographies on both Petty and Vargas, and was Vargas' art editor at Playboy once asked me why Bolles didn't make a play for the job at Esquire. There was just about no way Bolles couldn't have known what was going on at Esquire, but there's no record of him interviewing or even expressing any interest. Bolles was in and out of the hospital during this time so it's possible he simply missed the boat. Too bad.

But back to Rihanna and Bolles. Here's a photo of her updating the classic 1935 Film Fun cover (the original painting set a record for Bolles at auction). Perhaps the cover pose was her idea...Could Rihanna be a Bolles fan?

P.S., Thanks to Mala Mastroberte for alerting me to this. You can see her take on Bolles here and other pinup art here.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

2011-10-31T12:06:00.000-07:00

Model Behavior

2011-10-24T07:32:00.000-07:00

Over a thousand artist's models are currently at work in New York city. Demand is so high that hourly rates for those with experience have risen to 50-75 cents an hour, with the most accomplished pulling in up to $25 a week. Modeling in the nude, which was the common practice a decade earlier has declined and many artists now maintain their own wardrobes. It's the year 1894.

The great C.D. Gibson has himself amassed a collection of 200 dresses. Recently he was the victim of a sting, having hired a woman "posing" as a model only to learn she was planted by a newspaper writer working on an exposé about the corrupting relationship between artists and their models. A paragon of Victorian virtue, Gibson was not in the least tempted. Moreover, he was soon in on the scam as the model could barely hold a pose, the rule being 40 minutes of work followed by a 20 minute break. Like other famous illustrators Gibson had no end of woman begging to pose for him, but as he glibly noted, "models are not as plentiful as cranberries." Harrison Fisher lamented: "So many pretty and attractive girls come to my studio to ask for posing that I hardly know what to do." Gibson had a lot of other curious things to say about models. Here's another as quoted in a New York times feature about modeling published at the dawn of the previous century: "The men who harness women up with dogs will not advance much in their art; the men who place them where they rightfully below will really progress. It's all in the conception." Heavy stuff.

Indeed it was impossible to be a commercial illustrator and be unaware of how the artist-model relationship served as a cultural touchstone for the age-old struggle between the sexes, that battle being in the midst of a disorienting reorientation. The model also served, regrettably as a proxy for expressing cultural prejudice and even racial jingoism. To wit: “The best class of models in the world are the American girls. The models abroad are cheaper, but they cannot be compared with our girls here, who are so bright and interesting. Above all they are clean, which is almost an unheard-of quality among models on the other side.” But artists weren't always so keen on the U.S. model: “What a nice class of girls pose nowadays,” gushed, Edwin H. Blashfield. “Why when I was a young man the best models we could find were newsgirls, scrub girls, and well--, just the most commonplace, ignorant women.”

Any commercial illustrator who specialized in pretty girls couldn't help but do their own take on the model-artist relationship. The example above by our man Bolles has to rank among the best of any commercial artist, it's fraught with tension both erotic and domestic. It's also a rare surviving example of a detailed comp (recently sold at Heritage auctions) for a magazine cover from 1925 during his high deco period, it really shows to good effect Bolles' chops with watercolor. Comparing the sketch with the actual cover provides some interesting insights into Bolles method, and very likely the publisher's reticence over such a blatant display of skin. The most obvious alteration is the addition of covering on the model, very likely a concession to the art editor, but then Bolles subtly keeps the story line intact with the addition of the nude canvas. To our right is a Pep Stories cover from five years later. Until posting these images together it never occurred to me they had anything in common beyond the same theme. But not only does the girl on the Pep cover look to be the spitting image of the Snappy model, Bolles also reused the painting (albeit with the addition of a bit of clothing) as well as the pallette. This must have been a private amusement for Bolles as I sincerely doubt that anybody made the connection between these two covers, until now.

I'll be continuing with the theme of artist's model in future posts.

Bolles Goes Goth!

2011-10-16T18:47:00.000-07:00

This is one of the many items I planned on keeping in reserve for my book project, but when it showed up on the web I figured there was no point in keeping her in the closet (admittedly I did post a thumbnail of her a while back). The cover is from a 1943 issue of Breezy Stories. It showed up long after Bolles had stopped doing covers for the magazine and just about the very time he was getting out of the commercial art business for good. Bolles had stopped contributing new Breezy covers back in 1938 and the publisher Phil Painter was enough of a cheapskate to be content with blowing up previous Bolles covers to use as portraits. Truth be told, many look terrific that way. But by the early 40s he pretty much dispensed with that pretense and simply reused earlier Bolles Breezy covers with nary a change, except perhaps the even cheaper printing. This example, however, is a bit of a poser as I have no record of it ever having previously appeared in print. Maybe when Bolles brought it in to the office it was just a bit too much for the art director to digest. After all, it would take another 75 years before the goth pinup scene really gained some traction.

So consider this cover against the work of the other major pinup artists during of Bolles' era; Petty, Vargas, Elvgren, Moran, Bergey (ok, Armstrong). All were producing great material but nothing at all even remotely like this. Those pneumatic proportions wrapped in that outrageous costume (the gloves and a headband?!), the nuclear winter background, her power smile. Yet, Bolles contributed as much as any artist to the look of the modern pinup, which has long since become a cliché. But he was such an original that his own work transcended it. I'm grateful for this and am pleased that others feel this way too.

Coming up soon: Part two of artists and their models

A Peek at Bolles at Work?

2011-09-03T22:17:00.000-07:00

I recently picked up this copy of Stolen Sweets, then as now a hard to find title. Back in the day it took a lot of street leather to find a streetside magazine vendor who would have a copy or two stashed behind the counter. If the vice cops got wind of it, the vendor would have been rewarded with a ride to the slammer in the back of a paddy wagon. This may seem like a relatively sedate cover but don't let your 21st century sensibilities mislead you. There's no ignoring that expanse of bare flesh, punctuated by an exposed navel. Her happy countenance over that cool dessert is simply Bolles' way of playing with the potential censor. And speaking of which, that sundae looks simply scrumptious.

The cover was merely the first course (assuming that you started with dessert). The interior of the magazine was peppered with naughty drawings, spiced with girls peeled of heir nighties, and stuffed with overripe stories featuring endless variations of the male conquest-all equally unappetizing. Of all my attempts I've never been able to shovel through more than a couple paragraphs. But there was something in this issue that made me do a double take. It was this photo. Not the retouched flesh or the theme of artist's model, which in the 20s was as charged as the two poles of a battery, but had lost all its spark a decade later. No, it was the background that was beckoning to me. Look closely and you'll see a canvas of the very painting that appears on the cover.

I told myself no, there was no way this was Bolles' studio. But then I took a closer look at the easel and that really got my heart pounding, because I've seen the real deal. Take a look at it for yourself and decide if you all my handwringing over this is nothing more than wishful thinking. What doesn't look right about the photo is the artist. The hair seems wrong, and I just can't conjure the publicity shy Bolles allowing this, though I do think he let the publicity photographer, Murray Korman in his studio to photograph models. The photo has obviously been touched up (penciling in to strengthen some of the weak outlines) but there's no way the painting was pasted in after the fact. And why bother? It only took 75 years for someone to finally notice it. And the easel...even the sketch on the canvas has a Bolles look to it. So, is it possible? Could we be peering at the only existing photo of Bolles painting a model?

August 19: Men's Grooming Day

2011-08-19T06:45:00.000-07:00

Finally!! I've found a passable excuse to feature this amazing "throwaway" cover that originally landed on the newsstands back in 1936. Bolles would have quickly dashed it off to meet a looming deadline and then moved on to the next assignment. His work schedule at that time was perhaps the busiest of his entire career. Beside's his regular monthly assignments for Gay Parisienne, Spicy Stories and of course, Film Fun, he was producing near monthly covers for Gay Book, Breezy Stories, and Gay Broadway. Talk about the ultimate short order illustrator, bouncing from one publisher to another, each demanding their own particular entree. Considering the deadlines, lousy pay and very likely the complete absence of an art director (thankfully), you wonder why Bolles simply didn't default to his standard L-pose. Curiously, the only example of that pose he did for Gay Parisienne was its last issue.

Back to this cover. Take a good look at the liberally applied titivations Bolles festooned upon it. First, how about that dress? It's outrageous! No it's downright nasty, hard to top even by Bolles' standards. It makes you wonder if the nail file is for manicuring or fending him off. Next, what is with that crazy hairdo? She's kind of got a 1930's pompadour thing working. It borders on masculine-especially given her high hairline, but acts as a sort of counter against the emphatically emphasized feminine bits. And check out that meandering background shadow. In past posts I've blathered on and on about Bolles' use of biomorphic/amorphic shadows but the only descriptor I can peg to this iteration is oozing amoebic. There's also a hint of deco furniture. Her chair has a red-black lacquer deco thing going, perhaps a take on Biedermeier. And finally there's a lot--even by Bolles' standards--of hand semiotics being broadcasted here, most unusually by the gent who is getting all the attention. But first consider the girl, not only is she displaying the famous Bolles lifted pinky, we also see the very rare ring finger assist. In fact I think this particular confingeration is unique. And finally there's the lifted pinky in the male figure, another unique aspect of this cover. Of all his work for Gay Parisienne (or Spicy Stories or Tattle Tales or Bedtime Stories for that matter) this is the only example where the male gender gets any cover play, not that anyone's complaining.

A Celebration Created for Enoch Bolles! August 5 is National Underwear Day

2011-08-05T18:09:00.000-07:00

Talk about an observance custom made for our man Bolles! This lovely original painting was completed for a 1928 issue of Film Fun. Bolles revisited this theme once again in 1931 during his first run of covers for Spicy Stories. As you can see this Bolles girl is having a bit of trouble with her clothes line, not that she's in the least bit nonplussed about her predicament. Offhand I can't recall if there are any examples where the Bolles girl is hanging up her knickers, though there is no shortage of covers where she's parading around in them.

Dreams of a Bolles Girl

2011-07-22T09:16:00.000-07:00

The other night I had one of those dreams...I saw a Bolles girl. She was up in the clouds, smiling down on me. It wasn't just any Bolles girl, but the face from a painting that had been taunting me for years, always just out of reach. The scene abruptly shifted and next I was walking down an empty street in a strange town. Everywhere I looked I saw pictures of her. It had to be one of those feverish dreams I must endure from time to time, a hazard of my fixation. There were other variations, in one I actually meet Bolles, get to ask him all those questions that have been burning in me, see art never before shared. In another I find the veritable closet full of paintings. Always I awake with that brief moment of confused exaltation, only to be pulled down as the weight of reality sets in. It was just a dream. Only a dream. But this felt different, somehow more real.

Next thing I know I'm walking down a long street and spot the living embodiment of a Bolles girl. Not just any Bolles girl but that same cowgirl I've been in the hunt for so long. The closer I get the more real she seems. And then I'm inside and there are more Bolles girls, a chorus line of them...and in the middle of their dance I see it.

The painting. Only it's not a dream. I'm awake, not hallucinating, and am surrounded by Bolles cowgirls. And there's the painting, perched on an easel, not one of the several copies that have shown up over the past few years but the original. The long lost Whoopee girl.

A few months ago, after a four year search (full story here) she was pulled out of a crawlspace in an old house, amazingly none the worse for wear after lying buried for decades. All those false trails, the impostor paintings, and finally she emerges into the light. The painting, used for a 1934 issue of Film Fun, is in near perfect condition. A month after the issue hit the newsstands, Harmon Peery, the mayor of Odgen, Utah wrote a letter to Lester Grady, editor of Film Fun to ask if he could have the original painting to use as a mascot for a rodeo he had started. Just a week later the painting shows up in the mail and her second career as the Whoopee Girl began. This year marks the 75th anniversary of her serving as the official mascot to the Pioneer Days Rodeo, which is being held now.

Mayor Peery's grandson, Robert Peery King and the Egyptian Theater Foundation graciously invited me to the official unveiling of the painting to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Whoopee Girl and I wouldn't have missed it for the world. The event was fabulous, and painting simply amazing. If you are interested, you will be able to purchase giclée prints of the original painting directly from Mr. King. I've seen a version done on canvas board and it looks as close to the real thing as you can get. Some of the proceeds will be used to help build the Pioneer Days museum, which once completed with become the permanent home of Bolles' Whoopee girl painting.

So remember fellow Bolles fans, never stop searching. Sometimes dreams do come true.

This Just In: Big Time Newspaper Says it's OK to Love Pulp Art!

2011-07-15T20:27:00.000-07:00

Photo courtesy of Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times

Ok, let's see how long I'm allowed to let this photo stay up before some big-time lawyer demands it removed. But since this site warrants nary a single blip even on the periphery of the big radar screen of blogdom, maybe we'll manage to fly off into the sunset undetected.

Anyhow...in today's edition of the New York Times there's an interesting review of a new show at the Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators featuring Robert Lesser's pulp painting collection. It's a nice follow-up and high society validation of what we have known all along, namely that it really is ok to love pulp art. Indeed, the article acknowledges how pulp art resonates with both historic and modern cultural themes.

Coming soon: The final fate of a long lost Bolles girl.

July 8: Today is Collector Car Appreciation day

2011-07-08T00:30:00.000-07:00

This cover from a 1927 issue of Film Fun is the not simply the sole example featuring an automobile, as far as I know it's the only car illustration in any of the roughly 500 covers he painted. I do have one really great example from a clothing advertisement (I'm saving it for the book) and there is the all-important motorcycle cover, but given Bolles capacity to render things mechanical, it's curious he didn't do more of this for the myriad of automobile products that were extensively advertised back in his day. Or perhaps he did. Within the past month I've found two Bolles advertisements for products I had no idea he was affiliated with, so maybe there's example or two out there yet to be found.

Christmas in July

2011-06-15T20:55:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately I'll be away from the blog the next few weeks but I'll be returning baring gifts, and they won't be dad's ties recycled from last year either. There will be a fabulous full color advertising illustration circa 1923, a long-lost Bolles Film Fun painting finally surfaces and I'll be there to report on it first hand. Last but not least will be a never before seen original Bolles. Yes, it will be Christmas in July and I can't wait to unwrap the presents.

Why We Love (some) Pulp Art

2011-06-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

The new post on Illustration Art, a provocative and free ranging site pecked over the question whether it was ok to like pulp art as in a guilty pleasure? Or should praise be reserved for efforts which provide emotional and intellectual stimulation of a higher order, say above the limbic system? The set-up is a straw man argument. It's like asking someone if she loves candy. Answer: "Yes". "So does that include both Atomic Fireballs and Pierre Marcolini truffles?" It seems unfair and even pointless to compare works of high art (in the 1920’s it was oddly referred to as ‘art-art’) with illustration art completed under brutal deadlines according to the dictates of an art director for an abhorrent assignment (a spicy horror story) in a highly competitive market where the final product is almost guaranteed to be poorly reproduced. Funny thing about this, it wasn’t uncommon for the stories to be assigned to follow the art. I remember hearing Hugh Cave, the incredibly prolific pulp writer recount having been assigned to write a story based on a painting of a creepy goon sliding a body into a roaring furnace. He titled the story: “This is how we bake our dead!”

During the early days of the Golden Age of illustration there raged a similar debate about the merits of commercial art, but it pivoted on advertising art versus fine art. Ad companies contributed countless screeds to trade magazines such as The Inland Printer and The Poster advocating the virtues of advertising illustration, professing it was equal to—both in technique and emotional reward--classic examples of fine art. Yet to hedge their bets companies like Consolidated Sign of New York would occasionally blow up famous artworks and paste them on billboards, perhaps both to provide the public a visual breather and serve as a not very subtle art “lesson” (“Was that a Rembrandt or a Leyendecker I saw at 14th and Broadway?”). Those illustrators who felt maligned to be stamped as commercial artists sought upward mobility through the respectable escape-hatch of salon portraiture.

True enough, many pulp illustrators were not the most gifted of artists and some were downright hacks, but there were unsung talents who did with what they had to make ends meet. Consider that they toiled during the depression with poor pay among fierce competition over a shrinking market, while photography was inexorably shoving illustration art further into the margins. Many pulp artists, including Bolles--who was raising a family of seven children--had to produce three or four covers a month to stay afloat. Hugh Ward, one of the artists featured in the Illustration Art piece, was getting $50 a painting for some of his covers, and sometimes had to wait months for the check (this Ward painting recently sold at auction for over $143,000). I’m no fan of his Spicy Horror work, in no small part because he was too good at what he did. No artist was more effective at depicting sheer terror and menacing miscreants. His originals in my view are a bit disappointing; they look unfinished and even a bit rushed. But Ward knew precisely how they would look on the newsstand and he wasn’t about to waste an extra stroke on a detail that wouldn’t show. He also realized many of his paintings would end up printed in only three colors and I think he altered his pallet to exploit the atmospheric effect he could exploit by his knowledge of printing. In contrast, some of his art for Tattle Tales was surprisingly relaxed and naturalistic. There’s none of the sexual edginess or voyeurism so typical of that genre in this fabulous cover. Norman Saunders is another artist who comes to mind. His work for the smooshes was as flagrant—meaning successful---as any artist but he was amazingly adept at all the genres, westerns, war stories, adventure, sports, men’s mags and later gum cards including the cult favorite Wacky Packages. Was there any commercial artist who covered as much territory so competently? And then there was Earle Bergey, whose painting was featured at the beginning of the Illustration Art post. He was another artist comfortable with crossing genres who pretty much was the master of the science fiction universe throughout the 1940s and 50s. You might call his work clichéd but that would be wrong, the clichés came later from artists who borrowed or reworked his ideas to death. Bergey was also one of the few pulp artists to make the slicks, not just any fancy mag but the Saturday Evening Post.

So what about Bolles? His work could be charged with the typical crimes of other pulp artists. His rap sheet would include colors straight out of a gumball machine, overripe girls in the barest of coverings, simple compositions that appeared again and again, as well as poses and set-ups that dug deep into the threadworn grab bag of pinup clichés. I feel no need to defend his talent, imagination or originality here. Like other pulp artists he was far more adept than he gets credited for, and his work wasn’t limited to pulps and Film Fun. Bolles did illustrations for movies, travel posters, and produced scores of advertising art for major companies who also hired famous names such as Rockwell, Barclay, and Wyeth. And once and a while he produced work that transcended the base aspects of the pulp genre. As evidence, here appears what I feel is Bolles pulp masterpiece, a cover that appeared on the cover of a 1933 issue of Bedtime Stories, a notorious under the counter eventually hounded into extinction by the decency leagues and vice cops. Bolles probably made no more than $75 for this painting and assuredly was given a free hand to paint what he wanted. I very much doubt that the publisher, Henry Marcus came up with the idea of putting infamous women of the ages on the cover and even if he did, he likely had little of guidance to provide to Bolles the polymath. I’ve commented before about how oddly passive many of the expressions on these covers are but this one is entirely different. I can’t find any example of what was to be labeled pinup either before or after of a girl who expressed not mirth, embarrassment or even boredom, but menace laced with contempt? Is this any way to sell a magazine? Take a look at the Armstrong version. Technically it’s amazing, especially the treatment of the charger. The Bolles version of Salome is so removed from Armstrong's rendition that it would be easy to conclude they read different "books". Not that they didn't have other battles over territory (another story).

Finally, what are we to make of Bolles? What would motivate an artist who likely didn’t earn a nickel more than $75 for a painting he didn’t dare sign or put himself at risk for merely trying to purchase a copy. Whatever provoked him to produce a work of such complex malevolence for a trashy magazine whose editor would be pleased by virtually any display of reasonably rendered flesh?

June 8 is Upsy Daisy Day

2011-06-08T11:17:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot of traffic on the site the past couple of days and I thought it only appropriate to do what I could to help keep it flowing. So we are celebrating Upsy Daisy day with a very apropos original image by Bolles, painted for a 1937 issue of Breezy Stories. The original painting is available (Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with the vendor).

Bolles incorporated flowers into many of his paintings, sometimes for their symbolic value and in other cases to add a bit of visual trickery. Take a look at the 1936 Gay Parisienne to your right and what you may initially perceive as a strategically (or not so, depending on your perspective) placed hole in her swimsuit is actually part of a floral motif. Pretty tricky and perhaps more significant, a very early depiction of a bikini.

May 23 is World Turtle Day

2011-05-23T20:31:00.000-07:00

You have to wonder how Bolles pitched the concept for this cover to Harry Donenfeld, the publisher of Gay Parisienne. Sure, there would be the pretty girl as always, but why not add an animal? Not a cute puppy or pony; that angle worked like a sort of innocence pass that let the artist forego clothes on the girl (think Mabel Rollins Harris). No, let's make it an aquatic reptile. Granted, Bolles did throw in some odd props on a few other Gay Parisienne covers, including a tuba! And you have to give him points for a girl wearing a bikini long before you'd see a suit at the beach that revealed anywhere near that much acreage. The turtle, which I'm guessing is a Hawksbill, also seems quite content. So, no blow-back from decency societies specializing in protecting wildlife from abusive pinups.

Still, I just don't get it. Gay Parisienne was one of the hottest of all the so-called smoosh mags and the decency leagues stalked it like Clyde Beatty on the trail after big game. This oddball cover from 1936 just doesn't jibe with the magazine's notorious reputation, its pulpy pages chock-full of raunchy novels, dirty drawings and photos of naked girls. It got Donenfeld hauled into court so many times he ended buying his way up a notch in the publishing hierachy, buying out National Allied Publications, after first suing them for nonpayment. By May 1938 is pulps, Gay Parisienne and Spicy Stories were out of circulation, while at the same time Donenfeld published the first Superman story in Action Comics. Breezy Stories began recycling Bolles covers and his last new cover painting was for the June issue.

For the first time in his career, Bolles was down to just one magazine, and a mere two months later Film Fun had a new cover artist, Albert Fisher. The Bolles girl, who made her debut in 1914 and who had been adorning three to five magazine covers a month for nearly a decade, was gone.

May Day is Lei Day!

2011-05-01T14:09:00.000-07:00

I kid you not, May 1 is also officially known as Lei Day. There was no way I could let this holiday pass without a Bolles and it was a lot of fun perusing covers for just the right example. I've pretty much left this cover to the a 1931 issue of Hollywood Nights intact in its well-thumbed state. For some reason I feel the wear adds something to it.

Bolles did only a handful of covers for this magazine and others titles published by Henry Marcus' Follywood Publications. Among them are his only examples of pen and ink cover art out of the over 500 he created, and this is one of his best. He would have been lucky to earn $40 for it.

Hollywood Nights didn't last long; the combination of poor finances and the constant pursuit of the decency leagues would put Marcus out of business by the end of year. But in the 1930s you couldn't put a good smoosh mag publisher down for long and by 1933 Marcus was back at it with a new publishing company and new titles: Stolen Sweets, Tattle Tales, Bedtime Stories and Cupid's Capers. Bolles teamed up with him again and produced the most provocative pulp covers ever printed (aside from Hugh Ward's sex-and--violence mash-ups, but they constitute an entirely different category). They were successful, too successful. The Marcus lineup rose to the top (or sunk to the bottom, depending on your perspective) of the smoosh mag hit parade, and in the process became the equivalent of public enemy number-one for the New York vice cops and decency leagues. Marcus would be out of business-again-before the end of 1934. By then Bolles had moved on to another publisher.

Lass Clipping

2011-04-07T08:05:00.000-07:00

I'd forgotten I had a scan around of the original drawing of the cover featured in the previous post. Take a close look and it tells a story. As is plainly evident, the painting was barely altered at all from this sketch. Also clear is that it would have taken Bolles mere minutes of effort to whip this out, meaning the art editor of Spicy Stories would approve a cover based on the "barest" of efforts. Even after producing film fun covers for nearly 20 years, Bolles often would complete fully rendered comps (detailed concept paintings done on 9 by 12" canvasboard) of potential covers for Film Fun. I have other examples of cover concept sketches that didn't see the light of day so it's likely that he would show a batch of them at a time. Another thing that is evident upon inspection is just how precise a line Bolles had. He started out drawing, not painting and won, not once but twice the Charles Loring Elliot medal for drawing from the National Academy of Design. Oh how I wish the art that got him the awards was still around.

March 28: Weed Appreciation Day

2011-03-28T19:19:00.000-07:00

Was there a "Weed Appreciation Day" back in 1936 when Enoch came up with his kinetic vision of lawn care? If so, what kind of weed did the appreciation committee have in mind? Not that I've expended much effort at research but from what I've learned it seems the current interpretation is more along the line of consumption rather than eradication. Clearly our Bolles girl is having plenty enough fun making hay instead of burning it.

Our next post will be on the subject of Bolles' celebrity paintings for Film Fun. There's a rare example painted in 1928 coming up for bid at Heritage Auctions and the time is right to take a closer look at this short-lived theme among Film Fun covers. Just to let you know, posts will be slower for a while. I'm working on a draft of a Bolles book that I hope to have ready for review soon. The time seems right for a Bolles book. Don't you agree?

March 11 is Johnny Appleseed Day!

2011-03-11T08:52:00.000-08:00

I was waiting patiently for some excuse, oddball holiday or otherwise, to post this cover. It's a reprint that appeared in a 1946 issue of Breezy Stories but was likely first published in 1937 or '38. Out of the the 20 plus magazine titles Bolles did work for my records for Breezy are the spottiest. Why I have no idea.

So check out that impressive basket of apples, which isn't going anywhere. Bolles had a reason to be partial to oranges for reasons I'll explain later but favorite fruit or not, this still is a terrific cover. Yet, for reasons unknown Bolles decided to rework the painting. As you can see, the result wasn't exactly a failure, and I think she was purposefully modeled after an extra sultry Rita Hayworth, but the charm of the orginal was lost in the process.

The Bolles Girl in the Flesh!

2011-02-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

From time to time I've published photos of models who posed for Enoch as well as photos he clipped from magazines that served as the basis for covers. To wit, the photo of Mary Carlyle that he turned into such a lovely cover for Breezy Stories. You can imagine my reaction when I ran across these amazing recreations of Bolles covers by Mala Mastroberte. Mala doesn't just pose for these, she controls every step in the creative process from start to finish, composing and shooting her magazine covers without any assistants. She does the styling, the layout, props, wardrobe, shoes (!), makeup, hair, lighting and photography to bring the Bolles covergirl to life with amazing fidelity. Mala has also created several of her own original covers that are inspired by Bolles' work and you can really tell she has a grasp on what makes Bolles unique.

I asked Mala how she first became interested in creating her own versions of old magazine and paperback covers.

"I've been always interested in history, vintage clothing, antiques, old photographs, etc... I grew up in Poland, a country with a great history, but quite different than American or even Western Europe. When I first moved here 10 years ago, naturally I felt homesick and bit out of place in a country so much "younger" than my own. I started visiting every antique shop in sight, going to flea markets and then browsing the internet in search of anything with a past. That is how I discovered vintage magazines and began collecting them. Few years ago I started taking self portraits, at first just generally inspired by the pin-up genre. With time, once I accumulated more props and wigs, I was able to be more true to the beloved originals. I prefer the illustrated covers, for their fantasy quality. As a child I loved comic books and wanted to become a comic book character when I grow up. So this is, in a way, realizing my childhood dream."

"When I feel "inspired" I just set up my studio, take out my books or originals and shoot away. Sometimes I get the right pose in a few shots, sometimes it takes tens of photos (thank goodness for the digital cameras), but it is always lots of fun. So much so, that sometimes I do not even notice that hours have passed."

Mala has recreated a score of magazine and paperback covers spanning the 1930s to the 1960s. You can view them all at on her Flickr site. Of course I had to ask how she came to be so interested in the work of Enoch Bolles.

"Enoch Bolles, where do I begin! I do not think I have to convince you, or other fans that his illustrations are special. My favorive is his later period, once he established his original style. Even though I admired his pin-ups for a very long time, I did not dare to take them on until recently. Not only poses are particularly challenging but those recreations demand special and more skilled editing."

I want to thank Mala for sharing her story and fabulous photo creations. You can bet I'll be posting more of her work in the future. Let's all give Mala a big shout-out for her spot-on take on Bolles and the entire genre of pinup!

Dragon Girl-Part One

2011-02-13T21:18:00.000-08:00

She's not a Bolles. Sorry. This tidbit of subterfuge has been in the works for quite a while. The vision of how Enoch might have interpreted the über-it-girl" of the millennium, Lisbeth Salander has been thrashing back and forth in my head and wouldn't leave me alone. So I dusted off my paint kit, picked through a passel of pulps for inspiration, took a deep breath and put brush to canvas.

And so here's the finished product, a pale imitation for certain. Ok, I'll give myself a little credit, she's a step or two above the standard Quintana knockoff of Bolles, and the "distressing" was spot-on if I say so myself (having spent so much time-and money-on stacks of ratty pulps has given me a certain experience in this regard). Some of you picked up on it immediately and I bet others recognized the original inspiration for this cover, which was published in 1938 (there really was a Swedish detective writer named Stig Johansson from back in the 1940s). If the bug stays with me, there will be others to come based on three different Bolles covers for inspiration. Can you guess which?

Coming soon: a fabulous and contemporary photographic take on the Bolles girl.

Fodder For Future Posts

2011-02-09T09:53:00.000-08:00

Sorry to have slowed the pace of posting recently but my day job has been imposing itself. But I wanted to let you know that along with the art poster catalogs recently "discovered", I've also gotten some new magazines that I haven't had time yet to catalog. So just to let you know that there will be more to come here's a photo of some of the cache. Thanks for your patience.

Would you like to see my etchings?

2011-01-29T21:56:00.000-08:00

Above we have a couple examples of 1930s ephemera; catalogs of hand colors art posters by "well known American artists" which were "personally selected" by Joseph Bonita. More about him later. The contents of these catalogs were claimed to be photo reproductions of the original paintings and included a few unremarkable landscapes, but the rest were all of the pretty girl variety. Needless to say, none of the artists were well known, although one of the few signed paintings was by Paul Von Klieben, who years later designed the Ghost Town in Knott's Berry farm and was a resident artist there.

No, it was another artist's work, this one unattributed, that got my interest. Initially I assumed the photos were not taken directly from actual paintings but reused from engravings, as was the case with a series of blotters produced in the 1930s from Bolles magazine covers. The images were reproduced off the covers--not the originals--and printed on blank or black backgrounds, Bolles signature was tooled out of the image in every case where it had appeared on the magazine cover. I very much doubt whether he saw a nickel out of it. But then in one of the catalogs I came across an image instantly recognizable as an unpublished Bolles, and that changed everything. Somehow Bonica had gotten his hands on unique and original material, very likely directly from Bolles himself. And so I took a closer look. It turned out that some of the other Bolles paintings included in the catalog were still around, including a more finished version of the sketch.

Better yet, I recently picked up yet another of these catalogs and it didn't have just three or four pieces by Bolles in it, but nearly 20, and of these I know that four of the original paintings are still around. Let's hope we can add a few more to the list of survivors, especially because the catalog includes several fabulous images that are among Bolles' very best, including two paintings that made my top 10 list of original Film Fun paintings I hoped would be yet found, including the iconic motorcycle girl, oddly titled as "Slyvia" in the catalog.

Addendum: A few years back I somehow managed to get in touch with Bonica's grandson. I learned that in the 1940's Bonica had moved from print to film media and was hawking 16mm movies of burlesque dancers, and later a curious movie about the atom bomb. His grandson had no knowledge about his connection to Bolles or his 1930s art catalogs.

Blink and you'll miss her...

2011-01-01T20:25:00.000-08:00

...and I almost did. After a few days away I was back home, slogging through a backlog of emails that had piled up like snow in Buffalo. Several were Google alerts for Enoch Bolles, one of which ended up linking to an image I'd uploaded to a flickr group months ago. I hadn't been back to look since then so out of curiosity I opened the page to the group (Flappers and the Jazz Era) to check out thumbnails of recent entries. Buried among them was an image that tickled a very small, but overdeveloped patch of neurons in my brain. I enlarged the image and alarm bells starting ringing. There were tell-tale signs; long hands, fingers sinuously entwined; heart-shaped lips, the ends drawn tight like penny candy wrappers into a calm smile; rouged cheeks, a bit heavy for my taste; lovely pearls each so carefully rendered. The bobbed hair style was spot-on but the treatment seemed too sculptural. And then those peepers, beautiful yes but fringed by that mess of mascara which made them look like they'd draw blood if she blinked too hard.

Still, I wasn't entirely certain but then my eyes were drawn to what looked like a small fingerprint in the corner and that's when my heart started pounding. I zoomed on in and "bing" and there it was. Look closely and you'll see the initials EB modestly rendered next to her shoulder. A new Bolles! Published in 1925 amid his most active period of advertising illustration for all sorts of products and now we can add Winx to the list. What a great New Year present. My thanks go to clotho98 who posted the image. Check out her flickr page for hundreds of other great vintage images.

So I'll leave you with a question that this entry has revived. From 1924 to 1926 Bolles produced a huge body of advertising work, from trolley cards for a wide variety of products, to full color posters for films, to magazine illos like this one. There's plenty more around to be sure. But as far as I can tell, after 1926 his advertising work dropped to near nothing and I have no clue why. In 1927 Snappy Stories stopped publication, leaving Bolles with Film Fun as his only regular assignment, so it wasn't as if he was overextended. He must have taken on other work to fill the gaps, but where is it?

Addendum: I want to give a shout-out to the Dawl for the fabulous seasonal update he gave this blog. Thanks!!

Santa's Baby

2010-12-24T16:56:00.000-08:00

Beginning in 1928, the January issue of issue of Film Fun (which showed up on the newsstands a calendar month early) featured a Christmas theme. Here we see the cover for 1931; Santa seems particularly cheery but then again, rarely has he been the recipient of such generous gifts. The streak of Christmas covers ended the following year but Bolles clearly liked this composition enough to use it in a far more raucous new year's celebration for the January, 1936 issue of Breezy Stories. This has to qualify in the top tier of covers top for the magazine, which is saying a lot because Breezy paid Enoch more than the average pulp and in return he put a lot of extra work into his covers.

So is there any wonder as to why the beau of the Bolles' girl is beaming? The lucky guy, after Santa there were only one or two other times where the Bolles girl shared the spotlight on the cover with a member of the opposite sex. And from the look on his face he seems quite grateful to take the supporting role.

The Summer of '42

2010-12-15T20:40:00.000-08:00

Is it as cold where you are as it is here? It seems like a large swath of the planet has recently been struck by bad weather. And it's not even Winter yet! To to warm things up I'm posting a really inventive cover for the August 1938 issue of Breezy Stories. In fact it was his Bolles' final assignment for the magazine. His fifteen year run of covers for Film Fun also ended the same month, due to his hospitalization for what his doctor described as overwork and undernourishment. Yet it would be over a year before Bolles returned to commercial work and in the meantime the magazine industry was in the throes of a sea change. Just two months before this Bolles girl waded into the newsstands, Action Comics #1 was published and the comic book began its ascendancy into the print media stratosphere, carried by the steely arms of Superman. The publisher was Harry Donenfeld, who had clawed his way up the business by publishing Spicy pulps, most all of which Bolles had done work for at one time or another. In preparing this post I learned that as a young man Donenfeld worked for a clothing store his parents owned in Newark in the 1920s. Bolles grew up in Newark and his family had strong business ties in the community, including a successful shoe manufacturing business. One has to wonder if they first crossed paths there.

By the end of 1939 Bolles was back on the job for Film Fun but his other markets had dried up. Breezy Stories was sold off and the new publisher scrimped by recycling old covers. Both Spicy Stories and Gay Parisienne had ceased publication, victims of declining sales, badgering by the decency leagues, and perhaps Donenfeld's preoccupation with his burgeoning comic book company. In the meantime Bolles was back in top form and doing great work, having updated his girls for the 1940's with WW-II styled pinup poses and Rita Hayworth hairstyles.

But in 1942 Film Fun was hauled into court hearings by the Postmaster General, who declared the magazine "salacious" and the magazine's lawyers failed to convince anyone otherwise. By the end of the Summer the magazine had folded. Bolles' career was over.

The 1000 Yard Dare

2010-11-28T15:47:00.000-08:00

Dare you take on these femme fatales? Others have tried and paid the price.

A couple posts back the topic of conversation was the sassy variant of the Bolles girl. Here we see examples of the girl with the 1,000 yard stare or better, dare. Bolles did a number of these, mainly for Bedtime Stories. I'd long thought he'd left them blank faced as a time saving matter, particularly given that he was earning a lot less per cover compared with Film Fun. The illustrator Hugh Ward complained he was only getting sixty bucks a cover, and this a couple years after Bolles had left the magazine, which leads me to believe the owners may have doled out a sawbuck or two more for Bolles.

However, after having pored though my files to pick out these examples, I've been forced to reconsider my initial hypothesis. First, it wouldn't have taken Bolles any longer to apply one of his patented blinding smiles than a blank slate. Second, these particular girls were far less likely to be identified as a Bolles girl. Why, you might ask, wouldn't any illustrator be proud to be identified as the creator of such beautiful creatures? The most likely reason was the seamy reputation of pulps the likes of Bedtime Stories. Back in the 1930s Mayor Laguardia's Citizen's Committee on Civic Decency was burning with fervor to squash the so-called smoosh mags--nearly all of which Bolles worked for at one time or another--and among them Bedtime Stories ranked as perhaps the most notorious. The vice cops didn't hesitate to shutter newsstand vendors brazen enough to sell them or haul their publishers into court when they were lucky enough to find them. The consequence was that for a long time nobody knew who did these covers, even such an authority as the late Francis "Smilby" Smith author of Stolen Sweets was stymied. Certainly Bolles didn't sign these or request credits in the magazine's mastheads, which were chock full of phony names and locations to mislead the authorities.

So after thumbing through a virtual stack of covers I now think Bolles had more in mind that just shaving an hour or so off the time it took to complete a painting. Take a look above at Mata Hari (sporting that spectacular tiara) and you'll see that she's got something serious on her mind. Bolles chose infamous historical or literary figures with reputations for sex, intrigue and sometimes, violence (both to other's and themselves). So in some cases there is a historical explanation for the severity of the girl's expression. Bolles also loaded these covers with cultural references, though you have to figure he knew most would be lost on the target audience. Yet, our resplendent Cleopatra--who's lately gotten a lot of press with a new biography--certainly has no need to explain her regal insouciance.

Coming soon: My choice for the masterpiece of all Bolles' magazine covers.

It's a Bolles World: Part II

2010-11-14T10:44:00.000-08:00

It was a long meandering trek through the enormous Eldon mall in downtown Newcastle, England before I found a watch repair shop, inconspiciously tucked in a row of garish jewelry stores. While waiting for my watch battery to be replaced I happened to spy a rotating Zippo lighter display and before long the misnamed Varga Windy girl slowly wheeled around the bend.

...

As you very likely know, she was actually the creation of our man Enoch, and one of these days I'll get around to relating the story of her origin in its entirety. What surprised me though, was this 1960s variation that revealed itself a few seconds later. Zippo has produced at least a hundred varieties of the Windy girl but this was one I'd never seen before (and it was 'regionalized'; the sign changed to read Piccadilly Circus). Checking further I learned this Windy was one in a four decade set, all "updates" of the Bolles original. Sadly someone did a really lousy job drawing these and the addition of the cheapo clip art was certainly no triumph of design. Worst of all, the color scheme applied to the original version is a combination Bolles would never have allowed to see print. But Zippo has never treated Bolles very well. His name was intenionally misspelled in the original ad and he never again got any credit for the image. Adding insult to injury, Zippo identified Windy as a Varga girl in the 60th anniversary edition of the lighter produced in 1993. They subsequently got in some hot water for it and had to make good with the Vargas estate. You have to wonder if they ever even flirted with the idea of trying to reach Bolles' family.

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Coming soon: scans of Bolles original paintings thought lost forever from a 1930 catalog , and a movie publicity book that includes reproductions of a billboard by Bolles!

Which way is she leaning?

2010-11-02T16:51:00.000-07:00

Did you vote? Our Bolles girl is still pondering who to cast her ballot for. Let's hope she supports our party!

This is one of three issues of Breezy Stories from 1936 that the original painting is known to survive. Unfortunately my versions of both the magazine and painting leave something to be desired, and that's too bad because this cover has so much going for it. For unknowns reasons there are even more original Breezy Stories paintings from 1937 still around, and I'll get around to putting them all up on a post before long.
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On the topic of original Bolles paintings, just this week I got my hands on a copy of an art catalog from 1936 which has photos of nearly 20 Bolles originals. Over half are paintings I figured didn't survive the trip to the publisher's trash bin, and it gives me hope that at least a few are still be around somewhere, waiting to be rediscovered (expect an entire post on the catalog images sometime soon). If I had a clue where I bet we could rally together a few volunteers for some door to door "canvasing".

Gaining Attitude

2010-10-22T17:55:00.000-07:00

In the previous post I spent some time describing how the Bolles girl was anything but a one dimensional poster girl peddling glee. As approachable as many were, there were others who wanted nothing at all to do with the guy who had just shelled out his hard earned money for the magazine. Compared with any other pinup illustrator-then or now-Bolles was far more apt to depict his girls in emotions ranging from boredom to annoyance to outright contempt. Clearly, this version of the Bolles girl was not only well aware of her effect on readers but could care less. As you can see from the examples above which span from 1923 to 1941, the not so nice Bolles girl made regular appearances throughout his entire career.

To the right is the entire image for the 1923 Film Fun cover and as you'll notice, there's a lot more going on in the composition that we typically see from Bolles.Yet within a year these sorts of narrative elements would fade from the covers to leave the Bolles girl front and center, free of any visual competition. In some ways this was too bad, because as this examples shows, Bolles had no trouble handling more involved compositions.

But aside from all this, take a closer look at our jaded film star and consider just how racy her image must have appeared the day she hit the newsstands. Notice-as if you haven't already-that revealing swim suit, the rolled hose, those splayed ankles. Naughty girl! Nobody today would take offense at any of this, but back in Bolles' times these were just the sorts of provocations that resulted in Film Fun getting banned by entire countries. Just one more thing; could this be the earliest depiction of a stunt double?

Bowdacious!

2010-09-14T11:00:00.000-07:00

No punny holiday celebrations today. In fact, no puns at all (well, maybe one or two). The theme today is that there isn't one, and so debuts a new series that will occasionally fill in for the usual topical applications. The goal will be simply to post a cover, one not chosen entirely by chance but with far less than the usual deliberation, take a closer look and see what the image reveals.

So how about today's Spicy Stories cover from 1935?! Far and away it's tops for that year and she stands, or rather sits, along Bolles' very best out of the entire run of Spicy. What about those enormous bows?!! That subdued metallic silver ribbon lacks the "coloric" punch Bolles connoisseurs are so accustomed to imbibing, yet this curiously monochromatic scheme has effective design elements that direct your attention to what matters. Consider the composition, which is unusual for Bolles. While many of his girls sat or knelt in the oft favored "L", that approach was discarded here (along with conventional clothing) for a head-on pose incorporating several visual tricks which thrust the girl right off the page into the reader's lap. Notice how the waves of ribbon draping the granite deco seat act to accentuate the horizontal plane (the pattern is repeated in her hair). The flat treatment of her torso (well...most of it) is contrasted by the more dimensional shadowing and highlights on her legs amplifies the effect. The shadow on her forehead gives the impression she's looking down on you from a superior vantage. Her expression implies the same. Is she disappointed? Annoyed? Peeved? A wasp ready to sting you for violating her territory? ("that's not your flower!") Or is she merely bored? Certainly, there's something on her mind though it would take a braver person than I to dare ask.

And this brings up another unique aspect of Bolles' work. Was there any other pinup artist of his era (granted, the term pinup originated in the early 40s) who depicted their girls with such confrontational intensity? Bolles produced a lot of covers with nary a hint of a smile. Some of his girls were bored, others pettish or merely unimpressed, and there were more than a few who confronted you with a cool, neutral gaze that conveyed an air of menace. I would venture that Bolles painted more mirthless pinups than any other artist. Throw out embarrassment as an emotional expression and you couldn't come up with a single straight faced Elvgren. Petty did haughty but after 1935 it was all smiles, and you had to wait until Playboy before you saw it from Vargas. It was Bolles who made the pinup more than just a vehicle of vapid cheeriness or abashment. But let's brave a closer look. Could that be the slightest curl of a smile on the edge of those luscious lips? Still not sure? We'll zoom in even closer when we probe the depths of Bolles' emotional range in future posts.

Ad hoc hack

2010-08-22T18:38:00.000-07:00

Here's an illustration for a men's clothing company that I am dead certain was composed and painted by Bolles and equally sure was overpainted by another artist. Now, perhaps you aren't convinced it's a Bolles (and initially I wasn't) but there are some compositional giveaways and other clues. Most telling; take a look at this original sketch by him for the same company and I think you'll see why I came around. So the big question is why would you mess with a good illustration. One of my theories is that an editor used one of Bolles' unfinished sketches and had it embellished by another artist. Or perhaps it was a completed composition that an editor was unhappy with and instructed another artist to give it a more painterly look. Who knows, but what I am sure is that the overpainting isn't by Bolles. It's just too muddy and unassured in spots, particularly the weave pattern on the rattan chair. That's the very type of repetitive detail that Bolles would have nailed down to geometric precision. The woman's shawl is another problem. The folds in the wrinkles follow Bolles style but they are muddy in execution. I kind of like the detailing of the older gent's face but his hands are another matter.

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So who can truly say why this ad was subjected to another artist's reworking. Back then, advertising exec's were vocal in their assertion that illustration should be considered on a par with fine art, or what they called"art-art". Accordingly, they were forever chasing the newest trend in fine art. Perhaps Bolles was a victim of this trend and his precise illustrative style fell out of favor. But let's hope today's example is the exception and not the rule.

Meet Armida, and How!

2010-08-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

I had in mind an entirely different theme for today's post but it went up in smoke after coming a recent entry on the actress, Armida Vendrell featured in the fabulous and fabulously informative Starlet Showcase. The name rang a loud bell in my head. I recognized her as one of the cinema starlets occasionally featured on the cover of Film Fun, debuting in 1929 with the It Girl, Clara Bow and ending in 1932 with the utterly obscure, Margaret Poggi. The Poggi cover---which will be featured in an upcoming post--is a real poser; it was both a superb effort by Bolles yet a total departure from his typical style. But that story must wait, so back to Armida.

Aside from the cover painting there was not a lick about her inside the magazine, which was odd. As light on information as Film Fun was, the editors typically tucked in a short half-page feature on the cover girl, usually nothing more than a couple extra stock photos and a fake interview. So it was a real delight to get to read about Armida in the Starlet Showcase entry and better yet, see some great pics of her. Admittedly, Bolles likeness is a bit weak, and the same could be said for most of the other "specially posed by..." covers (See. I did it! I actually wrote something negative about our man Enoch). Compare for yourself with this terrific photo of Armida I expropriated from Starlet Showcase. It's a curiosity in itself because I'm nearly certain it was swiped for a pinup (Gene Pressler? Bradshaw Crandell? Maybe I'm thinking of Bolles, he did something similar in a 1938 Film Fun). Just to be clear, there was never any special posing; not with Armida, or Clara or Loretta or Alice. No famous, near famous or mere Hollywood hopeful sat for Bolles in his modest New York studio. He worked from publicity shots, which the Film Fun mail room received by the crate load. Except...there might be one lone exception. Long ago Enoch's daughter told me she had heard Lupe Velez actually did pose for him, and I am inclined to believe her as the cover Film Fun painting of Lupe is miles beyond any other. But it must be said that Armida's getup is another matter entirely. The designs are fabulous and knowing Bolles very likely historically correct. It's only too bad that in 1930, when this issue was published, Film Fun was skimping on printing and paper quality. This cover deserved better.

In a Bar... Far, Far Away

2010-07-26T01:03:00.000-07:00

So there I was, sitting in a bar in the back streets of Nara, Japan. It's the reason this blog has been bereft of posts for the past several weeks. The trip was for work but all the while I kept my eyes peeled for any Bolles connections (hence the late night excursion). If you look long and hard enough I've found that eventually something will turn up. It was just a year or so back that while I was working in Stockholm I came across a Bolles image in the most unlikely of places, one of those just-so Steig Larsson type associations, and I was hoping there would be something of the same in Japan. I had tried to get in touch with a collector I knew in Tokyo who has three Bolles originals, but that didn't pan out. And my very last night in Japan I found myself in an well worn neighborhood pub in Nara--which happens to be 1,300 years old this year--called Ryoma, named after the famous reformist samurai, Ryoma Sakamoto, who lived just prior to the Meiji restoration. Initially a traditionalist who favored isolation and tradition, he read extensively and became a strong advocate of opening the borders of Japan and embracing modernization, so much so that he brandished pistols along with samurai swords (by a twist of fate a gun was used to assassinate him), but this story is not about Sakamoto, as seminal of a figure that he was. That's somebody else's blog. No this story is about Enoch Bolles.

After studying a poster of this image of Sakamoto my eyes drifted to an image hanging on another wall, this one a poster for poster for Kirin beer. Alas, the bar was dark and the photo I took of it didn't come out but I found the same image on the web. It really knocked me out, and the closer I looked the more of a Bolles vibe I got from it. Take a look for yourself. As with a Bolles, her hands are very prominent in the composition and are oh so carefully posed. There are the little details in the rendering of the kimono, the contrasting color in the sleeves and the hint of the flower pattern in the obi. The almost airbrushed quality of the color also reminds me of Bolles in his later years. Ok ok, I'll admit that I'm really pushing the idea of an association here but Film Fun was available in Japan until it was banned in 1936, and this poster was done in 1939. So who can truly say.

But let's move from speculation to fact. Here we see the only existing example of a Bolles cover with an Asian theme. It's not unlikely that this may be the only example of an Asian pinup by any cover artist to see print in the 1930s. If there were, none came anywhere close to this level of eroticism. As many of you know each cover of Tattle Tales featured a girl from an exotic corner of the world. Unfortunately Bolles' run of covers for Tattle Tales lasted barely a year. It makes me wish he was with the magazine long enough for a return trip to the Far East.

A Bolles Out of the Blue!

2010-06-18T17:05:00.000-07:00

Do you feel this way? Does your heart start thumping when you read a story about someone uncovering a trove of old nitrite silent films in an attic, or discovering a new species of butterfly in the rain forest? To me these sorts of events are antidotes to the feeling that there truly is nothing new under the sun. Every now and again something unexpected turns up that surprises us and renews our curiosity. Well today's post is one of these events. It's been quite a stretch since the last time I've come across what for me is a "new" Bolles cover, and longer yet when his work pops up on a magazine I'd not expected him to have any connection to.

But here's a Bolles cover to Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, a sort of precursor to Time and Life (the 1930's iteration). It was part of the Leslie-Judge publishing company but I had never considered that Bolles would have done any covers for it. There's more, this issue appeared in 1914, and unless I'm missing other examples it is only the third magazine cover illustration magazine cover Bolles had done at that point. The cover was printed in only two or three colors, was intended to be photo-real. It's an incredible departure for Bolles, both in the topic and style in which it was done. I ran across it totally by accident, Bolles name was misspelled in the cover credit as Enoch Bowles. If perhaps you aren't yet convinced it is our Bolles and I can understand that given how different it looks, check out the EB initials in lower left corner. They are composed in exactly the style Bolles so often used in the mid-1920s. So let's hope there are more of these Bolles out of the blue show up, sooner rather than later.

Out of Uniform

2010-06-09T02:46:00.000-07:00

I've been lagging on my promise to post some additional Bolles covers featuring more imaginative interpretations of sailor suits and so here they are. Working through Bolles' oeuvre you'll find a fair number of examples of sailors and other nautical themes. Bolles himself did some sailing and one of his earliest jobs was at the Philadelphia shipyards where he did illustrations of ships. In fact, one of the earliest surviving examples of his work is of a sailing ship. Bolles even built a boat in which he piloted his family down the Hackensack river.

What is most special about these two covers is the display of Bolles at his best fashion sense. I will admit to some lack of objectivity in asserting that Bolles may have been the first true pinup artist, but I will defend to the end my contention that he far and away had the best fashion sense of any pinup artist, good-girl artist, or whatever label suits your fancy. Bolles knew his stuff and he honed his skills and fashion sensibilities producing illustrations of clothes for both women and men. We'll take a closer look at Bolles' little known career in fashion illustration in an upcoming post.

Sailor Suited

2010-05-21T05:52:00.000-07:00

After the last post on what I thought were all the Bolles Film Fun covers with white costume themes, it was kindly brought to my attention that not only were there more of them, they were girls in uniforms no less. Alas, I'd been sloppy in my research. So I am posting two more sailors from even earlier issues of Film Fun. To make things interesting--and to atone from my previous lapse--I've thrown a a couple of extras. As you can see from the 1927 Film Fun above, Bolles either inspired this postcard or swiped it, my guess is the former. What's surprising to me is how closely the uniform follows the painting and just how risqué it comes off by comparison. It just goes to show that what Bolles could get away with in an illustration would, when translated to the 'real thing,' be a lot less acceptable for consumption by the general public, or at least it seems so to me. And if that weren't enough, here's yet another swipe of the cover, used for a 1928 issue in a German publication called Das Magazin. From time to time in past posts I've shared other examples of copied covers, and I never fail to find it curious when some cover images but not others take on a second life.

To our left is another fabulous cover girl in white from 1925, which I like even better. In fact one Film Fun reader was so smitten, he wrote a poem about her using the cover caption that was published in a later issue:

Our old friend Omar told us

To turn down an empty glass.

No doubt the man from Khorasan

Knew that all joy must pass,

But even sages sometimes learn

On yachts, if not in town.

I'll bet you Omar wouldn't turn

This empty goblette down

Lt.-Col. Wilfred Bowey

As nice as this cover is, it pales in comparison to the original, and you can compare for yourself in this detail from the actual painting.

And finally, I couldn't resist including this.

As you can see, these "Jack Tars" were enthusiastic Film Fun fans. I'll soon be posting more sailor girls wearing even more imaginative interpretations of sailor suits designed by Bolles.

White is the New Black

2010-05-11T09:38:00.000-07:00

Bolles fans worth their fodder have surely heard the resounding report that this painting sold for over 80 thousand dollars at the Heritage auction last week. It's yet another record for a Bolles and is the 10th highest price of any painting yet sold from the Martignetti collection. It is certainly a great painting, no argument from me, but it is also completely atypical for Bolles. As rare as his black themed paintings were, a magazine cover awash in white borders on treason. At least with black you have the opportunity to establish contrast, create a silhouette, craft a definitive statement. But with white all that is so much harder. Pen and ink without the ink. Which is one reason why this painting is so successful.

Bolles earlier examples indicate he wasn't quite ready to take the monochromatic plunge. To your starboard hails yet another Bolles sailor girl, with a blot of ink for Professor Rorschach to ponder. But as you can see Bolles hedged his bets and grounded her in a sky blue field. I've featured this cover before because it's a composition Bolles revisited at least two other times, and no wonder.

To our left is the other Bolles white cover, which appeared on the newsstands in 1928. I've blogged about it before, not because I find it particularly attractive but because the subject of nursing was one a lot of illustrators took up. It first became popular as a theme for war posters and also likely because it was such an revered occupation. Bolles could add some double entendres to the sailor theme (I'll say! But let's not forget that sometimes a cannon is just a cannon) but nursing was off limits, at least back in Bolles' day. My how times have changed.
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Again the thing to notice with this cover is that Bolles obviously decided white would not do without some additional embellishment and so he threw in one of his bimorphic shadows. Typically they discretely pool around the girls' shoes but this one dominates the composition, virtually propelling our nurse right off the cover. All this reinforces just how unusual the cannon girl is. Still...did you notice that thin spike of red? If you know Bolles you know there was no way he could have resisted.

Women in Black

2010-05-04T20:00:00.000-07:00

There's no reason to revisit the theme of Bolles black unless we feature one of his most outrageous covers. Netty but Nice is simply over the top on all counts; her wild outfit, Bolles amazing treatment of all the different materials and textures, that fabulous deco chair, those shoes! Netty debuted in 1937, a great year for Film Fun and for collectors because-for reasons unknown-more Bolles paintings from 1937 to 1938 have survived than from any other period of his career. Sorry the scan is so poor but after all the years I've been collecting Bolles, this issue continues to elude me. So to make it up to you I've posted a detail out of the original painting (alas it has eluded me as well). As the side by side comparison with the printed cover-which was pretty well done- makes immediately evident, a lot of interesting detail and subtlety was lost in the reproduction. By the way, you can get a fabulous Giclee print taken from the original painting at Impact Graphic posters. For those of use who can't afford a Bolles original (and who can these days), it's the next best thing.

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The Madame X post prompted me to take a closer look at just how many cover girls in black Bolles painted and it turns out that throughout the 1930s about one Film Fun cover a year had a predominately black color scheme. Bolles did almost none for other periodicals and I think there are two reasons for this. First, just about all of his other magazine work was for magazines even spicier than Film Fun, and so the color schemes and poses typically ran at hotter temperatures. And second, the quality of printing was poorer. In some cases, covers were printed in only three colors and the lack of a black print run could add a murky atmospheric quality to the work, which is not necessarily a bad thing for horror or gangster pulps as my friend and mega-collector, the late Pete Manesis once pointed out to me. He felt that some cover artists who knew their work was going to be printed in three colors altered their palette to take advantage of the effect. But gangsters and fiends are one thing, and pretty girls another. Bolles faced a different set of challenges doing work for the smoosh mags.

Turning back to Film Fun, I think this cover from 1934 counts among his very best examples of women in black. The image by the way, was a complete swipe from a publicity photo (I've got it around somewhere and once I find it I'll add it to this post) but as usual Bolles adds his own signature to the painting, the cleverly worked shadow both grounds the pose and lends an almost geometric element to the composition. On the subject of signatures, there was a letter printed in this issue from a reader who inquired why Bolles signed some of his covers but not others. Truth is that he often did not sign his work but I've also seen a number of original Film Fun paintings with signatures that ended up being tooled or cropped out of the cover. Why that was done is the question I would have asked the editor.

Finally, a very recent "discovery" and what must be one of the wackiest Bolles covers of all. When I found this scan from a 1943 issue of Breezy Stories I had to do a double-take. How do you begin to explain it? Perhaps Netty became bored from all that posing and preening and so donned some gloves and a muffler and headed outside to catch some fresh air, glorying in the garish winter (nuclear winter?) sunset. It's almost as if Bolles was doing a riff on himself as Quintana might have interpreted the Netty girl. As bad as I'd like to have a copy of the Film Fun Netty girl issue in my collection I want this one ten times worse.

May Day!

2010-05-01T18:30:00.000-07:00

How on earth did the publishers of Film Fun get away with this cover? Or did they? It was published in 1925 and right around the same time Canada had banned Film Fun. This cover, by the way, was far hotter than anything within its pages but by the end of the year you could find photos inside of Earl Carroll girls traipsing around bare bottomed. Curiously the covers to those issues were a lot more sedate. It's almost as if some sort of erotic climate control was in place, the covers became more risqué as the pages within cooled, and vice versa. Robert Brown noted as much about Bolles' work for Breezy and Spicy in the 1930s.

Meet Madame X

2010-04-20T07:44:00.000-07:00

In the previous post, I'd left entry number 10 off of my favorites list of Film Fun girls. So say hello to my number one Bolles girl. I can't remember when she hit the top of the charts but she's been there as long as I can remember, and I can state with confidence that there forever she will remain.

So why do I like her so? Let me count the ways. First, the pose is most unusual among Bolles covers. Of his over 500 magazine covers, only a handful were done using this from-the-back perspective. Second, both her expression and hair are unique. No blinding smile, squinting eyes or nimbus of flaming red hair for her. In fact her hair style is the most severe of any Bolles girl yet if you take a close look at the way he painted it, you'll notice it's not at all simple and the treatment of her hairline is actually asymmetric. It takes a lot of confidence and knowledge to do something like that and to know it will end up making her even more fetching. And talk about attractive; don't those huge olive gray eyes draw you into the picture?

So what else? I've written many times about Bolles' knowledge of color and how it works so well on the magazine stand, but look here. There's no color at all in her dress or shoes. Bolles once said that art editors liked any color as long as it was red and I wonder how he ever talked them into going for this scheme. Black is also difficult to print effectively and a lot of pulp magazines only ran covers in three colors, so there was no true black (I'll soon be doing a series on all the other black costumed covers Bolles did). What little accent color there is has been chosen very carefully. Notice how the color of his signature echoes the olive in her eyes and how the pink in her phosphate (or is it a shake?) plays off the color of her skin. This is Bolles minimalism at its best.

Where was I?...reason number four: gaze at those lovely hands. You've heard me go on and on about how Bolles loved drawing hands and used them to intensify compositions and as semiotic elements that serve both as signs and symbols. See how elongated her left hand is and how the mere fingertips of the right hand are exposed. The standard middle fingers touching pose has never been used more effectively. In this cover Bolles also featured what he considered was the most charged aspect of the female figure, and one that you likely would never have guessed...it's the shoulder. I learned this from a single quote buried in a letter Bolles wrote over 70 years ago and after reading it I could never look at Bolles girl quite the same way ever again. In this case the shoulder not only serves as the central compositional element in this painting but as with the hand, is noticeably elongated along with her upper arm. It's also worth pointing out that her choice of drink lends a whole different aspect to the painting compared to something like a flute of champagne or even a beer stein. Bolles completed a couple other covers where the girl was holding a soda shop drink and I have to wonder if it was some sort of inside story or symbolic meaning that is lost to a modern audience or perhaps just one of his more innocent visual puns.

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Finally, some of you may have picked up on my lame intimation of a painting this one beckons to me, namely Sargent's painting of Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, better known as Portrait of Madame X. Not that I'm proposing Bolles did this as a riff on Sargent but he knew his art and was certainly well aware of this painting's history and its unanticipated aftermath. The public reaction to its debut in Paris was so notorious that Gauteau was forced to withdraw from high society and Sargent gave up his goal of becoming a full-time portraitist. Bolles also suffered from his choice of subject. The late Reid Austin, who served as Alberto Vargas' personal assistant at Playboy and who wrote the definitive biographies of both Vargas and Petty, speculated that Bolles' opportunities in the field of illustration became limited because of his notoriety as the cover artist for Film Fun. We may admire the beauty and attractiveness of today's subject and his other Film Fun girls, but in their day they often provoked indignation from polite society. And so Bolles may well have paid a personal price for our enjoyment.

Originals I'd like to see

2010-04-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

As you know from previous posts, the series of auctions of the Martignette collection of illustration art have put a number of Bolles originals back into circulation, unfortunately for collectors at record prices. But one positive side effect is that this enthusiasm for Bolles has also other brought other originals long held in private collections into the market, several of which were thought to be lost. The example above first showed up at a Heritage auction several years ago and is back at auction again. I had found this sketch of the image in a 1930s art catalog but knew nothing about this painting until it showed at Heritage. I'm almost positive it was never published. Speaking of Heritage, check out whose art they chose for the catalog cover to feature their upcoming auction.

So all this raises the question which burns (perennially!) in my mind: what other Bolles paintings are there to be found? It's tempting to hope there are a lot, Bolles produced over 500 magazine covers. The harsh reality is that it's unlikely that many more are around. With rare exception the work by created by commercial illustrators became the property of the publisher and there are many sad stories about how paintings were neglected or thrown out with the trash. Very few artists kept their original art and fewer yet retained the rights to it. Among the more notable exceptions was George Petty, who not only held on to all his originals for Esquire but also retained the rights to the images, which he aggressively remarketed. Like the majority of commercial illustrators Bolles signed away the rights to his work though he did manage to hold onto a fair number of his paintings including comprehensive sketches and proofs, but over the years they have been lost, given away or worse, stolen.

So if forced to choose, which 10 Film Fun paintings would I most wish were still around? I've been grappling with this and to be honest, I've gone back and forth on several and my final (for now) list includes works from three categories. These are the iconic images that every Bolles fan would die for, other works from what could be called the high-period of Bolles art running from 1932 to 1939, and his early work from the 1920s. The first group simply must include the Bolles motorcycle girl from 1934, and his deco infused masterpiece from 1935. Both of these images are all over the web and each has been reworked by Greg Theakston in the guise of Bettie Page. If for no other reason you'd have to choose these because they would be the most valuable to ever hit the commercial market.

Another painting to include in this group would be the Martini girl from 1941. She's been printed on book covers, drafted into beer ads, ironed on t-shirts and otherwise had a very busy second career. The original painting survived at least for a while, and a long while back I posted a photo of it in the Film Fun home office. In the second category of great but not iconic examples it would be an punishable offense to leave our favorite cowgirl out to pasture. I've written several entries over the months on my efforts to corral this painting from 1934. Though there have been several false sightings I am convinced she is out there somewhere waiting to be rounded up. And just to make things interesting below is a photo of her in the original, circa 1940. She's now the called the Whoopee girl and serves official mascot of the Pioneer Days rodeo held annually in Odgen, Utah.

Our cowgirl is joined by her sister from south of the border. This lovely senorita debuted in 1934 and soon appeared in blotters, calendars and even on a box of chocolates. Sadly in each case efforts were made to remove Enoch's signature. Clearly the inspiration for this cover was either a model or a photo, she has none of the more mannered aspects that Bolles sometimes is criticized for. The composition is a variant of the Bolles "L" and in my mind is the best example of the pose Bolles ever did. It's got everything, a fabulous composition, the snappy costume and hat, drapery and of course, great footwear.

Another must have would be the Can-Can girl from 1936. I just love the pose and all that crinoline, or whatever it should be properly called. As good as Bolles is at legs he really outdid himself with this painting. The pose is supposed to be based on a model and I have a photograph of her, but won't bother posting it. This is one of those covers where the model was merely a setup for Bolles' imagination.

And now we turn to an earlier era of Film Fun covers which highlight how Bolles' work stands in contrast from the work of other pinup artists because it so clearly presents both a personal and cultural timeline. As you move through the decades you can see the evolution of his technique (like it or not) and the emerging style of the era, which Bolles so clearly captured both in fashion and figure. By contrast, examine a Petty from the 1950s and you may notice that she has changed little from examples produced in the late 30's. He relies on the same technique, the poses are familiar and even the outfit could have been borrowed from one of his Esquire girls. This is not a criticism; Petty created a girl who was wildly popular and he would have been foolish to mess with success. The same holds when comparing Vargas' work between Esquire and Playboy though it must be said that Playboy allowed him far more latitude (maybe longitude describes it better!) in how he posed and dressed his girls though not all of it was at his discretion (he long resisted pressure for poses that revealed pubic hair).

In contrast, not only did Bolles painting style change over time, but the physical appearance of his girls did as well. It's ironic that he got out of the of the business at the very moment the term pinup came into use, because one could argue that he had more to do in codifying the genre than any other artist. But I digress, so turning to his work from the 1920s many would place this cover from 1928 at the top of their list. She's the total package. The next cover, from 1929 is shows that Bolles can do both naughty and nice. And today's final entry comes from 1924, one of Bolles best years for Film Fun. It's anything but a typical Bolles cover and I guess you could call this his peeved category, which includes a fair number of other covers. No copper is going to get away with pushing her around.

So that rounds out my wish list, or does it? Actually I'm one short and that cover is not only my top Film Fun, it's my favorite out of every Bolles I've seen. If you'd like to meet her stop back in a few days.

Out of the Ether

2010-03-31T18:43:00.000-07:00

Be you a Bolles specialist or an omnivore of classic illustration art, you've likely feasted your eyes on the series of auctions of original illustration art at Heritage auctions over the past year from the Charles Martignette estate. For me its been both fabulous and frustrating because prices have skyrocketed, especially in the case of our man Bolles. The upside--even if you've been priced out of the market--is that all this interest in Bolles has brought some long lost treasures out of the closet, most of which have been consignments from other collectors.

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The upcoming auction includes the 1931 Film Fun cover displayed here, and it's the only original I'm aware of from that year that survives. Yet as excited as I am to see the painting it is also a serious source of frustration. Every time a lost Bolles shows up on the market I can't help but wonder about its backstory; who owned it and what were the circumstances by which it was acquired? Each original I've managed to have photographed has a story behind it. Unfortunately many are scant on details, though one of the other Bolles for sale in the upcoming auction has a sticker on the stretcher that says "gift of Mr. and Mrs. Irwin Winsten, 1950", not that that means anything to me.

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I've also posted the one other existing Film Fun painting of Bolles with a circus theme that I know about. The painting was done in 1935 and has its own story. It was once owned by, of all people, the girly artist Bill Ward. In a letter written to a friend he described buying the painting from an "old guy" at a flea market, recognizing it as a Bolles but not finding the signature until much later (it was tiny). He didn't say anything about the price he paid but I think it may have been around $150! Later in the letter Ward notes that Bolles could be considered the true pioneer of pinup, stating: "this guy precedes them all, before Petty, Vargas and the rest." And then he goes on to say that his very first published pinup, done at the age of 16 (!) appeared in of all magazines, an issue of Film Fun and I believe this its the final issue.

You may recall that a while back I posted a graphic that displayed surviving Film Fun paintings and am happy I'll have to update it. In fact it wouldn't bother me if I had to do this again and again. So, let's consider this: What if there were only 10 more Film Fun paintings to be found? If you could choose, which ones would they be? My own top ten list will be showing up in a post shortly. So what are your favorites?

A Bolles? I Certainly Soap So!

2010-03-26T17:52:00.000-07:00

It may have been eight years ago when I received a most significant package from Theresa, Enoch's daughter. It was full of old ads that she had loaned to me, including several examples of what were once called car cards. These were advertising posters, printed on cardboard in standard dimensions that could be slotted one after another along the strip of space lying directly above the windows of trolley cars. From about 1900 until the 1950s they were ubiquitous not only in trolleys but also buses and subways. Enoch worked for the biggest advertising companies of the day and much of his work centered on the invariant format of car cards, which were sometimes scaled up to what in the trade was called 24 sheet ads, otherwise known as billboards.

Theresa was pretty certain that Enoch had done the lettering on this ad, and I concurred. It has some of his flourishes, most evident the tale preceding the letter P. But she was less sure about the charming image of the baby, and I also was reluctant to decide one way or another. Well at long last I finally managed to pick up my own copy of the card and have been poring over it since.

So is it a Bolles or not? The answer is I still don't know. First, it was done in either chalk or pastel. Bolles did the vast majority of his work in oil, though he did do one notable cover portrait in pastel, and I've seen examples of his work in a variety of other media. Second, the image has a gauzy look to it which is not at all like Bolles. As charming as the little fellow is, the technique is very different from the flat, precise application of color typical to Bolles. Yet, there is something about the treatment of the hair that harkens to Bolles, and the post with chin resting on shoulder is very typical to him. I've also seen a couple of other Bolles baby ads with more than a passing resemblance. Sorry for thinking out loud but for now all I can say is perhaps.

So let's close with a certainty. Here we have a terrific and very early Bolles from a 1917 issue of Judge. And it's not just a painting of any cute little girl, the subject is Enoch's daughter, Theresa. The story goes that he was sketching her in the kitchen just as you see, when Enoch's wife walks in, aghast at the mess. The only unanswered question, and one that Theresa couldn't answer, was if she had been responsible for the mess, or whether the culprit was Enoch.

Addendum: Just for the heck of it I'm adding one more Bolles baby, this from an ad that appeared in 1926. I think you'll see why I'm thinking our little fella in the Kirkman's ad is a Bolles.

Lá Fhéile Pádraig: Saint Patrick's Day

2010-03-17T19:50:00.000-07:00

You've had to suffer a passel of silly celebrations on this site, but today we have a real one with a cover to match. There simply was no excuse for me to let Saint Patrick's day pass us by without sharing this fabulous Bolles cover from 1927. Sláinte!

The Fruits of Her Labor. It's Johnny Appleseed Day!

2010-03-10T19:10:00.000-08:00

I'm back to using Bolles covers to celebrate national or not so national holidays, and here's a fun example from a 1930 issue of Spicy Stories published during a period when Bolles was conducting a lot of fruitful experiments cross pollinating compositions and themes. I'm not quite sure of the intended storyline but I bet you could come up with several convincing scenarios.

Many of Bolles' best covers for Spicy were done during this brief period. Unfortunately it didn't last long. By the end of 1930 Bolles was entering what might be called his bobble head phase, with the product being disconcertingly young looking girls. The most troublesome examples appeared on the covers of Spicy, largely given the content and underground market for the magazine. A couple years later his girls were reproportioned, heads smaller and other parts larger. Theories abound, but perhaps it was simply a change in diet.

P.S., I've felt obliged to add word verification for comments. This is not intended to in any way constrain feedback or comments, which I am always interested in. It's just that this blog has become a target of a lot of spam and junk comments. Sorry for the added step this will require.

Celebrating other blogs

2010-03-03T19:28:00.000-08:00

Given the theme of this site, it's only fitting that from time to time we acknowledge the wonderful creations of other illustrators. And what better example to debut this feature than the new blog on female illustrators by the indefatigable Leif Peng of Today's Inspiration. Along with Dan Zimmer, the publisher of Illustration Magazine, nobody has done more in recent years to promote the golden age of illustration, particularly the many unheralded talents who labored in obscurity. Leif is not only a scholar of illustration he is a detective of the first rank. His new site features an entry on the highly regarded but enigmatic illustrator, Lucia Lerner. Not surprisingly, Leif has uncovered new information and insights about Lucia's life and work. I am sure you'll find her story as fascinating as I did.

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I personally am grateful for this site because my mother was a professional illustrator; she started out doing interiors for Hallmark cards and later moved on to fashion art, all during an era when employment opportunities for women were constrained to a small number of fields deemed appropriate (her most interesting art job was as the court room artist for the Charley Starkweather trial!). So let's hear it for Leif and the pioneering women of Illustration.

Today is Beer Day...How about a Martini?

2010-03-01T19:11:00.000-08:00

Last year on Beer Day (There's more than one date for this celebration, I wonder why?) we shared a frothy mug of ale, courtesy of Enoch and Judge magazine. But there are times when a beer just doesn't suit the mood and our leggy flapper from a 1927 issue of Snappy Stories is dressed for something a bit more sophisticated. So only a martini will do, but none of that bathtub gin.
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This cover was one of the last Bolles did for Snappy. I think the magazine tanked out a few months later and it took a year or so before it was rehydrated by Frank Armer, who hired Bolles for some of his other publications, most of which were only sold at smoke shops and taverns. In fact Bolles did another version of this for a 1930 issue of Pep, which was one of Armer's most successful sellers until he got the utterly insane notion of spiking one of the issues with some full frontal nudity in the photo insert. But that's another story and for the details you should read Doug Ellis's Uncovered, which unwinds the serpentine tale of the smooshes and is chock full of exquisite illustrations of rare material, including stacks of Bolles covers.

Speaking of exquisite, I'm sure that many of you recognize the girl in the martini theme from the famous stage production by Dita Von Teese. I have no idea what the inspiration was for her act, though I'd like to think that Bolles had something to do with it. Maybe the original recipe for the martini girl is his too!

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Bolles on Ice. Very Nice!

2010-02-22T20:33:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the long absence. Blame it on my day job.

In celebration of the winter Olympics I thought it only appropriate to feature one of the sports and also a classic theme in pinup. It was probably George Petty, with his series of paintings for the Ice Capades programs, who did more to popularize the theme of pinup on ice than any other artist. But he certainly wasn't the only illustrator to mine that vein. Our man Enoch produced some fine examples, including this one from the January 1942 issue of Film Fun. Included below for your edification is Bolles' pencil sketch for the cover. Bolles produced at least three other preliminary drawings and to me it's interesting that after nearly two decades of Film Fun covers--and in the final months of the magazine--Bolles was still at it, working on different poses to come up with just the right version.

I've also posted another nice skating cover from Breezy Stories. Sorry for the condition of this issue, but I only have the scan and am not sure what year it was published. If I had to guess it would be 1935, but the odd thing is that this cover has a 'real' Bolles signature, and not the engraved version I wrote about in a previous entry. As far as I know it's the only cover of Breezy he actually signed.

I don't know about you but I think our Bolles girl deserves a perfect score of 10 for artistry.

Fairy Lust

2010-02-10T13:18:00.000-08:00

Here we have what is, to the best of my knowledge, Enoch's first cover for Film Fun, from 1922. I've photoshopped it but did so with my best approximation of how the chromatics of the original painting would have appeared, perfect printing permitting. There are several interesting aspect of the cover, first I admire the care put into depicting the moving picture camera, which looks to my naïve eye to be an accurate rendition of a particular model, and getting that detail right would certainly have been important to Bolles. Then there's that rainbow, which at first blush would seem to have been crudely rendered, with loose brushwork not at all evident in any of the rest of the composition. But Bolles didn't hurry over it. From examples I've seen by other artists of his era this blotchy sort of treatment was the standard method for depicting rainbows, far removed from the airbrushed look we now expect. I have no idea why this was or when illustrators made the change to the more homogenized effect. And of course the the most obvious points of interest are those iridescent fairy wings. My guess is the transparent effect with the title is courtesy of Bolles. Enoch was a master at lettering and could easily have done the lettering for this cover, which would have vexed even the best engraver.
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Next we jump ahead a few years 1929 and the inaugural cover of Ginger. I need not point out the differences which are obvious even to the most casual observer. In this case our Bolles girls is not only more assertively entwined (a Bolles theme we've dealt with in the past) but also essentially undressed, aside than the nondescript foot ware which qualifies as the most boring pair of pumps that ever graced a Bolles cover. But then, who would have bought this magazine for the shoes. Ginger lingered a couple years on the newsstands but this was the only cover graced by Bolles.

And finally we turn to our third bewinged maiden, from 1934, and once again, as best as I can tell, this is the first cover Bolles painted for this particular periodical. Gay Parisienne was a magazine that was in the eye of the decency squads the day it first hit the newsstands, no thanks to Bolles' smoking fairy (check out those hand poses!). Unlike Ginger, in this case he painted every subsequent cover of Gay Parisienne until the middle of 1938 (the magazine may have folded then, but
Bolles' health also took a turn downwards at the same time). And right at this very second it suddenly strikes me that this might be some sort of trend or signal by Bolles. Here we have examples of his inaugural covers for three different magazines, all featuring wings. Perhaps the editors were hoping the magazines would fly off the newsstands?

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Note: I'll be off for the next two weeks, but stay tuned. I'm working on a series about the girls who modeled for Bolles and will feature a previously unpublished painting!

Second Hand Smokers

2010-02-05T17:14:00.000-08:00

The girl in a recent post had such lovely hands that I thought it was time once again to feature them. And so I picked out a few of my favorite poses brandishing Enoch's preferred prop, a cigarette. As many of you well know, Bolles girls had a close relationship with smokes that was evident from the very beginning of his career. His second published magazine cover, an issue of Judge from 1914 featured what else but a girl walking a high wire with a cigarette! ...

While sorting through potential images to use in this post, it dawned on me that virtually every composition I found was different. I hadn't expected that at all because Bolles so often relied on his standard hand poses, namely the extended pinky and "W". At least this was the case when the girls were bare handed. But pass her a smoke and all bets were off. Bolles was no longer content with the norm. A long while back I wrote about the incident where Enoch was dissatisfied with a painting of a girl and cigarette, so much so that he somehow managed to enlist his son-in-law, a certified non-smoker (he was a national champion bicyclist), and get him to hold a pose with a cigarette until Enoch had the precise look he wanted.

Bolles also was a non-smoker though he nothing against doing work for cigarette manufacturers, but for what companies I haven't the faintest whiff. I've seen sketches and paintings of cigarette ads but have yet to find any published examples. However, his best known advertising illustration was cigarette related. He created the Windy girl for Zippo lighters (a story I'll be recounting in an upcoming post). Unfortunately when Zippo reissued the lighter as a collectible in 1993, they called her a "Varga," a slap in the face both to Bolles and Alberto Vargas, who was pressured into signing his work for Esquire as Varga by David Smart, ostensibly because it was more "euphonious" but in reality because the name Vargas was simply too ethnic for him. Plus Smart expropriated the trademark to Varga without Alberto's knowledge...But that's another story.

Though Vargas was a smoker he would allow no cigarette to touch his girls' lips. The same went for Petty, his girls could be in the cigarette ad but the boys had to do the puffing. For Bolles it was a different story. He had long recognized that aside from giving a girl something to do with her hands, the addition of a cigarette lent a certain...air about her.

The Most Famous Bolles Swipe...Ever!

2010-02-01T15:33:00.000-08:00

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We've talked about her before: she might have been the first yoga pinup, or perhaps the magazine cover that redefined what pinup was and what it wasn't, or maybe simply the hottest pinup cover of all time (according to no less than Smilby). It's no surprise that other illustrators would look at her and wonder, could I...should I?

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But who would ever have thought that the master of pinup would turn to an obscure Bolles cover (it was rare the day it hit the newsstands) and ponder the question. But indeed Alberto Vargas did just that and reworked her for one of his gatefolds for Playboy back in 1967 and in some ways she well may have been more of an homage than a swipe, with the classic high voltage Bolles smile Vargas adorning her. I showed the pair of images to the late Reid Austin, who was the personal assistant to Vargas and had as much to to with reinvigorating his career as anyone, and he wasn't quite sure what to make of it. And later what turns up but another variation, done by Billy Devorss variation around 1941. Neither of them are exact copies, but if you were working with a horizontal aspect ratio then you had to make some changes. To me what is interesting is that as hard as these talented artists worked to remake the image in their own style, they both come up a bit short. Like the Bolles cover or not (and not everyone does) it is certain that his particular geometry was hard to improve upon. There are lots of other Bolles poses that other artists have been inspired by but to even attempt this one is a real stretch.

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Postscript: Do you think that Vargas swiped DeVorss and not Bolles? It certainly seems so looking at these, though I know that Vargas had a large collection of Bolles magazine covers. But when you line these up it looks more like DeVorss did is variation on Bolles and then Vargas did his off DeVorss.

The Weirdest Bolles Swipe. Ever!

2010-01-29T18:38:00.000-08:00

I wasn't looking for her, I swear. She found me. Earlier today I got a friend request on facebook, and for a few seconds I was clueless as to why a 20 something residing in Denmark and sporting the figure on the left on her skin would try and friend me. At first I thought she might be a Bolles fan but after a couple clicks it was clear she wasn't. The request was simply an attempt to add to her her friend count, or whatever the term is for that metric. But when I spotted the thumbnail of her tattoo my Bolles bell rang out and it was no problem to ID the exact source. Take a look at the original, from a 1942 issue of Film Fun. The drawing of her figure is pretty much a flat out trace, but say what you may, as far as swipes go this one is at least interesting.

Stop Snowman Abuse day!

2010-01-25T19:51:00.000-08:00

After the countless posts I've made about other people's weird holidays it's time that the Enoch Bolles blog establish one of its own. Since last week's entries on Bolles variations of the figure four headlock upon several variations of hapless male-folk it became apparent to me that Enoch had a particular thing against snowmen.

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Take a look at this example, which I may have previously posted but have cleaned up and boosted the colors to what I estimate is a truer depiction of this heinous crime in all its lurid glory. Our poor snowman may think he's as snug as a bug but it is obvious that within minutes he'll be suffering from a terminal case of cranial hyperthermia, if the ashes she's flicking off her fag don't fatally singe him first. Poor old frosty hasn't a clue of the decerebrate fate that soon awaits him. He'll be facedown in the snow in mere seconds. Take a stand now. No more snowman abuse!

Keep yer (virtual) mitts off her. She's mine!

2010-01-17T20:24:00.001-08:00

For a while I've been subscribing to Google alerts, which sends you an email whenever a search term you've specified pops up on the web. It should be no surprise that mine is set to check for Enoch Bolles, and the other day I opened a link to see this image smiling back at me. Which was a total shock. You see I happen to own this painting. No, someone didn't break into my study and snap a pic of her. Nothing quite that invasive. This image was one of many included in an article I wrote about Enoch a few years back for Illustration Magazine and due to the generosity of the publisher Dan Zimmer, I got to keep the copyrights to the article. A few people have since quoted from it and I've been noted, which is truly appreciated. Obviously, someone had to have scanned the balloon girl from the article, posted her and now she's all over the web, crosslinked back and forth so much I could never untangle the mess to figure out who was the culprit.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind Bolles getting the publicity. In fact it's the main reason I've been doing this blog for the past year and why I'm still trying to publish a book on him. It wouldn't be a stretch to assume that anyone who regularly visits this blog will agree that Bolles deserves more recognition, both for his pinups and his work in commercial illustration. So when someone uploads an image from this blog and links it back to here I'm truly grateful and will thank them for the shout-out. But this is different and frustrating. Some of the other paintings I used in the article cost me a small fortune to have photographed and I promised the owners I would not use the image for any purpose other than for publication. Clearly, it's only a matter of time before they start to show up too, but at least in this case I can still be a bit preemptive, and display her in appropriate context to an appreciative audience. I'm sure some of you also recognize the pose, the painting was a "comp" for the October 1941 cover, which in my opinion falls far short. For one the girls' outfit was reworked to hide her navel, still a big no-no on the cover (though they quit bothering to airbrush them from the interior photos years earlier). Second, it appears that the engraver cut out part of her hair-do to keep it from blocking the logo, which was a big mistake. The other change was to the balloons, which look more like balls in the final painting.
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Talk about ironic, just seconds ago I got a new Google alerts, I checked the link and it's packed with Bolles images yanked from this site!

He's Warming Up To Her

2010-01-13T14:09:00.000-08:00

To continue with our recent topic of hitching a ride on unlikely sources of transportation, here's a fun cover from 1936 that the Dawl used for the fabulous banner you see above. Frosty is obviously quite pleased to be providing our Bolles girl a ride (who wouldn't!), and she doesn't seem to have a care in the world about the weather, not that her scarf is doing her a lick of good. I also owe TJ a shot-out for this fabulous scan. Stay tuned, there will be more snowy goodness to come.

It's a Bear Out There!

2010-01-09T20:48:00.001-08:00

With all the bad weather circulating around the globe it would seem only fair to recalibrate the temperature of this blog to match climatic conditions. And in keeping with the recent informal theme of Bolles girl astride various members of the Wild Kingdom here we feature one of the two known polar bear covers that Bolles completed, this one for a 1933 issue of Film Fun. Notice the long snout on our bear which is accurate and particular to the polar bear. Bolles worked hard on details like this that were clearly not a priority for subscribers to Film Fun. Notice also that the bear is not in the least sharing the girl's enthusiasm. But when the girl's mode of transportation is human, there's a remarkable adjustment in attitude.

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(Thanks Gary, for the nice scan of this cover!)

Back to the Beach

2010-01-04T19:20:00.000-08:00

It was just a few posts ago where I was speculating about the origin of the lovely lady adorning the cover of a 1941 issue of Young's Magazine. Well since then I was doing some "house cleaning" and what did I come across but a clipped cover from a 1935 issue of Breezy Stories, featuring our girl in her original outfit and as you've undoubtedly noticed, a different beach companion. Not that I can tell whether it's a Loggerhead or Hawksbill but Bolles did use the Girl on a Turtle theme for at least one other cover (a 1937 issue of Gay Parisienne).

Aside from the turtle the cover is notable for the signature, added by the engraver. Several other covers of Breezy Stories, all from 1935 have the added signature as well as a cover art credit for Bolles on the title page, which an acknowledgement even Film Fun never afforded Bolles. This version of the cover was used again as a closeup in a 1938 issue of Breezy. I'm sure Bolles didn't get a dime extra for it and I doubt whether he got anything for the remake either. By 1940 Painter Publications was using recycled Bolles' covers for virtually every issue of Young's Magazine. The puzzle is why is this one different, and in such a special way.

More Smilby on Bolles

2009-12-27T21:01:00.000-08:00

During my visit with Francis "Smilby" Smith, I got to pore over his wonderful collection of illustrated books and rare periodicals. It was especially exciting to hold magazines in my hands I had seen only in books or as scans off the web. But there was one issue in particular I was disappointed to have missed...until I took a trip to the loo, and there she was hanging on the wall, staring right back at me with those piercing eyes. The situation was not without some irony. Francis was a staff artist for Playboy and one of his perks was a free lifetime subscription. There were decades of them stacked upstairs. Yet there wasn't a lone issue of Playboy to be found in his bathroom (and no, I wasn't looking). Francis was also a personal friend of Alberto Vargas, but it wasn't one of his girls who was confronting me. It was a Bolles girl and it was that one. The one who moved beyond the merely provocative and who had ventured deep into the territory of transgressivness. In her time she would be labeled as nothing short of pornographic; the argument would still be made by some yet today. Of course none of this was lost on Francis and here's what he had to say about her in Stolen Sweets:
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"An exceptionally fine but curiously disturbing image that, facially at least, has more than a touch of Lolita about it. The conflicting images--modesty and a steady open gaze--combine with the setting--a sense of a forbidden something suddenly illuminated from the depths of a cavern--to give this cover a strangely charged eroticism."

I must admit that when first coming across this cover in Francis' book some years ago, I was unsure whether Bolles had painted her or not. Aside from being unsigned and appearing on an obscure 'smoosh' mag, it just seemed to be to be too much in all aspects. Too nude, too young and even too painterly. There were of course, several signature statements that eventually gave Bolles up as her creator, but why he put so much into a painting that may have paid him as little as $60 and could have gotten him tossed into the slammer is an equation I still haven't worked out.

Happy Holidays!!

2009-12-25T21:28:00.001-08:00

Thought I'd share my favorite Bolles Santa with you. The fact is, this is also my favorite Bolles advertising illustration. It's as if the art editor saw the comp for the ad and said, "I'll take it as is." Enjoy!

Bolles, according to Smilby

2009-12-22T19:41:00.000-08:00

I'm continuing this modest tribute to the late Francis "Smilby" Smith with a brief except from his book, Stolen Sweets--The Cover Girls of Yesteryear: Their Elegance, Charm and Sex Appeal. Here's what he had to say about what many consider to be if not Bolles' best, certainly his most provocative magazine cover.

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One of the finest of American covers. A superb conception--the body filling the space both ingeniously and erotically, with the satiny shine of the abbreviated lingerie emphasizing everything it was supposed to conceal. The textured backcloth and Bakelite radio are vital elements in the composition.

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The book was published in 1981 and has been long out of print, though copies occasionally appear on eBay. By unnerving happenstance I got a copy that came in the mail just last week. Get one for yourself if you can. It is chock full of great images by Bolles and others with Smilby's wry and revealing commentary.

Francis "Smilby" Smith 1927-2009

2009-12-16T11:31:00.000-08:00

I got some sad news this week. The cartoonist, writer, and collector extraordinaire, Francis Smith, who signed his work Smilby has passed away I first got to know Francis about 10 years ago after I cold called him. He had written what many still consider the best book about the history of pinup and glamour art, Stolen Sweets and I had the audacity to phone in order to pester him about some of the illustrations in the book that were unattributed but which I was convinced were done by Enoch Bolles. Other sections of the book (one is included below) had nice things to say about Bolles so I was guessing he would be be sympathetic to my cause. Francis graciously heard me out and we ended up speaking for nearly a half hour. By the end of our conversation we had agreed that the illustrations were indeed by Bolles. I followed up with several other calls and Francis connected me to another mentor, Reid Austin, the art editor at Playboy who convinced Hugh Hefner to hire on Alberto Vargas. Reid who alas, passed away two years ago, eventually became Vargas' personal assistant and editor at Playboy was a good friend of Francis, who himself contributed cartoons for Playboy for many years. Our relationship progressed to the point to where seven years ago I made the trip to the English countryside to visit the 400 year old (give or take a century) cottage Francis shared with his lovely wife Pam, a talented artist in her own right. Francis, his health flagging and eyesight fading but undimmed in spirit, greeted me--ginger and rye in hand--in their lovely garden where we talked about many things, including pinup. Inside the cottage I pored over his amazing collection of vintage pulps, many of which were reproduced in Stolen Sweets, and rare illustrated books by Barbier--whom he especially admired--and others. The shelves were stacked floor to ceiling with thousands of old 78's all in their original brown liners. Francis had one of the largest collections of blues and gospel records in the world (many of which have been remastered in a series of CD's. I think Francis may have written the liner notes). I had a grand time and ended up staying an extra day, having missed the last train back to London. In the years since Francis' health continued to ebb but he was comfortable to the end, supported by Pam's unflagging devotion, amazing energy and occasional sips of good wine that Pam would slip him while the nurses weren't looking. Francis will be missed by many but his words, art and spirit live on.

A Hat Trick!

2009-12-10T06:22:00.000-08:00

After the last two posts what choice did I have but to pore over my files for other examples of hats. And boy did I find one. Here we see yet another fine example, again from a 1941 issue of Young's. The scan is lousy, but in this case I do have a physical copy of the Breezy Stories where this image first appeared back in 1936. Unfortunately it is in utterly abysmal shape and my paltry photoshop skills were redlined just to get the image to where you see it. But even with these crummy reproductions it is evident that the printing quality of the Young's mag suffers terribly. If I'm lucky maybe one of these days I'll be lucky enough to get my hands on a clean copy so we can see what she looked like in all her "unenthumbered" glory.
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Contemplating our beached maiden one has to wonder why Bolles didn't get the opportunity to do work for the so-called slicks, or mainstream periodicals such as Liberty or SAT, both of which ran cheesecake covers. The easy answer is that Bolles girls were too hot. Try as he might (or perhaps he didn't) you couldn't hide that fact that the Bolles girl was not residing next door. Take a look at these side by side comparisons of work by Bolles and Liberty covers dealing with similar topics and published within months of each other.The Liberty covers smack with nostalgia and more than a bit of kitsch, whereas the Bolles girls have not lost any of the frisson that got him into trouble 75 years ago. And therein lies the problem. Bolles was just too successful for his own good.

Is this what she ended up wearing to the beach?

2009-12-07T20:58:00.000-08:00

After my last post I had been lamenting the fate of our beach beauty so cruelly left off the front page, when another possibility flashed in my head. So I present this smashing cover that appeared on the newsstands in 1941 in the dysfunctionally titled Young's Snappy Realistic Stories. As best as I can tell, Young's was sort of a mash-up with the remains of what was once merely Young's Magazine along with dollops of Breezy Stories, Snappy Stories and perhaps Yellow Book, all of which were the legacy of the publisher Courtland Young, who got his start back around 1912 with the long lived Snappy Stories. Snappy is regarded as the first of the so-called sex pulps and more important for us, is where Bolles had some of his best work published. In the mid-1930s these titles were acquired by Phil Painter publications who managed to keep Breezy Stories on the newsstands until nearly 1950, in part by recycling many of Bolles early Breezy covers. Unfortunately, Bolles had no residual rights to his artwork and so didn't see a plug nickel out of this. Worse yet, take a look at the lousy hand lettered text penned in directly over Bolles signature. This was clearly no accident, Painter publications was not only too cheap to shell out for new cover art, they also weren't even willing to pay to have an engraver to tool out Bolles' signature or block it out with some type. Fortunately for us, Bolles still gets credit for what was a really smashing cover that imaginatively combines several of his signature elements. There's the unique employment of the bull's (Bolles'?)-eye as a compositional element and as a frame for the background. Notice how it intersects her hat precisely at its at its apsides or extremes--not by accident--and that the arc of the circle also intersects the shadow cast over her face). There's also the bimorphic shadow, a really cute animal feature with terrier and the the red blanket, which acts both as a sort of shadow but also works to thrust the composition toward the viewer. Basically the entire repertoire of Bolles tricks.

The only problem with this story is the image to our right, clearly the same girl as the Young's cover, albeit cropped and in a different suit. This issue of Breezy is from 1938 and I'd bet the cover was likely reused from yet an even earlier issue, perhaps as early as 1935 during the short time when Bolles was signing his covers for Breezy. So it's more likely the concept painting in the previous post was inspired by this cover rather than the other way round. But what about the costume change in the two versions I show here? It just makes the sorting this out more complicated, compounded by the unfortunate fact that I lack a complete run of covers to Breezy or Young's. So there remains work to be done and art to be discovered!

She didn't make the cut

2009-12-02T14:04:00.000-08:00

Our fetching lass is known as a comp, or comprehensive sketch, in this case for a Film Fun cover that was never to be. The painting was sold at a Heritage Auction a few months back and would I ever wish I could brag that she was hanging out in my study. But alas, she exists only in my memory, or more accurately my hard drive's memory. I am lucky enough to own a comp of another Film Fun cover completed in 1941, and my guess is that this painting was done around the same time. It's curious to me that Bolles would still have been making such detailed studies, having 20 years and nearly 200 Film Fun under his belt. More so that the logo was painted in so carefully. By the way, I am pretty convinced that Bolles himself designed this logo for Film Fun, which first appeared in January of 1926 (he was a master letterer and designed other well known logos for commercial products including one long used for Bond Bread). But I have found one photo of a final Film Fun painting with the logo painted directly on it so perhaps this wasn't so unusual.
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So why didn't our Bolles girl make the cut? I think the image is lovely and I like her hairdo, which seems to be more in the vein of Rita Hayworth than the tightly coiffed Betty Grable style he often relied on. While Bolles posed a lot of his girls in beach scenes, this image doesn't match up with any of them and I think the only cover that comes even remotely close is this stunning image from 1940. By the way the original painting for this issue was offered for sale on eBay about seven years ago and if one of you happens to own it I would love to include a photo of it for my book project.

Let's just hope there are more examples like our fair beach maiden out there yet to be discovered.

In the Clouds Over Our Bolles Girl

2009-11-22T20:03:00.000-08:00

After the years I've spent hunting down the work of Enoch Bolles, "new" finds are few and far between, so this cover was a real joy to have come across. And what a nice image it is. I love the perspective and the nightscape of the city far below. Typical of most of Bolles' covers for Snappy Stories that depict a couple, it is the heroine who is in control of the situation. In fact, it's a good thing her beau is safely seated; he's so giddy with the sight of her, one false grope and he'd be careening over the precipice. Though from the looks of her it would be no great loss. Or perhaps I'm misreading the story line.

The Style Behind the Cover: Abril Lamarque

2009-11-16T21:28:00.000-08:00

If a newsstand was a speakeasy and magazines drinks, Film Fun would be the publishing equivalent of soda water. Pop the cork and you're blasted with an attention grabbing spray of bubbles and gas, which just as quickly hisses away into the ether without a hint of aftertaste, leaving you thirsty for another. It was the ultimate publishing ephemera during a time when an issue of Esquire could run over 200 pages and a half million words with works by literary luminaries such as Dos Passos and Hemingway. But Film Fun had some heavyweights in its bullpen. And foremost among them was its first art editor, who went on to become one of the most important magazine designers of the first half of the 20th century. He was also a master caricaturist during the time when that art form was at its zenith.

Abril Lamarque joined Film Fun soon after it was acquired in the mid 1920s by Dellacorte publishing from the financially tipsy Leslie-Judge, a unwise sale because Film Fun was the only solvent periodical out of their lineup. At the ripe young age of 20 one might presume Lamarque a bit too big for his britches to shape the magazine, but you'd have bet wrong. Despite his youth Lamarque had large ambitions and sophisticated ideas about design and he applied them in Film Fun, and later other Dellacorte publications. Aside from his editorial duties, Lamarque also produced spot illustrations, caricatures of film stars and for many years a one page cartoon, some examples of which I've included here. While with Delacorte, Lamarque contributed to a number of other ventures including a short lived prototype of the comic book entitled what else, The Funnies that debuted (and folded) in 1929, and the wildly successful Ballyhoo, which influenced later generations of humor magazines ranging from Mad to National Lampoon. Among his other creative inventions were imaginative variations of crossword puzzles, one which was intended to be read over the airwaves and another based on caricatures of what else, film stars.

Lamarque hired and nurtured staff who themselves would become influential designers such as the late Otto Storch, who credited Lamarque for sticking with him while he was learning the ropes and ruining assignment after assignment. His eye for talent took him to unusual places, including a back shed in New York where he found the folk artist Karol Kozlowski, whom he championed and brought to wide attention in the academic art world. Not surprisingly for a man of such manifold talents, Lamarque eventually moved on and took a step up from Film Fun to where else, The New York Times, where he oversaw a major design of the Sunday magazine that still bears some of his touches.

His career grew over the years to include consulting for many major corporations and design work that graced the covers of leading magazines with his unique skills and vision. Lamarque died in 1999. A noted amateur magician who created many original tricks, his passing was honored by a broken wand ceremony led by the Society of American Magicians.

Bidding Adieu to Intimate Apparel

2009-11-05T09:12:00.000-08:00

We end our week of appreciation for intimate apparel as interpreted by Enoch Bolles with this lovely painting from Snappy Stories. I believe the year is 1926 but am not certain. In this case I actually do have a physical copy of this in my collection, but only the cover. For reasons evident to Bolles fans, a lot of Snappy subscribers would carefully clip the covers and then toss the contents, presumably after at least giving them the once over. The covers however, got the over and over but yet when I find them they are nearly always still in pristine condition.

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The covers Bolles did for Snappy Stories were a departure as they had more involved compositions and narrative themes absent in most all his other magazine work. Typically the painting would depict a key event from one of the featured stories within the pages of the magazine, or perhaps it was the other way around. It was often the case that pulp writers were shown the cover selected by the art editor and instructed to craft a story after it. It gives a whole new meaning to the "tale" wagging the dog.

Intimate Apparel Week: Sheer Delight!

2009-11-04T06:24:00.000-08:00

We can't do justice to the theme of intimate apparel without including this image, which appeared on the October 1937 issue of Film Fun. It's among of the most sought after of all his magazine work and I still don't have a copy of it, so I was forced to post a photo of the original painting. Alas, it's not in my collection either. This image, along with the one posted yesterday provide ample evidence of Bolles' mastery in depicting the texture of clothing, be it velvety, silky or sheer. And of course we mustn't forget the shoes. Manolo Blahniks' got nothing on Bolles.

Intimate Apparel Market Week: A celebration made for Enoch Bolles

2009-11-02T20:33:00.000-08:00

Yet again, we invoke yet another arcane holiday as a pretense for celebrating the art of Enoch Bolles. And even the most casual fan of his knows that intimate apparel and Enoch Bolles go hand in silk glove. In fact much of Bolles early work as a fashion illustrator included ads for ladies unmentionables, and he used this experience to good effect throughout his career as a cover artist.

To start things off off we turn to one of most well known of all Bolles covers, from the November 1936 issue of Film Fun. I've stripped out the text so we can focus our attention fully on Polly. The bird is pretty cute too.

Can you see me better now?

2009-10-30T15:49:00.001-07:00

I was sure I had a nicer version of this cover somewhere and here she is, courtesy of TJ and his amazing photoshop skills. The post of this cover from yesterday has "peeked" the interest of a lot of readers of this blog; I've received several other examples of keyhole covers from Beau and so now we know that other artists were onto this theme before Bolles. Mark told me about a Kay Francis movie where a keyhole motif was used as part of the title sequence. I'd love to see that! At some point I'll post all the other examples I come across and see how far back we can trace the girl through the keyhole theme. Finally, in celebration of Halloween here's a cute Spicy Stories cover from 1935. Sorry again for low quality but I only have this as a scan and not a very good one.

Who're you looking at?

2009-10-28T20:58:00.001-07:00

It's only too bad that I don't have a better scan of this 1937 issue of Spicy Stories, or a real copy for that matter. She truly pushes the envelope--along with some buttons--and is an early example of what has been come to be called a "keyhole" cover. A lot of other pinup artists, among them Peter Dribben, seemed to favor this motif and it's become something of a standard in pinup. I've yet to come across an earlier version of the keyhole cover and is the only example I've seen where the room key is a part of the composition.

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Which brings me to the theme of this post. Who first came up with this idea? I've written other posts where I display Bolles covers that fall into one pinup setup cliché or another (upskirt etc.) but my question is whether Bolles first dreamed up this idea or did he take it from another artist. The field of etymology deals with the coinage of words and their usages but I am unaware of a visual analog of this, at least for the case of illustration.

Perhaps the time is ripe to propose the creation of a new branch of art criticism, but what to call it? Pinupology?

Mulligan Day was October 18, I'm taking mine now

2009-10-18T20:12:00.000-07:00

The Bolles covers from Laughter, a periodical in the vein of Judge and Life that ran from 1925 to 1927, really tickle my fancy. They ranged from his standard oil paintings to more cartoon-like covers resembling pen and ink sketches, like this example. It's only too bad that the magazine didn't last longer, but toward the end it started to run other artists on the cover, a familiar story for Bolles. The likely scenario was that as sales began to ebb art editors began to economize on cover art and turned to other illustrators, not that Bolles was commanding exorbitant prices.

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Below a lovely example of his advertising work done about the same time as the Laughter cover (1925). I've included it for comparison to dispel the myth that Bolles resorted to "cartoony" because he couldn't do anything else. As much as I like the portrait, it's the fabulous the typography, all in Bolles' hand, that makes this painting aces.

Hold That Pose!

2009-10-11T20:30:00.000-07:00

Do you have a favorite style of Bolles girl? On display today are three prime examples spanning 13 years, all in the same pose and predicament. On our immediate left is a put out but still fabulous flapper from a 1924 issue of Film Fun, below we see a perky but slightly pettish officer sporting a decidedly modern interpretation of a sailor suit, who appeared on a 1931 cover of Spicy Stories, and the vamp in the body stocking from a 1937 issue (fantastic cleanup courtesy of TJ).

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Each epitomizes the Bolles style of the era though it must be said that the Film Fun girl is a lot more curvy than the John Held Jr. body type Bolles appeared to be emulating a year later. The 1931 Spicy girl comes right in the midst of a two year period when Bolles was either undersizing the body or oversizing the head on his girls, or both. And the 1937 example shows him Bolles in the apotheosis of all his mannerisms. Notice how she has not a hint of concern about the growing fissure between her seams. The concern (anticipation?) of her audience, well that's another matter. It's only too bad there isn't a version of this pose from the 1910's when Bolles was working for Judge, otherwise we could add an Edwardian version for yet another comparison.

These examples highlight one of the things I like best about Bolles, namely how he stayed true to his core. There are stylistic references in his earliest published work that run throughout his entire career, but at the same time he adapted his style for the both the fashion and the figure of the times. The other thing evident in these comparisons is that his style did evolve over the decades; the relaxed yet precise brushwork during the 1920s was gone by the early 1930s, supplanted by canvases so smooth they sometimes appears airbrushed. It's also interesting to compare the treatment the girls hands, and if you've been reading this blog you already know that Bolles was close to obsessed about how hands looked. From these examples it is clear he put a lot of thought into them. He also certainly was aware of that he was revisiting the same pose and made some efforts to avoid merely resuscitating the same stance and look. What's curious to me is how he remembered all this. He painted at least a hundred magazine covers between each of of these and so one might suppose there was something special about the initial pose (and I'm in agreement here) that made him come back to it. I do know he saved at least some of his proofs so he did have reference materials.

There are yet more examples of revisited themes, outfits and poses and I'll be sharing these in future posts.

Just a Little Taste

2009-10-03T15:53:00.001-07:00

My interest in Enoch Bolles began over a decade ago, and as many of you know it has evolved into a goal to publish a book about his life and art. Toward that end I've worked to learn as much as I can about him and to root out new examples of his art, both published and in the original. Its been frustrating at times but there have been successes in uncovering "new" examples of magazine covers and advertising art as well as locating originals owned by collectors who have graciously allowed me to have them photographed for the book. Some of this material has appeared in the articles on Bolles and Film Fun I've written for Illustration Magazine. In additional to these articles, a sampling of previously unseen art and photos has made its way on this site. Still, much of what I've found has remained in storage so to speak, for the obvious reason that if it's already up on the web or published in an article what's the point of a book. But hoarding it has been no fun at all so from time to time I'll be serving up some toothsome hors d'oeuvres. On tonight's menu we have a very rare 1923 vintage cover to Film Fun, taken directly from the proof. Consider it a sort of amuse oeil.

Paint Me a Picture

2009-09-24T12:02:00.001-07:00

A question by frequent visitor Gary about how many Bolles paintings got me onto this project, which is something I've been meaning to do for a long time. Here we see a graph showing all the Film Fun covers done by Enoch Bolles from 1923 to the magazine's last issue in September 1942. This doesn't include the 1942 annual as I don't know when it was published, nor 1922 which I forgot to add until it was too late (for the record Bolles painted the October and December issues). The Blanks during 1926-27 were months when Film Fun was not published, which I think corresponds to the period that Leslie-Judge was selling off the magazine. All later blanks are months when the magazine cover was done by another artist or were, egads, photos. The question marks represent paintings that survived for a time but may or may not still exist, with some of these having been extensively reworked by Bolles.
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As would be expected, the majority of the 29 original Film Fun paintings known to exist were from the later years of the magazine. What is interesting are the outlier years; three painting from 1925 are still around, 1937 with half of the year's output surviving, and 1940 where three and perhaps four of eight still exist. The 1937 trend holds for Breezy Stories and Spicy Stories. For some reason Bolles, or somebody else, held on to a lot of of paintings from 1937 through 1938. As far as I know, there's just a single surviving original painting from Gay Parisienne out of the 46 he did, and just one each from the entire run of Tattle Tales and Bedtime Stories. It also appears that no originals survive from 20 other titles Bolles did cover work for, but let's hope I'm wrong. As many of you know interest in Bolles' work has skyrocketed with record prices in recent Heritage auctions. This clearly has brought some pieces out of hiding, or perhaps just out of the den. Feast your eyes on this cover for the March 1938 issue of Spicy Stories that Heritage will be selling in their upcoming illustration auction. Until I saw it I had no idea the original was still around and let's hope there's more where she came from. If you have information on original Bolles paintings or corrections to my 'statistics' I'd love to hear from you!

International Eat an Apple Day!

2009-09-18T13:21:00.000-07:00

Ok, so it was yesterday, but I'm not about to wait another year, simply to be calendarically correct. The Breezy Stories is a 1944 reprint from an issue I would bet was published in 1937 or '38. For whatever reason a very large proportion of Bolles originals that survive were painted during this two year period. It's too bad this cover suffers from such lousy printing but below I have reprinted the original painting, or what became of it. Bolles reworked a number of his paintings a

nd again, most were originally done in 1937 or 1938. In my estimation the original is preferable to the repaint, but it does show how richer his

palette was than what appeared in the printed version. I also think the repainting may have been a sort of warm-

up for his cover for the April, 1942 cover of Film Fun which could well be considered his most

brazen. I'll do an entire post on her soon and so you can judge for yourself.

Signature Statement

2009-09-08T13:06:00.000-07:00

In my previous post I closed with a challenge to find an unusual element to the Breezy Senorita, and I must admit it was not easy. Take a look below and you'll see the answer. It was Enoch's signature. Or at least what looks like a Bolles signature because I don't think he actually signed it. Aside from Film Fun Bolles only signed a handful of magazine covers and for the record here are the titles: America's Humor (one issue), Gay Book (two out of seven issues), Screen Romances (two issues), Talking Screen (one issue), Judge (nearly every issue he did), Puck (one issue), and Wit O' the World. He initialed almost all of his covers for Snappy Stories and a few for Laughter, Live Stories and Zest, but that was it. My guess is that less than half his Film Fun covers were signed or initialed though I've seen several originals where the signatures were cropped out or perhaps even tooled out by the engravers. Bolles was more apt to sign Film Fun in the 1920s and by the late 1930s he had virtually stopped (one of these days I'll put all this up on an Excel spreadsheet). Even his family had to beg to get Bolles to sign portraits he had done for them.

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But when Bolles did sign his covers his name became a part of his compositions. They were rarely rubber stamped; he constantly tinkered with the lettering which varied from issue to issue, as did the color. Often, he positioned it half in shadow so the lettering would transition from positive into negative space. Compare Bolles with the invariance of George Petty, who's signature was essentially a chop (no wonder, he trademarked it) and Vargas (who had it trademarked without his knowledge!). Armstrong's was a gorgeous mess of loops, almost begging to be yanked into an indecipherable Gordian knot of a scrawl, but after some early experimentation, it never changed.

So now take another look at the Breezy Stories signature and you'll see how wrong it looks. Aside from the scale, which is smaller in relation to the painting than anything else Bolles has done, it just seems off. Missing is the sweeping brush stroke and casual skill with lettering so evident in the other examples. Instead you get what looks like an attempt at forgery, which is what I think it is. In 1935, the year this cover was first published there were several other Breezy covers that were signed by Bolles, and the signature looks exactly the same in each. I think what we are seeing is an engraver's attempt at copying the Bolles signature. Aside from four or so covers in 1935, no other of his Breezy covers were signed.

Now let's reexamine our feature cover, from 1932. Bolles put a lot of extra flourish into the signature (and I'm sorry this copy has so much cover wear). It is unusual but the girl is the real outlier. The painting is well done and likely an accurate depiction of Margaret but alas, she looks nothing at all like a Bolles girl. And just who was Margaret Poggi is another bit of a poser. I could not find out a lick about her, even on imdb.com. It makes me wonder whether this image may have been a sort of leftover from an assignment Bolles did for Fox Films (he did some work for the company from time to time). If anyone could find something out about her or even better, snag a photo I would be grateful.

Knife to meet you

2009-08-31T12:49:00.001-07:00

Watch out! This senorita means business. After the recent post discussing how Lupe Velez was so casual about brandishing her sidearm I thought it would be interesting to follow up with a cover where the Bolles girl looked like she was both willing and able to do some bodily harm. This 1940s reprint from a 1935 issue of Breezy Stories is a most unusual Bolles cover. The most obvious reason is because Breezy Stories was a pulp that trafficked in stories of a rather demure nature far removed from the true Spicy pulps. As described in a 1932 issue of Writer's Digest the editors of Breezy looked for: "dramatic, powerful human problem stories in many of which the sex angle is merely suggested." Curiously the article later indicates the editors "do not care for stories that have a distinct foreign flavor." Despite these high minded descriptions it is obvious that Bolles was hired to to sex things up and add a pinch of foreign spice. Not only did the cover have the exotic accent claimed to be so unpalatable by the editors but also a threat of violence that was entirely absent from within the pages of the magazine.

With this cover Bolles was dipping his brush into the spicy menace genre monopolized by Culture Publications, an imprint started by Harry Donenf e ld (who later made his fortune with DC comics) that included in its line-up Spicy Detective Stories, Spicy Adventure Stories, Spicy Mystery Stories, and later adding the incongruous Spicy Western Stories. As risqué as were the stories inside their pages, they paled against the visceral impact of the covers, particularly those by the master of the genre Hugh Ward. His fulsome, barely clothed women practically burst with goggle eyed panic as beetle-browed thugs, mad scientists and backwoods geeks menaced them with dagger, pistol, poisonous snake, blackjack, raygun, scimitar, bullwhip, syringe, branding iron, spear, dumbbell (wielded by the carnival strongman), arrow, harpoon and other instruments of violence. For the sake of comparison, most of the covers shown here involve knives. They are also unusual because they depict some tough harem girls you wouldn't want to mess with, instead of the typical shrieking showgirl. But just from these few examples it is clear that Ward owned the Spicy Menace genre. Even H.L. Parkhurst's covers for these titles, which dealt with equally lurid setups, appear almost classical in contrast.
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Aside from the standard woman in peril theme there were at least two other storylines that run through the spicy menace covers. One pandered to race fears, and the other not so subtly hinted about the impending fate of a brazen woman foolish enough to display her charms to the wrong audience. Not surprisingly the spicy menace titles were prime targets for decency leagues and the editors tried to succor them by publishing less graphic versions of the covers and later by replacing the Spicy Titles with the less provocative "Speed". Neither worked, and they were eventually hounded out of circulation.

So back to our Bolles girl. She must be considered a sort of bespoke or one-off cover as Bolles never did another that remotely resembled her situation or disposition. And frankly, I don't think he was comfortable doing this cover. For as suggestive and even salacious as some of his other work was, it totally lacks the misogyny and sadism that run so rampant through Spicy Menace art. It's also curious that it appeared just a few months after the Culture Publications titles hit the newsstands. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Ward painted the Hashish for Hoshepure cover to show Bolles how spicy menace was done. Finally, there's one other unusual detail in the Bolles cover painting and no, it's not the lack of the raised pinky. Can you spot it?

Foxy Hunter

2009-08-22T15:09:00.000-07:00

Just a short post this time around. I've been in England this week and have discovered that our man Bolles has been misleading us about the appearance of women on the other side of the pond. Consider the evidence on your left. Our cover girl to this 1935 issue of Spicy Stories has nothing in common with the Geordie's I've spied strolling the river walk, as attractive as they are. But perhaps I simply haven't looked hard enough, and so I will update you if my research yields any new insights. As some of you know Bolles did an entire series of covers on girls of the world and so my work must continue, undaunted.

Cover Girls

2009-08-14T18:53:00.001-07:00

This 1930 issue of Talking Screen, which was soon retitled Silver Screen, is among one of only four cover portraits that Bolles did in his long career. To my mind it is far and away his best. It is instantly recognizable as a Bolles but still captures the essence of Nancy (she's always seemed a bit of a pixie to me). The gauzy look to the edges and lines make me think she was done in oil pastel, a medium Bolles would only have employed by directive. His cover for the debut issue of Talking Screen was a pastel of Norma Shearer in the Armstrong style, so blatant was it that Armstrong did his own version of of pose just a few months later for a competing movie rag. This Carroll cover is far more successful and I only wish there were more. The one unfortunate element is that the type runs right over Enoch's signature, which is uncharacteristically large.

Now it is true that Bolles did a dozen or so figural illustrations of Hollywood starlets for Film Fun but most were a bit of a disappointment, clearly taken from stock photos--despite the captions claiming they were specially posed for Film Fun--and they come off a bit generic. The lone exception was the over the top painting of Lupe Velez as pirate girl. I would be grateful if someone could explain to me the popularity of the girl-as-pirate, for a while it seemed that every illustrator worth his salt was shoving them off the plank one after another. The Bolles cover certainly captures the vivacious energy of the Mexican Spitfire, perhaps because she may have actually posed for it, or at least that is what Enoch's daughter once told me. The one misfire in this painting is the lame flintlock. I could swear Lupe's brandishing a purse sized can of mace.

Last Call!

2009-08-06T19:55:00.001-07:00

Drat! Or should I say draft? Midnight yesterday was the last call for beer day. This is a cover I've been waiting for an opportunity to share for so long I simply couldn't throw it back in the cooler for another year. A bit of history: long ago I spotted a smudgy thumbnail of this 1922 issue of Judge on eBay and it immediately set my Bolles radar pinging. I had no choice but to get it. After the issue showed up in the mail my intuition was confirmed. The telltale EB was faintly initialed in the shadow of the glass (notice the tiny conceit of how the descender of the "B" extends ever so slightly out of the shadow). What a thrill. This has to be the most atypical cover of any Bolles ever did.

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So what clued me in? First, even at low resolution I could tell it was a quality illustration, but then Judge had a bullpen full of top rate illustrators including the likes of Flagg, Held, and Lagatta. What set this image off were the lighlights. Bolles did a lot of commercial art and reflective materials (glass, porcelain) often had strong highlights with the light source located directly in the midline. Second, the shadow had some Bolles touches too it, amorphic with a warm to cold register. Or maybe I just lucked out.

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At any rate I think the cover is a hoot, and you have to wonder how long it took Enoch to paint all those little bubbles. And of all things, the cover was swiped by another artist (Bolles hated that) nearly a decade later, on another cover of Judge no less (hard to believe prohibition lasted that long). Who knows if the "model" was a glass of root beer or the real thing. Although Enoch might have an occasional beer I very much doubt if he took his oils and canvas to the nearest speakeasy to solicit an appropriate model.

Cheers!

Walk on Stilts Day?!

2009-07-27T15:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is. Really! Once again, we have a perfectly topical example by Bolles on hand to help us in acknowledging this most inexplicable of celebrations. And what a great example she is. I love the bows and how the tails drape behind her. She's having no trouble at all negotiating the stilts even with those pumps. Our Bolles girl is certainly no klutz.

True Inspiration!

2009-07-21T17:19:00.000-07:00

The classic illustration blog Today's Inspiration celebrated its 1,000th post yesterday. It's probably safe to assume most of you are well familiar with TI (I get more feeds from it than any other site on the internet). Started four years ago by the commercial illustrator Leif Peng, TI is a wide ranging survey on illustration that balances entertainment with erudition. And of course it is chock full of fabulous scans of great art. Leif's most recent series of posts has been on the manifold genius of Al Parker, but for me (and I suspect many other followers) it is his entries on the many the long forgotten talents that are most inspirational. With passion and conviction, Leif reminds us again and again that there was a time--not that long ago--when illustration was a vibrant, influential field teeming with talent and imagination.

I also owe Leif a personal note of gratitude. Two years ago my Enoch Bolles flickr site was 'erased' by an anonymous sysadmin because the scans I posted weren't mine. Leif was sympathetic to my cause and graciously provided me space in TI to write about Enoch Bolles and present some of his art. The enthusiastic feedback I got inspired me in turn to make the leap to create my own blog (shoutout to the Dawl for making it look so good), and Leif''s support has also spawned several other illustration blogs. So let's all raise our glasses to toast Leif and let him know we are looking forward to the next one thousand posts on TI.

P.S.: Leif has posted his top 10 most downloaded images. Can you guess the theme? PINUPS!

Upped-skirts, Downed Panties and Other Pinup Clichés

2009-07-17T20:58:00.000-07:00

There's a very amusing post at Illustration Art on the physics of pinup illustration. Unfortunately it made light of a subject worthy of more gravitas. So today debuts the first in a series of occasional lectures on the topic of pinup clichés. We must begin by acknowledging that a pinup is de natura iure itself a cliché, and so our endeavour will focus on the various subspecies made so popular by the leading pinup practitioners. Among them a special shout out (shout at?) must go to Art Frahm. He was the first to document the weird phenomenon of the opposing forces of updraft and gravity well, originating approximately at the girl's kneecaps with the result of a simultaneous upskirt and panty drop. In most cases Frahm embellishes the composition by the addition of the so-called lucky leerer and inexplicably celery, as first observed by the pop-culture commentator James Lileks. On our right we feature a rare example of a Frahm front flank updraft, which seems to have aroused as much enthusiasm (at least in the postman whose appointed rounds have come to a screeching halt) as would be expected from the more common rear orientation. The final element is the orientation of girl's face. For the sake of the composition but forsaking logic, her embarrassment is directed to the viewers of the painting rather than the lucky leerer, despite the fact that we are out of the site-line of the naughty bits.

Gil Elvgren is another of the upskirt devotees and he painted several examples early in his career, which began in the late 1930s. Clearly seen in these examples is his singular contribution to the genre; namely the pursed lips variation to the more general expression of abashment endemic to the pinup world. Elvgren used this expression only occasionally in his earliest work but by the 1970s (see example on right), the "Limpet"--as some disparagingly refer to it--became the standard of the Elvgren girl. Judge for yourself whether the term is apt.

The previous setups are variations on the more generic Klutz as depicted here by K.O. Munson. In most examples the girl is shown suffering from a moment of athletic ineptitude but other examples entirely forgo the pretense of a setup. We are led to belief the girl simply lacks the basic motor skills required for bipedalism.
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So where does Enoch Bolles fit in this discussion. It must be acknowledged that Bolles resorted to, if not created, many of the standard setups including the upskirt, the snagged skirt, the klutz, the girl astride beach toy, the girl with terrier, dressed in a tea towel, sleepy time girl, hairpin pose as well as many others. Yet there is a telling difference to the Bolles girl and that is her remarkable lack of self-consciousness. Caught in a situation that would shame others, she registers no embarrassment at all. Take a look at these examples and you'll see her unique temperament. True, our Spicy Stories girl may simply be unaware of her condition but you can't say the same for the girl on the cover of this 1937 issue of Film Fun. Miss Bo Peep blithely deals with her prediciment where the Driben girl registers obvious annoyance.

The final two covers are even more emblematic of the Bolles difference. Here we see standard setups for the upskirt and klutz. Most pinup girls would have been mortified but the Bolles girls are having a good time, and I hope you have too. Class dismissed.

The $ Game

2009-07-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Heritage auctions sold off another wing from the warehouse of works from the Martignetti collection. The prices for the Bolles paintings on the auction block as well as some of his other pinups were in a word, astonishing. The previous record for Bolles at auction was a bit over 38 grand at an Illustration House auction held several years ago. It was the painting was for this cover of Breezy Stories published in 1937 (for some reason a lot of paintings from 1937 have survived) and when you look at the magazine cover (gotta love that nameplate) it's easy to see why bidders were so motivated.

But the prices realized yesterday put Bolles in a whole new ballgame. His top item was the Slipping Beauty cover for the February, 1935 issue of Film Fun. There's no doubt that it is a special Bolles but I was shocked to see that when the mallet fell the winning bid topped $65,000! It went more than the Petty's, the Vargas pinups for Playboy and even a really nice Elvgren (though two other Elvgren's went for an incomprehensible 200 grand!!). Unless pinup collecting has suddenly become a hobby of Goldman Sachs traders, it is hard to fathom this recent surge of interest. On one hand I'm pleased to see works of Enoch Bolles gaining wider recognition and interest (you can see a video of a couple of the paintings and other nice examples from Martignetti's collection at the Heritage auction web site) but on the other hand it bodes poorly for many collectors who might hope someday to own their own original. A few people have given me a bit of grief for contributing to this trend, but I sincerely doubt that anything I've written about Bolles has had an impact on this. I hope not, at least not until after I get my hands on that one particular Bolles original I pray is still out there sitting in somebody's closet, begging for a new home.

The Skin Game

2009-07-08T21:00:00.000-07:00

I've just been reading a recent post in an art blog (to remain anonymous) which I typically enjoy, but not today. The post is on the topic of skin. High praise is accorded to classic artists and illustrators who dutifully chart every scar, mole, blemish and age spot. But when the example turns to pin-up artists the tone of the goes red. It is true, pin-up artists invariably make skin tones pure and rosy, glowing without the slightest taint of imperfection that the blogger and his pantheon of followers hold so praiseworthy. Not surprisingly the entire genre of pin-up received repeated lashings from the tip of a wet Windsor & Newton Kolinsky Sable brush. One comment in particular zeroed in on our man Bolles with a particularly snooty aside (comparing his girls to Gumby!) and as you might anticipate, that set me off. But first, a personal disclosure. Generally speaking I am not a pin-up fan. There are yards of it that I find insipid, misogynistic, poorly rendered or just plain dumb (think Art Frahm). But there is the good stuff and of course there is Enoch Bolles, who we all know by now was much more than just a pin-up artist. Plus it is simply unfair to compare salon artists with commercial illustrators who in the case of Bolles had the responsibility of eight mouths to feed while the economy was sunk in deep depression. Even back in his day there was a snobbery about what was called art-art versus commercial art. The debate was so serious that the guys who ran the big billboard companies would occasionally go to the absurd extreme of pasting up reproductions of classical paintings on outdoor billboards. Others claimed the art in their ads was the equivalent of fine art and so they were doing the public a service (Ha!).

Miriam Hopkins, by Enoch Bolles circa 1935. Unpublished as far as I know. As much as I admire Bolles' treatment of her skin, it's the amazing attention to her hair that really jumps out. This example should put to rest the notion that Bolles was merely a 'cartoonist'.

But back to Bolles. Skin-or at least skin color-was something he obsessed over all his life. He did not resort to tube colors or other quick fixes and in fact was continually tinkering with how to get it just right. He was trained in classic methods of painting by Robert Henri and other instructors at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design and was a keen observer of classic artists (one of these days I'll get around to posting his commentary on the techniques he thinks were used to paint the Mona Lisa). To give you an idea of Bolles' passion for getting "picture making" right, I've transcribed portions of two among the dozens of letters he exchanged with his daughter, Liza, who was a talented artist in her own right. Their correspondence involved a discussion of both theory and technique and they also exchanged study paintings. It's worth pointing out that Enoch was writing these letters from a mental hospital where he had spent nearly three decades! If there is any evidence against him "dying a mad-man" as as been claimed, then this is it. His writing reveals him to be engaged both intellectually and culturally. He was widely read and knowledgeable about an amazing range of subjects. But best of all the letters revealed his keen sense of humor and kindliness. The reality having to endure life in a hospital that housed over 7,000 patients did not rob Bolles of his humanity or sap his spirit.

Note: these are exerpts out of much longer letters. You'll notice that Enoch uses a sort of short-hand to describe certain techniques.

Enoch to daughter Liza, September, 1965 (subject: on painting a mango)

In your tilts with paints have you discovered that doing that tantalizing surface, or human skin, or an egg, depends upon a delicate progressive graying of the color from the third lighted hue on down? Lesson: mix orangy color of mango, red and yellow-this paled with white is your #2 circle with tiny bit of white in centre, #1. (Note: there is an illustration in the letter that corresponds to these numbers). To #2 mixture (orange and white) add very slightest amount of color (orange, red and yellow) and imperceptible amount of graying (blue) which will be #3, these three being your highlight. Now to #3 add small amount of color (orange) and gray slightly with blue and you have #4, the first halation from highlight. Add more color and slightly more blue #5, second halation. To this add enough color to be the true color of mango, gray slightly, #6. From here down in narrowing courses, enough in number to meet shadow, continue to add color plus red, more and more red as tone darkens and gray these with blue or black. This is not complicated after you have tried, made your mis-mixtures, finally got color and form. Of course mangos, vary in color but win your knowledge with one color of orange or light orange. If you haven't already mastered this you will be surprised by the illusion of color and form right up to the tiny brightest spot which is so important. You'll need red sable water color brush [illustrated in the letter] and of course, small flat red sable oil brushes. You will need many goes to get right mixtures and smooth blending but then you'll have a fascinating toy that most or many, painters don't have. Think of it this way; #6 is the color of mango-all above that is a sort of light-cap spreading over lighter than the true color part. Below #6 is easier, local color going down into redder hues properly grayed.

Enoch to Liza, 1968 (They had been mailing an oil portrait painted by Liza back and forth)

Our girls' neck is too dark, too red in front. Don't try for sterno-mastoid here, it would confuse you. Be led by the treatment of the copy I sent you. General color of light on front of neck, grayed red with tiny addition of yellow to match appearance but not quite brightness of face. Then match my spots of pink on cheeks and carry almost full length of cheek. Not pure pink. No made with parent color which I think was vermilion with little yellow added. Grayed of course by mixing vermilion with hue next above it and tiny bit of black. Be careful to match my grayed pink.

Now with the tiny reflected light. It is dependent upon the so-called third line which separates it from darkest lighted part of face as you see-in flesh this third line is usually made with red, black, very little which. The reflected light is usually red (more orange) bit of black, much lighter as you see, yet it can be the color of the reflecting light, whatever that may be. In modeling a garment, which the third line can be blue, almost pure, an illusion in bright lighting. Look at this old Leyendecker Post cover, double lighted, warm, cool. You will see third line running between the lights everywhere.

July 3: Compliment Your Mirror Day

2009-06-30T20:37:00.001-07:00

As the fourth of July neared my excitement grew. What a theme for a post! It was just a matter of finding the perfect patriotic pin-up. With over 500 magazine covers, countless advertising illustrations and other works you'd think the only difficulty would be picking out the best example. But try as I might nothing came even close. No girls straddling sky rockets, no flappers in Uncle Sam garb, no WW-I posters. It almost seemed that Bolles had made a conscious decision not only to avoid any art linked to the Fourth of July, but with any overtly patriotic theme.
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It's possible that this absence was simply a matter of timing. Bolles was not among the rank of illustrators who would have been invited to participate in the civilian preparedness campaigns that J.M. Flagg and other artists figured so prominently in. And his career was coming to an end just as the WW-II pin-up became codified by Alberto Vargas.
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So as a fall-back we will be celebrating Complement Your Mirror Day, and in this case I have far more than enough material (don't forget the great Gay Book cover with a mirror theme that was recently featured). Perhaps another day we can reflect on the symbolism of using mirrors as a prop, but for now it's enough to ponder the meaning behind this improbable celebration.

Pole Enhancing

2009-06-23T10:42:00.000-07:00

Watch it with that axe! This cover from the April 1935 cover of Spicy Stories has a lot going on but it's her expression that makes the cover work for me. The outfit, such as it is, would have been a lot more fun if Bolles had done her up in fire fighter's version of his famous biker girl uniform. The skimpy underthings don't make any sense at all. Well, maybe some. Afterall we are talking about Spicy Stories, a periodical pulled from the newsstands of New York city on order of the mayor, lest it arouse citizens to impure thoughts.

It's too bad that the preliminary sketch to this cover isn't around because I have this idea that Bolles' first attempt had her adorned in fireproof attire (though I have to say of the sketches for Spicy covers I've seen the editors rarely changed a thing). But if Bolles did have her dressed up too much the editors probably defaulted to the standard less is more approach to cover, so off went the uniform ("but keep the rubber boots"). A nice image still, but I can only imagine what Bolles could have done with a firegirl in a uniform.

The cover did generate considerable interest in the form of imitation, the theme of my last post and so I've decided to stay with it for a while. I'll follow this up with two classic Bolles images that were expropriated by other magazine cover artists. Curiously, each involves the model entwining her legs around various props. For your perusal, below are several other examples of girls pole sliding that followed the Bolles cover. The clues I provided in the previous post should help you identify the artists.

Postscript: Somone brought this Elvgren to my attention so I've added her to the growing fire pole.