One-Off Part Six

Our newest edition of the the One-Off series happens to be the very first of all Enoch's one-offs, and his third magazine cover.  Puck was an odd duck, paddling back and forth from a partisan political rag to a sort of humor mag.  For a brief stretch the covers featured what you might call proto-pinups, which were painted by the likes of Rolf Armstrong, Harry Horst Meyers, Neysa McMein and our man Bolles. Batting cleanup in this stellar lineup was the Viennese artist,Raphael Kirchner. Before moving from Paris to New York in 1914, Kirchner had established a thriving career as a society artist as well as providing illustrations for the likes of La Vie Parisienne. His work for Puck showcased a French inflected and ungartered eroticism that was absent from American illustrators.  A masterful technician, he worked in a number of media and strongly influenced the work of Alberto Vargas, who took Kirchner's place as the artist for the Zeigfeld Follies after his untimely death in 1917.  

Unlike the the girls of Kirchner and Vargas, who were content lounging in the boudoir, the Bolles girl was outdoors and on the go. Other artists, most notably Fisher and Gibson, were also painting the so-called New American Girl, but the Bolles girl was different. While the girls of Fisher or Gibson might be content with a game of croquet, the Bolles girl would rather pole dance off a buoy.  

Years later Bolles revisited this theme. The buoy may have been updated, but our Bolles girl hadn't changed a bit. She still loved to boogie!   .