November 12, Elizabeth Cady Stanton's birthday

Sorry about the poor resolution but I wanted to get this image up today, and there was no way I could have dug up the issue and rescanned it in time. So here we see Bolles championing the right of women to vote, or at least he agreed to take on this assignment. Actually, for his time Bolles was very progressive as to the role of women in society. Among other things he encouraged his daughters to participate in sports, pursue higher education and follow their interests wherever they led them. From my biased perspective I think is evident in his work. Yes, he was a pin-up artist and his covers are laden with clichés and slathered with sex-appeal; some of the standard ingredients of objectification. But I think there is something more that comes through. Among other things his art is more gracious and affable compared with that of other pin-up artists of his time and since. And his girls certainly were more competent than the competition; they skied, climbed, flew and skydived while the others merely primped and preened.

Today is Veteran's Day

This certainly qualifies as a classic pinup but in 1941 the term was just entering into the venacular. In a future post I'll make my case that Bolles had as much if not more than any other illustrator in codifying the genre but ironically he left the scene at the very time when pinup peaked in popularity.

Marian Nixon, Enoch Bolles original painting for Film Fun

Ok, one more original, this a scan provided a few years back by Heritage auction. Starting in 1929 and for a couple more years Bolles did occasional movie star covers for Film Fun, and this one of Marian Nixon done in 1930 is one of his better likenesses. Certainly they were done from stock photos provided to the magazine but Enoch's daughter once told me that Lupe Velez actually posed for her cover, which makes sense to me because it is a total knockout. This cover too has something extra and it's not just the fabulous composition and court jester costume. Take a look at the details in the painting. It's Bolles at his best, there are carefully rendered color fields but his approach to the wrinkles and highlights was utterly relaxed. You can see the speed and precision in the brushwork (it takes total confidence to paint like that). A couple of years later Bolles' style evolved to a more mannered application and the brushwork disappeared.

"Sappho" Enoch Bolles original painting 1933

This may be the only surviving cover painting of the 'under-the-counter' title, Tattle Tales, which was one of the most notorious of the smoosh mags targeted by the vice cops under New York mayor La Guardia. Bolles would have been lucky to make a hundred bucks from this cover (the great Hugh Ward got even less and he complained about how difficult it was to collect). And any association with the magazine presented the risk of jail time, a fate suffered by several staffers and more than a few hapless newsstand sellers. The big question is why Bolles knocked himself out on these covers as they rank among his best. I'll be featuring several other unseen originals in some upcoming posts.

To Restore or Not to Restore?

For your perusal: a low-rez scan of a rather tattered magazine cover that I've applied my meager Photoshop skills to reviving. Aside from removing some of the more obvious stains I've warmed up the pallette, perhaps beyond what it looked like as it would have fresh on the newsstand. It wouldn't have been hard to completely bleach out the background of any spots but I decided enough was enough.

And that's the question I have for you. Would you rather see original covers in all their original stained and torn glory, or cleaned up to digital perfection? I admit that I can't keep from fixing up the most egregious damage but at some point I begin to wonder if something is lost. There are comic book sites where the scans of 50 year old pages are bleached not only of their age, but of their origins.

On the other hand, take a look at my pal TJ's handiwork below. The scan of dingy issue is as close as I'll ever come to owning it but what TJ has done makes me feel I am seeing the image as it may have appeared on canvas. Stolen Sweets was among the magazine Bolles worked for that used cheap printing methods and sometimes only printed in three colors. As far as I know there are no surviving paintings from this title so TJ's efforts are as close as we are going to get.

Did you vote?

A Very Early Enoch Bolles

I thought it was time to share something that has never seen the light of day. A few years back I got in contact with a person living in London who had this piece from 1910 and another dated, 1915. He knew I was the Bolles-guy so he graciously let me buy the pieces one charcoal stroke at a time, so to speak. I've seen a few earlier works by Bolles but this one knocked my socks off. The problem is that I have no idea of the context, who she was or how it got across the pond to England. But that's been the story more often than not.