Pinup posit

When I first considered a pinup calendar for Peeling Wallpaper I knew I would have to choose carefully. I wanted the first image (they will change every couple of months) to be artful but a little bit naughty. At the same time I had a theme in mind: girl on car with tool. I looked at a lot of “classic” pinup art from the 1940s and 50s. The choice was not easy. There were a lot of talented artists to choose from. Their drawings were beautiful, as were the women they featured. Women with curves. Refreshingly, not waifs. Generally speaking, the state of undress in which these women are caught on canvas is no more revealing than the average teen-aged girl cruising the shopping mall these days.

In the end, it was the work of Gil Elvgrin (1914-1980) that I kept coming back to. In my mind, he was the best. There is so much detail in his drawings. Everything is perfectly proportioned. Everything catches your eye: the legs, the stockings, the flare of the skirt, the shoes, the hair, the lipstick. Everything.

As obvious as it was to me that Gil Elvgrin was the guy for me, it was equally obvious that Art Frahm was not! Frahm (1907-1981) was best known for his “ladies in distress” series. The scenes from this series are ludicrous. The women are quite literally having trouble keeping their panties up. Whether they are bowling, getting off the elevator, feeding the parking meter, changing a flat tire, getting on the bus, their undies keep falling down. What’s up with that, Art? Maybe it really was a problem back then. It was the post-Depression era, after all. Maybe these women were wearing hand-me-down knickers that were just too big. Hmm. Then again, maybe it was their diet. Too much celery. Maybe it was the celery!