Jil Elvgren's Pinapoteca: pin-up girls and their photo prototypes

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

At the beginning of the twentieth century, posters with girls were very popular in the United States, which the artist seemed to take by surprise: half-dressed or with a slightly lifted skirt. Such pictures were most often attached to the wall with buttons (pin) - hence the name of the posters and the style in which the images are made. Jill Elvgren's pin-up girl is a cheerful or surprised beauty with a slender figure and wavy hair. The American illustrator has been working for many years, but only now can we appreciate how similar the models are to the girls from the posters, and find out what features of their appearance were mercilessly erased to please the format.

The history of the pin-up poster dates back to the century before last, when illustrator Charles Gibson presented to the public his ideal of an American girl: beautiful, fashionably dressed, inquisitive and active. The author was lucky: his vision coincided with the tastes of his compatriots, and even the concept of "Gibson's girl" was formed. However, it was still not a pin-up.

Charles Gibson's pretty young ladies were idealized but not erotic. No upturned skirts and deep neckline: the yard is on the edge of the century, and perfection should be decent. But as time went on, the girls stopped wearing corsets and long dresses. However, the illustrations by Charles Gibson influenced the artists of the twentieth century, who created the pin-up girl type.

Gil Elvgren has also pinned his name to the pinup honors board. True, when he began to embody his ideal in a series of posters, the term "pin-up" did not exist yet - it appeared only in 1941. So the ideal. This is a young girl who lives next door, unaware of her own attractiveness - in short, the very charm and innocence, the real dream of a voyeur.

The main thing is to catch such a neighbor by surprise, and the very seductive details of her dress will open to the eye. The surprised faces of many pin-up ladies remind of portraits of babies from the stronghold of fabulous feminism - the Green City, which Dunno and his comrades had a chance to visit. There, I remember, everyone wanted their eyes to be bigger in the portrait, and their mouths smaller. American pin-up with a Russian flavor, however.

Jill Elvgren did something similar to the artist Tubik: in addition to the rounded lips and wide-open eyes, the heroines of his posters are overgrown with fluffy hairstyles (short hair is not a format). In this style, the American artist worked from the 30s to the 70s, having painted more than 500 oil works in total. He, as they say, got into the stream, so that the reckless neighbor girls brought fame and commercial success to the illustrator.