Pop Art Pinup Girls

Mel Ramos had something to say about sex in the media, about societies celebrity-culture and growing voyeurism, about art and specifically about cheesecake, and he used pinup girls to say it. There seems to be a complicated love-hate relationship between the artist and his subject of cometary, as Ramos seems to adore his subject matter and yet has a certain contempt for the way it is used in popular media.

Roy Lichtenstein

Deriving a direct inspiration from the comic book and print world, Roy Lichtenstein would classically paint his works to look like the result of the printing methods of the times. He was saying something about being a painter in the age of mechanical reproduction in every piece, but each one also talked about other social issues. Women would star in his earlier work and the posh esthetics of then-contemporary fashions show up constantly.

Andy Warhol

Probably the most famed Pop Artist, Andy Warhol would iconize the most famous faces. What was Warhol’s work all about? Like Lichtenstein, he was addressing the painter’s role in the age of mechanical reproduction, in every one of his pieces, but each piece or series would deal with other issues, as well. The media’s “sexualizing” disasters and violence, societies superficiality, sexuality, religion and so on.










Most prevalent in his work was the theme of:

...a culture overloaded with attention attracting stimulation, in which people experience things as second or third hand entities - through TV and print as banal and redundantly commercial, that there is a need for affectless, superficial art.The artist and the viewer do not need or want an experience that is full of feeling or meaning - in fact it is better to be less interested and less involved in the experience of the art.

~ Contemporary Art Gallery ~

The celebrity faces he had printed would be mere copies of the original. Ironically enough, His images would become icons and immortalize the already existing iconicity of Jacky O, Liz Taylor and Marilyn Monroe.

Allen Jones

Moving into the BDSM realm (for all us modern pinup lovers ), Allen Jones introduced, what is known today as Fornophilia, into Pop Art. Jones was already doing, in the 60’s, what has only become more main-streamish, this past decade. Jones’ sculptures deal with women and how we are perceived in society through fashion and design. It’s a completely different pinup world.

Allan d'Arcangelo

Began as a Pop Artist, but became more abstract and conceptual as time wet by. His earlier images are distinct pinups and they are mostly an evocation of a far-off dream or memory. For d’Arcangelo pinup girls represent America, but his most interesting work, would be the reconstructive portrait of Marilyn Monroe, titled simply “Marilyn”:

‘Marilyn’ was painted in August 1962 shortly after she died. I was sad and angry. Sad because part of my boyhood was gone, and angry because she was so manipulated by Hollywood, the public and herself. Her death, either suicide or murder, was a desperate end of life. This painting, unmistakably her in the little hunch of her shoulder, describes how she had been used. Her smiling or pouting face is not presented nor her voluptuous body, but a two-dimensional figure, the residue of image-making. You are offered your turn to reconstruct the image in the same way. It’s a paper doll: tab A into slot A and so forth, with a pair of scissors inviting participation, making us all culpable.

~ Allan d'Arcangelo ~

Thanks for joining the tour,

Tags: pop art, Pinup Girls, popular media, print, comic book, Mel Ramos, Andy Warhol, Pop Artist, painter in the age of mechanical reproduction, Roy Lichtenstein, Low art, Allen Jones, pop-culture, art movement, 1950's, Allan d'Arcangelo, Marilyn Monroe