Rolf Armstrong

Though there was no earthly reason he had to, but Armstrong like to paint his girls on location much as Sports Illustrated photographers do today in featuring the latest swimsuits.

Rolf Armstrong Self-portrait, 1914

When it comes to figural art, I've always had a weakness for pretty girls and the artists who paint them. Some time ago, in discussing the fairly limited tradition of nude figures in American art, I pointed out the fact that in the U.S., unlike Europe, such art, first of all, was late in coming (only after WW I) and instead of taking the high road to academic museums of art, instead traveled the "low road" paved with pin-up calendars, men's pulp fiction, advertising, and society magazine covers. In the past I've featured or discussed a few of these artists, Art Frahm, Charles Dana Gibson, Vargas, Howard Chandler Christy, most of whom, if they painted nudes at all, did so as something of a sideline. Over the course of the early 20th-century, before photography totally antiquated such art, there were perhaps no more than ten or twenty who in any way excelled at what they did. The point being that unlike Europe, which chastely cloaked its penchant for nude figures in a respectable, but thin veneer of classical mythology or feminine hygiene (those paintings titled, "bathers"), on this side of the Atlantic, the pretty girls were unabashedly sexy whether fully, scantily, or totally unclad. Any attempt to justify such art as anything more than sexually suggestive, usually revolved around humor or the beach. This defined the art of Rolf Armstrong.

Armstrong draws Cagney, ca. 1930s.

Armstrong's Karloff, promoting the
1935 release of Bride of Frankenstein.

As such artists go, Rolf Armstrong could almost claim to have been classically trained, having spent several years studying at the Art Institute of Chicago, later with Robert Henri (probably the Art Students' League) in New York, and then moving on to the Academie Julian in Paris. The man paid his academic dues (or tuition, at least). Judging from his 1914 self-portrait (above, left) he could done well modeling for other artists, he was quite the handsome young man. Topping off his training, and perhaps the most important aspect of it, Armstrong returned home in 1921 to complete his studies in Minneapolis at that famous art institution of Brown and Bigelow. There he learned the art of calendar painting. From that point, his career took off, allowing him a sort of playboy (not the magazine) lifestyle hobnobbing with, and painting, the likes of Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo, Henry Fonda, James Cagney, and Boris Karloff. Really? Boris Karloff ? (right).

Armstrong's early ideal of feminine beauty,
probably dating from around 1915 judging by the hair styles.

A Phototplay cover was about as good as
it got for an illustrator during the 1920s.

Born on April 21, 1889, in Bay City, Michigan, Armstrong was about as all-American as an artist could be. His father owned a company making fire boats as well as running a fleet of excursion vessels on Lake Michigan. They did quite well during the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition, but by 1899 their farm was in foreclosure, forcing the family to move to Detroit. His father died when he when Rolf was fourteen, prompting his mother to move to Seattle to live with her older son. There, the teeenage artist's natural talent took hold. He finished high school and headed back east to study art in Chicago. Strangely, Armstrong's first professional art featured men of action from the military, sports, and the old west. Something of an athlete himself, Armstrong taught boxing and baseball as well as art. And when he switched to pretty girls, they were not pinup models but wholesome girl-next-door types as seen in his Photoplay cover (above and at right).

Armstrong's change of style and content, probably from the 1930s.

Sexy, but not sexual.

During the 1920s, and especially the 1930s, as the American moral code relaxed somewhat, the demand for more and more risque female figures both for publications and calendars, grew more prominent. Comparing Armstrong's art over this period we find both the style and the content evolving. Both became more..."au naturale." Armstrong's list of clients grew longer and more impressive as the Depression, and later a World War raged on, including such big names as Photoplay, College Humor, Life, Every Week, Shrine, Pictorial Review, and Woman's Home Companion. Gracing the pages of these periodicals Armstrong's ads touted Pepsi, Pompeian Skin Care, Oneida Silverware, Palmolive, Kissproof makeup (left), and Hires Root Beer. None of these featured nudes.

From the 1950s--humor and a
flesh-colored swimsuit can do
wonders for a man's morale.

It's somewhat unfortunate that artists from this period, though they painted nudes from time to time (Armstrong more often than most), have become known as nothing more than pin-up artists. Unlike their European counterparts with similar work in the Louvre or the Uffizi, whose nude figures are revered as great art, American artists such as Armstrong and others are recalled as little more than "dirty old men." Yes, their work, to varying degrees, came to be quite sexy (as opposed to sexual). But the difference in how they are recalled today has as much to do with the synthetic prudery of the American culture than it does with their art, or art in the broader sense.

Rolf Armstrong, the master of
the "arty" pin-up.



An Armstrong "pin-up" from the 1940s. I wonder how many sailors and soldiers would like to have changed places with the calf?

 

Charles Dana Gibson

Studies in Expression, Charles Dana Gibson--no two alike.

Mr. Gibson, Portrait of Himself,
Charles Dana Gibson

I love illustrators. I hate those who look down upon them as something less than artists. In fact, insofar as their work is concerned, I see little need to separate the two other than to say that while all illustrators are artists, not all artists could make it as illustrators. Technically, the only line between the two is that illustrators have traditionally created primarily for publication while artists...not so much. During his career, Norman Rockwell blurred the line between the two distinctions to the point art critics and historians have mostly given up drawing one in his case, preferring the "slash mark" instead--artist/illustrator. Besides Rockwell, I especially love the work of Stevan Dohanos, Howard Chandler Christy, Jon Whitcomb, Ben Stahl, Art Frahm, Richard Dadd, and James Montgomery Flagg. Another of my favorites (I'm surprised I've not written on him before) is Charles Dana Gibson. Gibson was not like any of the artists listed above. He seldom, if ever, painted, but his drawings have become as iconic as any of the others, his name more recognizable than most of them.

Women drop things. Often they're adverse to picking them up, especially wearing tight corsets, long dresses, and tall hairdos.

If you can't read the extensive captioning beneath
the drawing, it involves a wealthy father
interviewing a potential suitor for his daughter.

I think what I like best about Gibson is not so much his art, which, like all illustrators, and indeed, many other artists, has become dated. One look and it screams: early 20th-century. No, what I like best is his sense of humor. It's sharp and dry, subtle, but ever-present though one couldn't quite class him as a cartoonist. Many such artists have a dry wit. The fact that Gibson consistently worked in black and white with pen and ink, suggests an affinity to cartoon art, yet, despite his self-portrait (above, left) he seldom exaggerated proportionally. His expressions are sometimes a bit comical as seen in his Studies of Expression (top) but never cartoonish. Humor, like art, can be dated, and Gibson's sometimes is, but even a hundred years after the fact, I still found myself laughing out loud at some of his wry observations and titles seen in his work. Gibson's dialog beneath his Civil Service (above, right) reads like the script from a TV sitcom. Likewise, I can identify easily with the men diving beneath the table to retrieve their wives' lost items (above). Been there, done that.

A Word to the Wise, Have a Good Book in Case You Are Bored.
I found the contrast between the uncomfortably stiff collars of the two young
men and the lack of such in the female attire more amusing than Gibson's title.

One of Gibson's illustrations
from The Prisoner of Zenda.

Gibson was born in 1867 in Roxbury, Massachusetts. His family tree sported two U.S. senators hanging from its branches and came decorated with considerable wealth. Displaying a great deal of talent in his youth, and with a family who could afford to send him the best art schools here or abroad, Gibson's art training, though excellent, was surprisingly limited--a mere two years at the Art Students League in New York (which may account for why he seldom painted). Nonetheless he sold his first drawing to Life magazine in 1887. He was twenty at the time. From there he quickly moved on to Harper's Weekly, Scribners and Collier's. Quite apart from his talent and sense of humor, the young man was apparently quite the self-promoter--an extremely valuable personal asset for any would-be artist, then or now. Gibson's "big break" came in 1898 when he was commissioned to do illustrations for Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda (above, left) and later, its sequel Rupert of Hentzau. The two books became quite popular as much for Gibson's illustrations as for their plots.

Picturesque America (detail), Charles Dana Gibson.
(Bathing costumes, not swimsuits.)

The Gibson Girls

Of course, Charles Dana Gibson is best known for his girls. In 1895, Gibson had the great good fortune to marry a very beautiful woman, Irene Langhorne, who happened also to have four equally beautiful sisters, all of whom he persuaded to pose for his illustrators. Consequently, his iconic Gibson Girls were born, and with that many feminine personalities all around him, no doubt served as ready sources of humor, whether they realized it or not. They were simple, elegant, always beautiful, but the primary consideration in drawing them was being able to render hair...lots and lots of hair, stylishly coiffed, piled high, with not a single strand out of place. However it wasn't just the look these lovely ladies presented, but their spirit and the substantial, though often hidden, influence they exerted over their husbands, that made the Gibson Girls the epitome of early 20th-century femininity.

The title of this one has long-since been lost, and with it Gibson's personal slant on its meaning, though the tall, slender, businessman bears a striking resemblance to the
original John D. Rockefeller.

An early Life cover by Gibson dating
from 1906. It's not very "X-massy."

Someone once commented that Norman Rockwell was such a part of The Saturday Evening Post's success that he, in effect, "owned" the magazine. The same could be said regarding Gibson and Life magazine. Actually, starting in 1918, he did become the editor and eventually gained part ownership of the popular news and general interest publication. Despite a ready means of promoting his art in a magazine he virtually owned and edited himself, the popularity of his Gibson Girls declined after WW I. Gibson and his lovely wife retired in 1836 to their summer retreat on a seven-hundred acre island off the coast of Maine where he took up, quite belatedly, painting. He apparently wasn't very good at it, I could find only one example of any of his illustrations done in color, and that dated from 1903.

The RKO advertising department got ahead of the production department.

Fifty years after Gibson's death,
one of Gibson's "girls" was
honored with a postage stamp.

Charles Dana Gibson died at the age of seventy-seven in 1944, but not before having a strong cultural impact, especially upon the minds of Life magazine readers. Even before his death, RKO Pictures in Hollywood bought the rights to his drawings for use in a motion picture, The Gibson Girl, a musical comedy which was to star Ginger Rogers in the lead. However, financial setbacks at the studio and reportedly a poor script caused them to cancel the project shortly before shooting was to begin. Fifty years later, a Gibson Girl did, have the distinction of gracing a 1995 postage stamp (right) and Gibson himself is said to have "invented" a martini which came to bear his name (gin, vermouth, and a pickled onion garnish).


 

Art Frahm

Tourists, Art Frahm

1950s glamorous beauties

By the time you're reading this, my wife and I may be sitting exhausted on a street curb in San Francisco not unlike Art Frahm's colorful friends above. We may be out of our minds, but we've chosen this year to take a cross-country driving tour, visiting our son and his family in Phoenix, then taking the "long way" back home to Ohio via L.A., San Francisco, maybe even Seattle. I don't know, but I'm guessing the American illustrator, Art Frahm, was far too busy (or had better sense) than to embark on such an exhausting excursion.

Often I chafe at those making any great distinction between artists (painters) and illustrators, but in Art's case, I'll tolerate any discussion of disparity. Art Frahm was no academic; had little or no formal training in art other than working as an assistant for Haddon Sundblom (the Coca-Cola Santa Claus artist); and often his technical skills were barely adequate for the job at hand.

Beautiful, glamorous, sexy, white ladies, usually not so well attired.

Frahm painted so many variations of
this scene he literally wore it out.

The San Francisco hobos (top) were not typical Art Frahm art, though he did paint the surprisingly well-dressed group on several occasions as they popped up here and there on their rail journey around the country. Frahm painted beautiful ladies...beautiful, glamorous, white ladies, beautiful, glamorous, sexy "ladies," frequently in stressful situations. Often such situations had their root cause in cheap elastic (as in around the top of their undergarments, if you get my drift).

Someone (maybe me) once said that if Norman Rockwell had been a pervert, he would have faced stiff competition from Frahm. Frahm's specialty was pin-up calendar "art" (the quotation marks are an outright necessity is this case). Though I was never aware of the artist's name, I can remember seeing his work on such calendars. Usually they hung on the wall of grimy auto repair establishments, during the 1950s and 60s as I was a growing boy having a certain fascination with such profound depictions of feminine beauty. Frahm was one of a "talented" group of maybe a half-dozen other such American illustrators producing a steady, monthly supply of such enticing beauty. Though not necessarily among the best, Frahm's sense of humor often made up for his lack of technical proficiency.

Safety Wins, 1961, Art Frahm

Slip Tease, Art Frahm

Of course, Frahm's female depictions were not limited to distressed ladies discreetly concealing their ankles from public view. Pinup calendar publishers were also fond of scantily (though discreetly) clad bathing beauties on the beach (bottom, left) as well as the ever-popular, demurely-posed nude figure (right), though Frahm painted surprisingly few of the latter. While the high-brow esthetes of New York's SoHo were starving themselves trying to make names for themselves by abstractly expressing themselves, Frahm was doing quite well, thank you, with his (more or less) naked ladies. Yet Frahm's figures, while possibly in poor taste at times, never descended to a level of explicitly lewd graphic sex. Moreover, one of the more fascinating aspects of Frahm's loosely defined art is the fact that the same artist who painted the "distressed' pet owner in Slip Tease (above, right) also came up with the downright wholesome parade of adolescent school children seen in Safety Wins (above). Frahm may not have been the best or most versatile artist/illustrator to ever cash in on risqué monthly depictions, but he was certainly not stuck in a rut.

Not Rockwell, but not
typical Frahm either.

You can't beat the combination
of sex and patriotism

Rose, 1940s, Art Frahm (no Rosie the Riveter).

Art Frahm was born in 1907, and grew up in Chicago. He died in 1981. A few years ago his work would have been decried as "sexist." Today, it's little more than dated, somewhat amusing evidence of the continuing social changes we see daily and our level of moral outrage regarding nudity, sex, and more specifically, the female anatomy. What would have been deemed little short of obscene, even pornographic during the 1940s, 50s, and 60s when Frahm was so prolifically producing such pictures, today, while not likely to turn up on a calendar in a church basement, hardly raise an eyebrow, and certainly falls far short of present-day erotica. Unfortunately, porn just ain't what it used to be.

Puppy Bath, 1940s, Art Frahm.
Even when painting little girls, the artist loved short skirts and bare legs.