I enjoyed this book. I only wish that it would be bigger and longer. A great bathroom book
Rating: 4 / 5

JEEPERS PEEPERS! A GALLERY OF AMERICAN PIN-UP ART receives a fine introduction by New York gallery owner Louis K. Meisel, whose gallery specializes in pinup artwork by top artists from the 1930s through the 60s, as it provides a gorgeous set of color pinup illustrations by a wide range of artists. These don’t just come from calendars, but are from commercial art, wartime posters, and more, going beyond the usual pinup collection focus to display a solid diversity of models and approaches to the pinup.

Diane C. Donovan

California Bookwatch
Rating: 5 / 5

When someone else mentioned this book was small, they weren’t kidding…to give you a frame of reference, the dimensions are slightly less than that of a standard DVD case. I suppose I can’t be too critical about this point as Amazon does have the dimensions posted on their site, and I just neglected to notice this when purchasing.

Published by a company called Collectors Press, Jeepers Peepers! A Gallery of American Pin-Up Art is about 175 pages long, and about 160 of those pages feature pin-up art from the 1930s through the 1960s, presenting roughly over 300 tantalizing images divided into seven different categories (the editorial review states six, but I counted seven). The categories included are as follows (in order);

1. Nudes

2. Playful & Sporty

3. Swimsuit & Seaside

4. Exotic

5. Indian maidens, Pirates (yarrgh) & Gypsies

6. Sheer Beauties (lingerie)

7. Glamour

Up front there’s a six-page introduction written by Louis K. Meisel, who’s apparently `owner and director of one of the largest and oldest contemporary art galleries in the world’. The introduction is very informative as Mr. Meisel certainly seems to know his stuff (unlike me). My favorite quote from this section is as follows;

“There was no problem with political correctness; feminism was decades in the future. The pin-up girl was how girls and women wanted to look and how men and boys wanted them to look.”

As far as the images, they’re presented cleanly and in a very professional manner. The paper stock is decent and glossy, allowing the images to shine. As I mentioned earlier there’s over 300 images crammed into about 160 pages, so sometimes you’ll have one, two, or even three prints on a single page. There’s also a concerted effort to identify the particular artist, the date, and title of the work (when possible), which is about the only other text in the book beside the aforementioned intro.

A few things I noticed while perusing through the book…

Apparently it wasn’t uncommon for alluring women to get their skirts caught on everyday objects, resulting in said garment riding up to reveal that which we’re normally not meant to see. One example would be the act of using a ladder to put something (i.e. books) on a shelf. Ladies beware, as not to catch your hem on one of the rungs when you’re coming back down (ladders seemed particularly fiendish devices to operate)!

Another interesting phenomena…back in the day, when an attractive woman was walking her dog while her arms burdened with groceries or some such thing, there was the extreme possibility of having the naughty, mischievous pooch tangling its leash about its owners legs, thereby causing the woman’s undergarment to fall about her ankles, followed by a gust of wind coming along (perhaps from a passing bus) and popping the poor woman’s skirt up just enough to reveal a healthy pair of gams (and perhaps then some).

A variant on this would be a similar woman, arms burdened with whatnot, trying to exit a telephone booth, only to have her skirt get caught in the door! Oh my!

Then, of course, we have the poor woman at the bowling alley…just as she’s chucking her ball down the lane her underpants fall down about her ankles, right at the same time her skirt is blown slightly upward by, I suppose, the air pressurized hand dryer located by the ball return. How many pins did she end up knocking down? Who cares?

My favorite section of the book is the Playful & Sporty portion, as it presents various situations as the ones listed above, most with a similar tone, that being of the `oops, look what happened to me!’ variety. As if those kinds of things ever happen in real life (maybe they do, but sadly, never in my presence).

I should probably mention this was sort of my introduction into the world of pin-up art, as while I’ve been aware of its existence, this is the first book I’ve purchased exclusively devoted to the subject. That being said I’m sure there’s better books out there in relation to the material, but in terms of a general and economical introduction I think this worked out well as it covered a number of different themes along with presenting works by a decent number of artists over a healthy period of time. The flipside? The prints presented are often on the `smallish’ side, especially those where two or three appear on the same page. All in all the positives outweighed the negatives, and even given that which I know now (with regards to the size), I’d still have bought the book.

Cookieman108

Rating: 4 / 5