Saturday, July 24, 2010

FALLEN PANTIES AND CELERY: THE ART OF ART FRAHM

Like a lot of other artists, I'm a sucker for a good pin-up. My favorite pin-up artist is Art Frahm. Most popular for his work in the 50's he gets a lot of criticism for his lack of realistic backrounds and his Mannequin-like female faces, but I respect the guy for being brave enough to illustrate his fetishes for the world to enjoy.
Although he did work commercially for companies such as Coca-Cola and Coppertone, he is best known for his pin-ups of "women in distress". These pin-ups depict a situation where in one way or another a woman's panties have fallen down around her ankles in a public situation with one or more onlookers. Women share embarrassment while men smirk with arousal. In most cases the models hands are busy holding a grocery sack with celery hanging out of it.

In other cases it is a pesky animal (most often a puppy) who has caused the reveal of her panties.

Here's a selection of some of my faves. Unfortunately I don't have the names/dates for all of these, I believe a couple are untitled.

ART FRAHM
FARE LOSER 1953

ART FRAHM
NO TIME TO GO 1954

ART FRAHM
MAIL CALL 1958

ART FRAHM
IN NEED OF HELP 1955

ART FRAHM
GOING DOWN 1956

ART FRAHM
THE SHAKEDOWN 1955

ART FRAHM
SPARE 1952

ART FRAHM
O-OOH 1950

ART FRAHM
NUMBER PLEASE 1957

ART FRAHM
NO TIME TO LOSE 1951

Here's on of Art Frahm's illustrations you may have seen before...

Photobucket

5 comments:

laura l. sweet said...

Great collection of his falen panties artwork. Only you are mistaken about his drawing the Coppertone Girl. That was originally drawn by the late advertising artist Joyce Ballantyne Brand with her then three year old daughter as the model.

STEVEFELLDOWN said...

Oops! Thanks for setting it straight. I'm so emBARE-ASSED!

Art Frahm Facts said...

Art Frahm conceived and drew the rough drawing for the Coppertone ad. In fact, it was HIS daughter used as the model!
Joyce was a friend and co-worker of Art's. Art gave Joyce the task of finalizing his drawing! So Art Frahm really DID draw this ad among others.
Joyce Ballantyne just hogged the credit when Art past away. It's hard to defend yourself when you are not alive!
He also got screwed on the Quaker man on Quaker Oats boxes that he drew.
You can read these true and interesting facts in the new book I've almost finished writing about Art Frahm. Art Frahm was a genius and a fantastic artist!

Elaine Sokoloff said...

When is your book out? I am so excited that there may be a book of his art at some point!

Unknown said...

As you say, great artistry - however, it would be easier to appreciate it without the stupidly oversized Photobucket logos obscuring the art... 🙄