A short history
of pin-up.
1898 to 1950, using only the dated works in this collection.
The pin-up did not change because artists changed their minds. It changed because the container changed: a weekly cover had to carry a joke, a calendar had to hang for a year, a studio photograph had to be printed by the thousand, and each of those jobs produced a different picture of the same woman.
1898 The cover girl before the pin-up
Harrison Fisher's Christmas cover for Puck is a joke with a well-dressed woman watching it. The figure is drawn for a weekly that costs 25 cents and is read once. See the work
1916 The same formula, a different week
The Judge cover of 8 January 1916 puts a woman at the centre of a visual gag. Nobody in 1916 would have called this a pin-up. See the work
1917 Colour as identity
Fisher's November 1917 Cosmopolitan cover is a fashion plate: striped coat, beret, gloves, a borzoi's head in the corner. The magazine is selling the woman's composure. See the work
1927 The newsstand lesson
Enoch Bolles's Film Fun covers argue in three colours and one sentence. The figure steps out of her own frame. See the work
1929 The painting without the type
Woman in Pink survives as the original artwork, which shows how much room Bolles left empty for a masthead. See the work
1932 Onto the wall
A Day in June is published by Brown and Bigelow as a calendar print. This is the form that is literally pinned up. See the work
1935 The studio makes the face
RKO files a head shot of Betty Grable with catalogue numbers. Eight years before the photograph that made her famous. See the work
1943 The pose that travels
Frank Powolny's publicity portrait for 20th Century Fox: the look back over the shoulder, produced in quantity for theatres. See the work
1947 The last decade of the painted girl
Gil Elvgren's The Verdict Was, Wow! is calendar art at its most composed: red hat, green dress, quiet background. See the work
1950 The photograph behind the painting
A studio reference for Anchors A-Wow: a prop mast, a colleague holding it steady, and a pose that will be repainted without the scaffolding. See the work
What the sequence does not prove
These ten objects are all public domain in the United States and all come from American magazines, studios or calendar firms. They are not the whole history: they say nothing about British, French or Australian publishing, and nothing about how the images were used by the people who pinned them up. Treat the sequence as a way of seeing the forms, not as a complete account.