The Art of Pin-up Hardcover – 3 Sept. 2014

A surprising book. Among the many scholarly and beautifully produced Taschen books this is a stand out for me. The work displayed here is based on skill, observation, and hard work. How refreshing it would be if this could persuade the absurd and conceited world of Fine Art to present an exhibition of commercial artists who have created brilliant work throughout the modern period. Norman Rockwell, N. C. Wyeth, Robin Jacques, Milton Glaser, Alex Raymond, Frank Hampson, Chester Gould, Burne Hogarth, S R Badmin, and a thousand others, would be a popular show and one that should open the eyes and minds of the narrow minded group who dictate the absurdity of what constitutes much of our official art. Okay, none of the artists above are included in this collection, but to look at the immense care and skill in the best of the examples here will further extend the list. A brilliant and beautiful work packed with background details of a neglected and valid world of applied art. Taschen, I thank you for this fabulous volume.

I am absolutely delighted with this item it is Realy special many thanks

Beautiful - make sure you've got a shelf big enough for it!!

Excellent artwork ,very nostalgic

If you have the 1996 Taschen The Great American Pin-Up book you'll already have a lot of the paintings in this book but what you won't have is them beautifully presented in the ultimate pin-up book. What you'll get is worth describing:1 The book, because of its large size, comes in a box with a carrying handle. Nicely this has two Vargas paintings on the front and back which could even stretch to framing.2 The first ninety-one pages has a heavily illustrated essay (in English, German, French) about the history of pin-up art and artists. The essay has excellent deep captions to the illustrations.3 Ten artists are considered in depth, each starts with a several hundred word essay followed by their work and photos of models and other printed ephemera that used the pin-up art, especially calendars4 Each of the artist chapters starts with spread of thickish coloured paper, the artists signature on the left and a tipped colour print, frequently a page from a calendar on the right. There's another tipped painting opposite the Contents page.5 There are three pull-outs of paintings by Elvgren, Petty and Vargas, these are forty-four inches wide.6 The last forty-three pages have a brief look at fifty other artists (1900 to 1975) with examples of their, some of these are whole page in size.7 There eight spread wide (twenty-two inches) paintings by Bill Medcalf: one; Petty: two; Vargas: five. Throughout the book there are plenty of whole page paintings, about fifteen inches deep.8 The paper, binding and printing (in Italy using a 200 screen) are first-class as you expect from Taschen.Dian Hanson's front of book essay gives some interesting detail about the publishers of pin-up art, especially Brown & Bigelow (without them this book wouldn't exist) Esquire and Playboy. With 546 pages and huge size this must be the ultimate pin-up art book, I doubt they'll be anything better in future years.

Superb, as one would expect from Taschen. This book is so big that it is hard to lift up! Beautiful stunning crisp reproductions of the pin up art of the past. Some pages fold out, many illustrations are tipped in onto thick beautiful coloured papers. I have a lot of books, but this is one of my best. If you like these early 1930's 40's 50's and 60's artworks then this is a magnificent giant of a book. It also comes in a sturdy carry box. Knockout.

Enormous book (30 x 40 x 6.5 cm, 12" x 16" x 2.5"), great illustrations and photos, high quality thick paper, in the continuity of other "XL collection" volumes by Taschen.The first 100 pages of introduction chapters feature more (very comprehensive) text than the rest of the book. But there are lots of images there, too !Then, one 30-to-50-page chapter is dedicated to each "master" : Rolf Armstrong, Enoch Bolles, Peter Driben, Gil Elvgren (76 pages), Art Frahm, Bill Medcalf, Earl Moran, Zoe Mozert, George Petty, Alberto Vargas. Plus an extra chapter about "other artists".The text is trilingual (English, German, French), as the German editor Taschen accustomed us to.All in all, the image/text surface ratio is about 9 to 1, including many, many pages with no text but tiny legends.A couple of fold-out pages extend the illustration surface to a huge 116 x 39 cm (46" x 15") quadriptych - Vargas beauties deserve this, but I wish there were more.CONCLUSION : A must-have for any amateur, worth the £70-80 ($90-100) price tag.ATTENTION : there seems to be two editions using the same ISBN. One with 720 pages inside a cardboard case (amazon.de, amazon.fr), one with 546 pages and no case (amazon.co.uk, amazon.com). This comment is about the latter. Very positive, although I expected to get the former - therefore the 4 stars only.

It's hardly useful that this book is only SUBTLY marketed as multilingual. All the previews are in English. And yes, the art is pretty. But this book is functionally 2/3 useless to me. There's not much explanation or warning- 2/3 of the book are just in French or German. I thought I was getting an English book- I did not. A for effort but what am I supposed to do with the majority of the book I can't actually read?