South Seas Venus by Vargas

As it's the first of June today we thought we would post this nice Vargas Polynesian girl from the June page of Esquire's 1943 calendar. Originally it was accompanied by the following verse:

This June I would have married

but an ocean stepped between,

I hope no sultry so and so

has landed my marine.

Another expression of the fear expressed by American women of straying troops far away, given the notorious charms of South Seas island girls!

At this point she was still a Varga girl. The name only being changed to Vargas (his real name)when he acrimoniously split from Esquire, after a series of law suits, who asserted that they owned the copywright to the term Varga girl and his signature. As a result of this dispute Vargas spent much of the late forties and fifties in financial difficulties. He was rescued by Hugh Hefner who started to commision the renamed Vargas girls for Playboy in the sixties.

Venus with a snake 3: Ana Beatriz Barros

Well, here is lovely model Ana in a very subtle picture with a large snake. We wonder whether the young lady draped the snake over her mons veneris herself or whether she required the services of a snake wrangler. At least, being Brazilian, there is some artistic justification for her interaction with this particular reptile. Whether is is geographically appropriate for Brazil stretches our not very great expertise on the suborder serpentes but we believe that it is a Boa constrictor of some sort which would, indeed, place it in Central and South America.

Miss Barros, who is now 28, is one of those rare models who manages to combine catwalk work for the likes of Valentino, Missoni, Gucci, Christian Dior, Versace, Jean-Paul Gaultier and Dolce & Gabbana whilst also being a photographic model for Sports Illustrated, amongst others. This is on account of her 5 ft 111⁄2 in height and 34-24-34 figure.

S-s-s-s-plendid!

Fantasy Venuses: Frank Frazetta

Cat girl (1984)

Agent Triple P has only just discovered that the fantasy artist Frank Frazetta died about three weeks ago at the age of 82. In most artistic genres there is always healthy debate about who was best at this and who was best at that; rightly, as tastes and key factors relating to appreciation vary from person to person. Agent Triple P would be surprised, however, if the vast majority of people who appreciate fantasy art wouldn't acknowledge Frank Frazetta as the finest fantasy artist of the last fifty years. Many would say finest fantasy artist ever but Agent Triple P thinks there is a strong case for Arthr Rackham there. Nevertheless, despite coming from a comic books background, his loose and impressionistic paintings changed the style of fantasy art forever. He was much imitated but never surpassed. Famous for his outrageously muscled barbarians his women were, in contrast, soft and rounded like overripe fruit.

The Moon's Rapture (1987)

Frazetta was born in Brooklyn, New York and started to draw at the age of two. By the time he was eight he was enrolled in the Brooklyn School of Art and by the age of sixteen was already working professionally on comic books. After years of tight, comic style illustration Frazetta really made an impact with his cover paintings, done in oils, for a re-issue of Robert E Howard's Conan books in the mid sixties. Dark, brooding, impressionistic, brutal and often filled with horrible things they changed the nature of fantasy illustration overnight. Recently, one of these became the first of his paintings to sell for over $1 million.

Saber-tooths (1977)

He also changed the way that book cover artists were treated: insisting on the return of his originals rather than having them sold or thrown away by uncaring publishers and insisting on the acknowledgement of copyrights. The series of books of his work published in 1975 were the first time a popular, commercial genre artist had had a book devoted to his work. This spawned a whole industry devoted to publishing fantasy artists' portfolios that is still going strong today.

Nude (1985)

His paintings got looser and more luminous during the eighties, when he produced some of his finest work on the female form.

Geisha

He had been in ill health for some time and a series of strokes meant that he had to learn to paint with his left hand instead of his right. Frank Frazetta died on May 10th 2010 in Fort Myers, Florida.

Egyptian Queen

May Venus: Marguerite Empey

Marguerite: reigns supreme

This month we look at the House of Rabbit's May offerings. There are 58 to choose from with only eight in horizontal format (compared with last month's ten). The winner is easy. It is Marguerite Empey from May 1955 who we have featured extensively in an earlier post. http://venusobservations.blogspot.com/2010/05/centrefold-venus-of-month-marguerite.html

Quite simply, Hal Adam's picture of Marguerite is one of the best ever Playboy centrefolds but we feel we should look at some of the runners up for May. We quickly narrowed it down to eight contenders and from these have selected the following four.

Firstly, we have Diana Lee from May 1988 who is included because she looks sensationally damp; covered in droplets of what you wish were sweat and also because she has to get credit for holding what looks like a very uncomfortable pose on very hard wooden furniture!

Next, from May 1981, we present Gina Goldberg, photgraphed by Arny Freytag. Three things tickle Agent Triple P's fancy here: the long string of pearls, the one stocking and the glimpse of fluff at her rear end. Enticing!

Our third eighties girl is the peerless Susie Scott with her amazing hair. Enough said.

Finally, the picture that would have won if it hadn't been for Marguerite, is from May 1954 and features Joanne Arnold, coincidentally the girl featured in our Marguerite post shown posing for Hal Adams' Hartog shirts advertisement. The zebra skin, of course, is what makes it such a striking image.

Well, it is nearly June already so we had better start reviewing next month's candidates!

Redheaded Venus of the Week 7: Venus by Modigliani

Venus, (1918) by Amedeo Modigliani

This is an unusual nude from Modigliani for several reasons. Firstly, the figure is shown standing, rather than the more usual reclining or sitting nudes of Modigliani's painted nudes period. Rather than being just a nude for the sake of it she is actually named as a "Venus" and is posed in the classical Botticelli way.

More noticeably is her colouring, however. Most of Modigliani's nudes were painted with black or dark brown hair but everything about this one indicates a real redhead. The hair on her head is a rich red and her pubic hair a paler orange colour. As someone who has explored more than few redheads this colour differential is not unusual. Many redheads colour their hair, as red hair tends to lose its colour very early in life; being grey at thirty is not unusual. Henna was a popular dye in the nineteenth century (as it still is: Triple P had a friend who used to source her henna in suspicious looking packages from Casablanca) and this has that characteristic dark tint. Her face has a pink blush on the cheeks which is far more visible than on his other figures. Her nippes are paler than he usually depicted. Above all. her skin is very pale compared with most of Modigliani's other nudes. He tended to render women's bodies in flat, largely unshaded, expanses of fairly dark colour. The different parts of the body were indicated by line rather than tone. The effect is almost like a Roman, terracotta amphora.

Modigliani painted quickly, in rapid bursts of energy, often finishing a painting in a couple of hours. Drink and drugs fuelled his endeavours: his normal companion when he painted (he never let people in to his studio when he was working) being a bottle of brandy. The sculptor Chana Orloff once observed of Modigliani that "To work well he had to have two or three glasses of wine. After the first it didn't work; after the second things were a little better; after the third his hand worked on its own...he threw a way sketches when he was sober. He drew with incredible facility when intoxicated."

This painting was sold at Christies New York, in November 2006, for $15,920,000.

Venus by Request: Priscilla Wright

Priscilla shows us her tiny, tiny waist

CK Dexter-Haven has requested the March 1966 pictorial featuring Playmate Priscilla Wright. Priscilla was just nineteen when photographed by Mario Casilli (1931-2002) who shot 57 Playmates in total; in other words nearly 10% of them!. Much of the text, and indeed the pictorial, concentrated on the fact that she was a keen golfer. Typically, for Playboy in this period, she is dressed in all of her pictures save one plus her centrefold. It is, perhaps, no wonder that Penthouse started to eat into Playboy's market in the sixties.

No, its not a golfing magazine, it really is Playboy

She became a Bunny after her centrefold appearance and was featured in the Bunnies of Hollywood feature in December 1967. Fortunately, we have some photographs of her not playing golf.

From the December 1967 Bunnies of Hollywood feature


Very sixties hair!

At the time she was a very petite 5'2" tall and a very trim 34-19-35. Most notable, of course, are her extreme tan lines, something which Agent DVD appreciates. Agent Triple P is not such a fan of this, however: he prefers his women the same colour all over, not looking like saddleback pigs!

Now that is an houglass figure!

Lovely smile!

Lovely tummy!

Lovely effect of gravity!

We are listening to Cy Coleman as we put this together. Coleman (1929-2004), of course, composed Playboy's Theme which was used for Playboy's TV shows. In 1966, the year of Priscilla's pictorial, he was nominated for a Tony Award for his musical Sweet Charity which is currently enjoying a successful run here in London starring the rather splendid Tamzin Outhwaite; much missed from one of Triple P's favourite TV series Hotel Babylon.

Indian Venus: Sarasvati

Agent Triple P has always liked this exquisite ivory statuette of the Hindu goddess Sarasvati (which is now in Vienna, we believe). It is an amazingly intricate piece of carving and her delicate face is beautifully done. When we were younger we were quite struck by the potential of a young lady with four arms! We have had experience of several Indian girls and can say that if they had had any more hands we would have been quite overwhelmed!

Sarasvati was originally a water deity, goddess of the river of the same name which flowed west from the Himalayas. In ancient times the river and its goddess were celebrated for purifying, fertilising and for flowing clear to the sea. The river today peters out in the desert, however. Later the goddess became more associated with the rituals performed along the river's banks and led to the belief that she influenced the hymns involved and therefore also identified her with Vach, the goddess of speech, who was said to have invented Sanskrit.

Later, and today, she is largely thought of as the consort of Brahma and is the goddess of all the creative arts (especially poetry and music), learning and science.

She is usually depicted as a graceful woman with white skin who rides a swan or a peacock or is seted on a lotus flower.