In terms of non-photographic art, I love the commercial genre much more than anything else. There’s something about the almost-completely-lost profession of creating art on demand; producing amazing art on a deadline… often uncredited, and often, for astoundingly low pay (but nonetheless a living wage at the time, if one was prolific).
I thought today, finding this magazine (for a dime or a quarter) at a thrift store is just as exciting to me as someone finding a lost Renoir in an attic. If I hadn’t found the magazine on that day (sandwiched in a pile of sheet music, but that’s a post for another night) – I would’ve gone my whole life without seeing the art – and I would’ve never shared the art with you. Lookit this color! The beauty, the sensual, the sexual (the left is an illustration of MGM musicals star Jeanette MacDonald). Somebody sat down in an office in 1936 and knocked these works of art out over cigarettes and coffee; capturing, creating, perpetuating hair, clothing and cosmetics motifs and styles that continue to (mostly subconsciously) influence today.
Unlike Renoirs, magazine art of this vintage are still readily available on the Internet, and thus worth just a few dollars. Not enough demand; 1936 isn’t that popular anymore. At least not consciously.
