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Dian Hanson's History of Pin-up Magazines Vol. 1-3
Open your notebooks, sharpen your pencils, and get ready for a history lesson like none you’ve ever experienced. You’re about to learn everything you could ever want to know about the world history of men’s magazines―not magazines about sports, not fashion, not hunting or fishing or how to build a birdhouse in ten easy steps, but those titillating periodicals embracing the subject dearest to all heterosexual men’s hearts and other body the undraped female form. Editor Dian Hanson traces the fascinating development of the genre from 1900 to 1969 in three compact, informative volumes. In Volume 1 you’ll learn about the first magazines that appeared around 1900 in France, Germany, and the U.S., and follow the development of the genre through the First and Second World Wars. Covered are men’s magazines masquerading as movie magazines, humor magazines, art magazines, nudist magazines, and “spicy” fiction. Volume 2 documents the proliferation of pin-up magazines following the Second World War, most notably a little item called Playboy that debuted in December 1953 and spawned dozens of imitators. This volume also charts the emergence of English men’s magazines, fetish magazines, and the top five covergirls of the 1950s. Volume 3 begins with an explosion of new American pin-up magazines following the loosening of U.S. obscenity laws, and continues with French titles in decline, England going pervy, nudists going hippy, and Germany going pervy, hippy, and political.
- GenresArt
832 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2012
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59 people want to read
About the author
Dian Hanson
116 books82 followersDian Hanson (born November 2, 1951) began her publishing career as an American pornographic magazine editor, historian, and occasional model, helping found the 1970s hardcore journal Puritan, then moving on to Partner, OUI, Adult Cinema Review, Outlaw Biker and Big Butt, among others. She was most famously the editor of Juggs and Leg Show sexual fetish magazines from 1987–2001.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 22, 2019
I've always been interested in kitschy ephemera of this kind, though I've spent most of my time with comic books, old pulps, and men's magazines. I'd seen this collection for sale before, but the price was a little too steep in comparison to my interest level. I was surprised to see it land in the bargain bin at half-price (from where I rescued it), as it's obvious by the outside that it's a quality product--which is usual for Taschen books. I've read a few of these kind of general retrospectives--though only the ones concentrating on the materials I mentioned above--and Dian Hanson's effort seemed to adhere to the type, meaning there are plusses and minuses, most of which depend on your familiarity with the periodicals being discussed. Considering that this three-volume history is designed to cover 70+ years of pin-up magazines, it's not difficult to see that many things are either going to be left out or given only a brief look--especially when about 70-75% of the book are reproductions of magazine covers. So, depending on what you are expecting, this could be disappointing.
Hanson never really defines what a pin-up magazine is--my first thought when someone says 'pin-up' are the cheesecake of artists like Vargas or Gil Evgren. It's obvious that Hanson's idea of the genre is more expansive. It might be better to say that this is a history of that subset of publishing that continually pushed the envelope in the effort to publish pictures of fully nude women for prurient buyers--thus we also get nudist publications, cabaret revues and film star magazines from around the world. From around 1900 to 1960, the battle line was drawn at the waist--higher depending on the country--and this history follows the arc of topless and fetishistic magazines with no nudes, and ends when the standard was relaxed to include full nudes. Since there is no real demarcation line, Hanson's history follows some trends even into the 90s, but the cover reproductions end in the mid 1970s.
Because of my familiarity with similar retrospectives, I think that the information that accompanies the reproductions is satisfactory for someone who knows little about the publishing history of these magazines, but it probably rather superficial if someone is a collector. But probably most important: the text does not get in the way of the pictures. The layout and design of the books are excellent--a page of text, with a full page cover reproduction facing it, and then, at the conclusion of each chapter, 7-10 more pages of full page reproductions that pertain to the text. There are obviously some readers who aren't going to give a hoot about the accompanying text--this is a visual medium after all--but for those who do want to read the history as well as view it, the book's layout makes this easy.
As to the reproductions themselves: Most of what we see are the covers of these magazines, though there are a few shots of the interiors. All of the reproductions are excellent quality, and I think what I found most interesting was seeing the change over time of what publishers thought would entice people to buy their magazine. For those to whom it might be a concern, the reproductions are limited to bare breasts--there are no fully nude models in the book without some sort of fig leaf at least.
Because the emphasis is on the cover reproductions, the text may not cover all the information some readers are interested in--another reviewer accurately mentions that there is not a lot of information on the models themselves--but as an introductory or companion volume, I thought it was excellent. In an age where anything a person would like to see is only a mouse click away, this isn't a book that is likely to get anyone excited (unless, perhaps, you are a twelve-year-old boy), but it is an entertaining overview of a cultural phenomenon.
Hanson never really defines what a pin-up magazine is--my first thought when someone says 'pin-up' are the cheesecake of artists like Vargas or Gil Evgren. It's obvious that Hanson's idea of the genre is more expansive. It might be better to say that this is a history of that subset of publishing that continually pushed the envelope in the effort to publish pictures of fully nude women for prurient buyers--thus we also get nudist publications, cabaret revues and film star magazines from around the world. From around 1900 to 1960, the battle line was drawn at the waist--higher depending on the country--and this history follows the arc of topless and fetishistic magazines with no nudes, and ends when the standard was relaxed to include full nudes. Since there is no real demarcation line, Hanson's history follows some trends even into the 90s, but the cover reproductions end in the mid 1970s.
Because of my familiarity with similar retrospectives, I think that the information that accompanies the reproductions is satisfactory for someone who knows little about the publishing history of these magazines, but it probably rather superficial if someone is a collector. But probably most important: the text does not get in the way of the pictures. The layout and design of the books are excellent--a page of text, with a full page cover reproduction facing it, and then, at the conclusion of each chapter, 7-10 more pages of full page reproductions that pertain to the text. There are obviously some readers who aren't going to give a hoot about the accompanying text--this is a visual medium after all--but for those who do want to read the history as well as view it, the book's layout makes this easy.
As to the reproductions themselves: Most of what we see are the covers of these magazines, though there are a few shots of the interiors. All of the reproductions are excellent quality, and I think what I found most interesting was seeing the change over time of what publishers thought would entice people to buy their magazine. For those to whom it might be a concern, the reproductions are limited to bare breasts--there are no fully nude models in the book without some sort of fig leaf at least.
Because the emphasis is on the cover reproductions, the text may not cover all the information some readers are interested in--another reviewer accurately mentions that there is not a lot of information on the models themselves--but as an introductory or companion volume, I thought it was excellent. In an age where anything a person would like to see is only a mouse click away, this isn't a book that is likely to get anyone excited (unless, perhaps, you are a twelve-year-old boy), but it is an entertaining overview of a cultural phenomenon.
November 1, 2017
Beautiful design, but very much a coffee table/display set, very little in the way of history beyond a lot of dates and names, and I would've liked to know more (anything) about the industry's models and business operations as well as just its publishers and their tastes.
November 13, 2020
Beautiful to flip through.
May 19, 2015
This is a beautifully presented collection of men's magazine covers from the first seven decades of the Twentieth Century. The covers themselves are, by turns beautiful, amusing, sexy or peculiar. Some feature pin-up paintings by artists who have become legends in their field. Others are decorated with photos. There are magazines covering the world of burlesque, British tease magazines were the girls never removed their clothes, kinky journals full of dominatrix fashions, legitimate nudist magazines, fake nudist magazines looking to circumvent the pubic hair prohibition. And there is a generous sampling of covers from Playboy and Penthouse, whose Pubic Wars were a major event in publishing history. Countries whose output is given coverage are : the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy.
While the bulk of the three volumes is taken up with cover photos (and a few discreet glimpses inside some of the issues), the often very witty text by Dian Hanson, and her occasional collaborators, helps to places these artefacts in their cultural context. These weren't always just titty magazines. Sometimes they also provided a home for some of the world's greatest writers and for anti-establishment expression. The great era of the girlie magazine is now over, but this book allows us to travel back in time and imagine what it was like to live in a society where the prospect of viewing a shapely girl in her underwear was enough to give a man sweaty palms as he handed a small coin to a newsagent to procure his ticket to a paradise of pulchritude.
Here are some choice samples of Hanson's wry commentary :
On the decline of nude figure study magazines advertised as being for painters and photographers :
By 1960 art nude magazines were in serious decline the world over due to the increased acceptance of frankly sexual publications. When you picked up an art magazine in 1965, be it in Sweden, France, Denmark or the U.S., you could be reasonably sure it would contain only actual art. Which must have been a terrible blow to serious art students without access to figure models.
On fetish publishing pioneer "John Willie" :
If ever there was a man dunked in the toilet of fate by his own penis, it was John Alexander Scott Coutts, aka John Willie.
On terrorist and ex-co-editor of left wing girlie magazine Konkret Ulrike Meinhof :
In 2002 one of their daughters sued the state for the return of her mother's brain, removed at the time of Meinhof's death to see if tumor surgery in 1962 could have contributed to this promising men's magazine editor becoming a pistol-packing terrorist (the conclusion was "yes"). And maybe the tumor was to blame, as no other editors of the many new sex magazines that followed the student riots of 1968 became leftist guerrillas.
While the bulk of the three volumes is taken up with cover photos (and a few discreet glimpses inside some of the issues), the often very witty text by Dian Hanson, and her occasional collaborators, helps to places these artefacts in their cultural context. These weren't always just titty magazines. Sometimes they also provided a home for some of the world's greatest writers and for anti-establishment expression. The great era of the girlie magazine is now over, but this book allows us to travel back in time and imagine what it was like to live in a society where the prospect of viewing a shapely girl in her underwear was enough to give a man sweaty palms as he handed a small coin to a newsagent to procure his ticket to a paradise of pulchritude.
Here are some choice samples of Hanson's wry commentary :
On the decline of nude figure study magazines advertised as being for painters and photographers :
By 1960 art nude magazines were in serious decline the world over due to the increased acceptance of frankly sexual publications. When you picked up an art magazine in 1965, be it in Sweden, France, Denmark or the U.S., you could be reasonably sure it would contain only actual art. Which must have been a terrible blow to serious art students without access to figure models.
On fetish publishing pioneer "John Willie" :
If ever there was a man dunked in the toilet of fate by his own penis, it was John Alexander Scott Coutts, aka John Willie.
On terrorist and ex-co-editor of left wing girlie magazine Konkret Ulrike Meinhof :
In 2002 one of their daughters sued the state for the return of her mother's brain, removed at the time of Meinhof's death to see if tumor surgery in 1962 could have contributed to this promising men's magazine editor becoming a pistol-packing terrorist (the conclusion was "yes"). And maybe the tumor was to blame, as no other editors of the many new sex magazines that followed the student riots of 1968 became leftist guerrillas.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews