Dian Hanson

The definitive annotated and illustrated history of pin-up magazines — 1900-1969 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...

The pin-ups that won the war: how Alberto Vargas maintained troop morale. Alberto Vargas took over Esquire magazine s monthly pin-up post in late 1940. By 1942, when the U.S. joined the war, he had more than a million ardent enlisted fans who carried his pin-ups in backpacks and duffel bags as reminders of the American girls they d left behind. When Esquire was charged with obscenity over a par...

The female leg is an erotic oddity: non-genital, and nearly identical in structure to the male limb, there is no obvious reason why it should be eroticized. Yet through much of history, across many cultures, the female leg was kept covered and treated as taboo, until it became an object of sexual obsession. In Victorian times, the word 'leg' was forbidden in polite society, lest gentlemen be drive...

In the 15 years since TASCHEN released The Great American Pin-up, international interest in this distinctly American art form has increased exponentially. Paintings by leading artists such as Alberto Vargas, George Petty, and Gil Elvgren that sold for $ 2,000 in 1996 are going for $ 200,000 and more today. Pin-up ― drawings, paintings, and pastels of an idealized female face and figure intended fo...

His name is less familiar than Vargas’s and Elvgren’s, but his brilliantly colored and voluptuous pin-ups are well known. Peter Driben’s career began in 1934, with covers for La Paree Stories, Pep Stories, Snappy, New York Nights, and Bedtime Stories. He progressed to High Heel, Silk Stocking Stories, Gay Book, and Joker, but true fame arrived in 1944 with his first cover for Beauty Parade. For...

He’s called the King of Pin-up for good reason. Gillette Elvgren (1914–1980) known as Gil, created some 700 pin-up oil paintings during his long career, more than any other calendar artist. His subjects were flirty, sassy, playful, and spirited, quintessential American girls who found themselves unintentionally exposed in myriad ways. They first rose to popularity among troops in World War II, and...

Many loved The Big Book of Legs but some found it just too darn big, weighing in at nearly seven pounds. True, it was packed with shapely legs spanning six decades, from the first shy emergence of the ankle in the 1910s, through the rolled stockings and rouged knees of the 1920s, to the Betty Grable '40s, the stockinged and stilettoed '50s, on into the sexually liberated '60s and '70s, but it coul...

For those of you whose datebooks have been replaced by smartphones, Taschen has created the new 365 Day-By-Day series so that you can still enjoy the warm analog feeling of marking every day with the turn of a page. Each day you'll discover a new image and a related quote - on special days you'll also learn the birthdays of iconic pin-up models - ensuring a constant source of inspiration...