American Beauties: Drawings from the Golden Age of Illustration
The Library of Congress produced an exhibit some years ago entitled American Beauties: Drawings from the Golden Age of Illustration.
The Marketing of the American Beauty:
"The unprecedented success of the 'Gibson Girl' in the 1890s unleashed a visual barrage of American beauties which lasted throughout the Golden Age of American Illustration and continues to this very day. The different types of women presented in this exhibition demonstrate not only a nationally evolving ideal of beauty, but also a concentrated effort on the part of publishers, advertisers, and the artists themselves to develop an easily identifiable, aesthetically pleasing product. It is no wonder the marketers increasingly turned to the allure of the American female; in the early part of the twentieth century women were thought to control 80 percent or more of the consumer dollars expended in the United States. Accordingly, advertisers turned to images of feminine mystique to which consumers could aspire (and hopefully emulate) through the purchase of goods and services. Men were also charmed by these images, however, and magazine publishers used the attraction of pretty faces on their covers to boost impulse buying for their all-important newsstand sales."
Exhibition Overview
"Arresting and gorgeous, icons of feminine beauty from America's 'golden age of illustration' (1880-1920s) dazzled viewers with an intensity, vividness and variety that captivate us today. The creation in the 1890s of the 'Gibson Girl' by Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944) began a decades-long fascination with idealized types of feminine beauty in America. Other gifted illustrators of the era such as Coles Phillips (1880-1927), Wladyslaw Benda (1873-1948), Nell Brinkley (1886-1944), and John Held, Jr., (1888-1958) fashioned diverse portrayals of idealized American womanhood that mirrored changing standards of beauty. More fundamentally, however, this popular art highlighted transformations in women's roles in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During what historians call the era of the "new woman," increasing numbers of women pursued higher education, romance, marriage, leisure activities, and a sense of individuality with greater independence. This exhibition features drawings selected from outstanding recent acquisitions and graphic art in the Library's Cabinet of American Illustration and the Swann Collection of Caricature and Cartoon."
"The Gibson Girl first appeared in Life Magazine and rapidly set a standard for feminine beauty that endured for two decades. Gibson drew his tall, narrow-waisted ideal in black and white, portraying her as a multi-faceted type, always at ease and fashionable. He depicted her as an equal, sometimes teasing companion to men and highlighted her interests or talents, such as violin playing in The Sweetest Story Ever Told, ca. 1910. Gibson's influence on fellow artists can be seen in the stately beauty in A Quick Change, ca. 1901 by Charlotte Harding (1873-1951). Other artists created rival icons. Coles Phillips, for example, developed his 'Fade-away Girl' through innovative use of negative space - his full figured beauties blend into backgrounds of colorful, tightly composed designs that graced the covers of Life and Good Housekeeping in the early 1900s. Typically involved in domestic tasks or appraising suitors' gifts as in Know All Men by These Presents, 1910, the 'Phillips Girl' projected a warm allure that differed from the Gibson Girl's winsome reserve. Neither seriously challenged the patriarchal tradition of separate spheres - public and professional for men, private and domestic for women."
"The influence of Gibson's and Phillip's romantic ideals waned markedly as the American public and artistic communities were introduced to modern European and American art at the time of the Armory Show of 1913 in New York City. American society also became increasingly urban as cities burgeoned in size. Modernist styles and urbanism influenced younger artists such as Ethel Plummer (1888-1936) and Rita Senger (active 1915-1930s) as they drew new types of beauties. Plummer drew her young women as slim silhouettes, clad in tighter, formfitting clothing. Shown in an urban setting, they convey a consciousness of themselves as fashionable beings in their attitudes and communicate a poise and confidence that became hallmarks of the modern woman. Rita Senger's lithe beauty dancing on a shore (ca. 1916) embodied a freedom based on insistent individuality. Compared with their predecessors, Plummer's and Senger's figures move freely in more public, open spaces. Both artists also depicted their slender beauties as stylish, flattened figures, defined by sophisticated use of line, color, and pattern in drawings that are contemporary with the introduction of modernist styles. Their work possesses a bold, modern simplicity that was prized by Vanity Fair and Vogue. Images from magazine covers, short-story illustrations, and advertisements exerted widespread influence, for readers sought not only entertainment and enlightenment from these visual sources, but also regarded them as examples to be admired and imitated."
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