Customer Reviews

Pulp Art: Original Cover Paintings for the Great American Pulp Magazines

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_Pulp Art_ contains a varied collection of wonderful cover art from the pulp fiction of the early 1920's through the 1940's. The paintings are nicely reproduced, crisp and colorful. Intended to encourage the viewer to buy the book, all the cover art is sexually suggestive, menacing, or mysterious. The art also reflect the attitudes and prejudices of their times. The whole spectrum of different genres are represented here, including Science Fiction, Tarzan, Mysteries, Westerns, Heroic, Romance, and War. I found several spelling errors in this book, some of them quite obvious. _Pulp Art_ could have benefited from a decent proof reading, to be sure. Still, the beautiful art is fascinating to view and speaks louder than the printed text inside.

At 12 x 9, this book gives its hundreds of pictures a first-class presentation. Many of the original paintings are reproduced at full-page (or nearly) size, giving you a chance to really study the detail. Beautiful coffee table book.

Pulp fiction is an acquired taste these days; although I was born in the sixties, long after the death of these magazines, the paperback boom in science fiction and fantasy following the explosion of popularity due to Tolkien and "Star Wars" put much of the classic pulp series in my hands. I still love the stuff, much in the same way that I enjoy sitting down to a childhood meal of Captain Crunch or a chocolate Sundae. This book provides the graphic counterpart to the words I know so well, in gorgeous reproduced color. The pop culture of the thirties is to this day some of the deepest and most endearing, from Fred and Ginger to the Marx Brothers to the Wizard of Oz movie to hard-boiled detectives to golden age science fiction to the westerns to...well, you probably get the point by now. This is an art that was never intended to do anything more than sell a magazine, but it shows a vitality and craft sadly missing from the same kind of art today. Granted, some of it is misogynistic, sadistic, and racist, but then almost everything in western society is, even to this day. Taken with a little salt, the paintings reach out and bash you between the eyes, daring you not to pick up the magazine they advertise. The book provides an introduction to the topic unmatched elsewhere, and makes suggestions for follow-ups to the fan. The pictures alone are worth the price: they range from N.C. Wyeth to J. Allen St. John to Margaret Brundage to Rafael de Soto (whose use of light, darkness, and bright colors is perhaps the most striking in the whole book, at least to my uneducated eye -- regardless, his paintings in particular leap off the page). All in all, a most enjoyable volume.

I purchased this book for reference and I'm glad I did. It captures
all the brush strokes of the original pulp art paintings, as best it
could. Nothing in this book is a waste...It is a treasure of a bygone
era. All the imagination of being an artist assigned to these fantastic
stories is display in this volume. My favorite section is the paintings
of The Shadow...Someday, I hope they do a whole book on the Pulp Art
covers of that classic character who knows what evil lurks in the
heart of men. This is a well worth investment for me and anyone who
is a fan of Pulp Art and Pulp Fiction... BRAVO!!

If you're a fan of dramatic art, ripping fast cars packed to the gunwales with gleaming blue steel and gleamier women, get this book. As a feminist, I hate it. As an artist, I'm an addict.

This is why I have a therapist. Go get your own.

The dedication:

"What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince." ~ Lucien Freud.

This is NOT your mother's Freud.

However, with all due respect, a book about the pulps without at least one typo would not be true to its subject. That is to say, a hallmark of the pulps is the speed and verve with which the books were produced -- mispellings, tygos, broken fonts and printing blemishes included.