Gil Elvgren (American, 1914-1980). Your Choice - Me?, 1962. Oil on canvas. 30 x 24 inches (76.2 x 61.0 cm). Signed cente...

Description

Gil Elvgren (American, 1914-1980)
Your Choice - Me?, 1962
Oil on canvas
30 x 24 inches (76.2 x 61.0 cm)
Signed center left

Property from the Collection of a Distinguished Academic Woman

The present work is published as a Brown & Bigelow calendar. The present work appears on page 270 of The Art of Pin-Up by Dian Hanson with Louis K. Meisel and Sarahjane Blum (Taschen, 2014) and as figure 463 in Gil Elvgren: All His Glamorous American Pin-Ups by Charles G. Martignette and Louis K. Meisel (Taschen, 1996).

PROVENANCE:
Charles Martignette;
Acquired by the present owners from the above, 1991.

In 1944, Gil Elvgren accepted a position as a staff artist at Brown & Bigelow calendar company beginning a 30-year relationship that turned the illustrator into a household name, and the most popular pin-up artist of the 1950s and 1960s. Elvgren's initial contract was brokered by the Stevens-Gross Studio of Chicago, where the young Elvgren had been working under the mentorship of Haddon Sundblom, creator of the iconic Coca-Cola Santa. Through his relationship with Sundblom, Elvgren would go on to work with Coca-Cola for more than 25 years. Like Sundblom, Elvgren brought a wholesome, cheerful, and inviting vision to his lushly painted, luminous canvases, as well as an approachable and often humorous Americana sensibility that has drawn frequent comparisons to Norman Rockwell.

In 1962, when Elvgren created the present work, published as a Brown & Bigelow calendar in 1964 under the titles Your Choice and Me???, his style was instantly recognizable and frequently imitated. Elvgren playfully pokes at his status in the artwork, allowing the subject to stand in for pin-up art as a genre, and the artist himself. She faces the viewer, holding attention with a flirtatious gaze, while a canvas with a stereotypical "modern art" portrait shows her in less favorable light. The audience's answer to the implied choice of which they would choose--an Elvgren girl or a fine art canvas--is considered a given.

Though there is no indication the work is directly in conversation with the growing Pop Art movement, Your Choice stands as an example of art from the period that actively explores the relationship between high and low culture, and relies on the audience's preexisting relationship with ubiquitous and popular imagery from mass media. In addition to being an exquisitely executed and delightfully fun example, it's what we might call today very meta.

Thoroughly demonstrating Elvgren's wide appeal, talent, and charm, this is without a doubt one of the greatest and most significant examples by the artist we've ever offered.


More information about Elvgren, Gil. See also: Gillette Elvgren Artist.



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