Ben Denison
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The punchline on many of these 1950s cartoons fades, but the visuals more than hold up - they shine.
The
sleek, graphic style of painting with flat, broad areas of color shows
that Ben Denison, along with a few other illustrators of the time,
invented a new style that endures and may have inspired many
ultra-contemporary artists who refer back to them for inspiration. It's a
quintessentially Mid-American look. Denison crafts a narrative with
clean lines, flat shapes, and a bright, contrasting color palette,
distilling it into simple visual forms. Moreover, the work serves as a
time capsule of an aspirational life that Playboy magazine presented to
its predominantly male readers. An urbane, handsome young man sits in
his cool sports car at Lover's Lane with a hot blond in his lap. How can
life be better?
Signed lower right: Denison
The present work is
published for "Denison's Sports Cars" on page 25 in the August 1957
issue of Playboy with the caption: "I'm tired of sneaking around like
this. Just what does your husband have against me anyway?" The work also
appears on page 13 of Playboy 50 Years: The Cartoons by Hugh Hefner
(Chronicle Books, 2004).
Framed under museum glass in a new high-end metal frame. Frame size 21.75 x 18.25