Pin Up Academy

I've been working on this request for a piece, a pin up girl in WWII garb against a spade background. It occurred to me that the colloquial term "cheesecake" for a piece of of pin up art has the connotation of being light, airy and undisciplined.

But besides the obvious one-note subject matter, pin up art is some of the most consistently academic portraiture of the 20th century. And truly, how one-note can an image be when the sex appeal is neither vulgar nor exaggerated, but the work of a subtle blend of the ethereal lines of feminine beauty?

Take a look at this image I use for reference:

I mean, such a stunning painting. Certainly, executed quickly for a fast turnover, but the effortlessness and ease of the style of this piece is so telling of the mastery of the artist. The figure is lush and intangibly attractive, but she is grounded in the reality of imperfection and rendered with a rather loose command of the brush. The lighting is not truly realistic either; it's simply been used as a reference guide to flatter the most classical shapes of the female form.

But every element of these pieces are tied to the traditional techniques of academic painting. Just because the subject is a woman in a (perhaps) provocative pose, can we really afford to cast these artworks off as mindless fluff? If we can get past the (admittedly threateningly) gorgeous image of a woman being sensually alluring, we can see pin up art as an incredibly disciplined vehicle for expression that we can all react to with feeling.