Kenney Mencher: Alberto Vargas, Earl Moran, Art Frahm, Tom of Finland and Me

One of the things that been trying to do with my art is study the human form and tell a story and sometimes I just wanted to figure studies. To that end I bought and looked at vintage pinup photographs of both men and women and even invented some of the figures myself using what I know about anatomy and portrait painting. Here are some of my pinup paintings of men and women. What's always surprising to me is that a majority of the female figures have been bought actually by women and the majority of the male figures had been bought by men.

Sometimes artists and art historians and even art critics make distinctions between high and low art. When I first started studying art history, one of the first things that I noticed was that the great artists like the Velasquez and Titian, and Giorgione were all painters who did a series of nudes, such as the Venus of Urbino.

And I know that painters like matinee were seeking to critique the whole history of art history by making the paintings they made. Nevertheless, I was struck by the idea that these great master painters were still painting naked women. I always felt the little bit weird about it, especially when I was 10 or 11 years old and I was looking through my parent’s art history books to look at naked people.

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s there was a popular art called pinup. The so-called pinup artists people like Alberto Vargas, Earl Moran and Art Frahm were artists who seem to master the human form but also tell a bit of the story. Today there are even gay male pinup artists who've been around for years such as Tom of Finland and others.

I'm not sure what this says about our culture and even things such as the male gaze, or the idea of making gay art but I really like the idea that in a way pinup art is kind of subversive. Here are some of my pinup paintings that are directed at both male and female audiences and an audience known as bears who are yummy large men.