These works create a nice abstraction of the world in the painting using natural peeping holes. Reminds me of the fourth wall idea.

Links:
Official website

George Petty was one of the top “cheesecake” illustrators of the 30s and 40s. He began his career with a series of cartoons featuring beautiful girls and their far from handsome beaus. His work coined the term “Petty Girls” to describe the carefully airbrushed girls with brilliant smiles and sexy poses. He left Esquire, to be replaced by Alberto Vargas who we will be featuring here soon, and became a freelance commercial artist. His girls soon ended up gracing magazine ads and calendars for such unlikely products as Tung-Sol Radio Tubes and the aptly named, Ridgid Tools.

The exaggerated almost comic nature of these illustrations is extraordinary, especially since they were made with the most serious intention. It’s like a the 40s housewife on acid, a lot of acid. Except being such an eye candy and inspiration for nightmares, it’s a quite extraordinary example of American perception of women at the peak of the cold war.

“I decided it was important for me to look at this community of women of lost identity not as segmented bodies but as whole individuals and icons of reality. I wanted to code the genetics of prostitution. I feel that prostitution is a concept, a cultural legitimate behavior and a common myth that should be reviewed and analyzed.”
Golda Holterman believes, women’s bodies have become normalized as sexual objects in the media of Western society, particularly photography. The danger of this approach is that the person becomes an object which can be used and disposed of.
“For me, photography is a medium of observation. Through photography, I create an alternative way to observe that a pattern of myth exists in reality: women as a perishable object of desire. If the viewer can stay with the sense of humanism, I will have achieved my goal.”

A different look on the topic of woman exploitation in the sex industry is given in the movie Yo Puta. The movie maybe mellows things down a bit, but it does give an intriguing insight/introduction into this world.

Links:
Gallery 1839 London
Px3 Photo Competition
Via traveling with the ghost.

The naughty element is present throughout Auguste Learoux’s works. It’s, naturally, most prominent in Casanova bathing/spanking his lover and pulling her towards him, to bed. However, even in the delicate ballerina there’s a sense of kinky seduction, her posture delicately reflects vulnerability and lust. It’s the modesty of the image that gives it its full sexual power. Below are more of Learoux’s illustrations for the Tales of Giacomo Cassanova. The images were taken from here.