Pollen, Samson - BLOOD SPORTS Painting
VF: 8.0
(Stock Image)
SOLD ON: Monday, 03/13/2023 9:05 PM
$235
Sold For
16
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PUBLISHER: Jove Books
COMMENTS: Samson Pollen painting; cover; 1980; image size 22.5" x 23"
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DESCRIPTION
Samson Pollen painting; cover; 1980; image size 22.5" x 23"Great painting by acclaimed men's magazine and pulp artist Pollen for the cover to the pulp paperback Blood Sports by Paul R. Rothweiler. Gouache on illustration board. Painting is in very good condition, there is light wear around the edges of the board, not affecting the painting.
Includes a proof of the published cover.
Artist Information
Samson Pollen was a prolific Bronx-born artist, who died in 2018, at the age of eighty-seven, making his name illustrating men’s adventure magazines and pulp fiction, mixing cliffhanger moments and scenes of seduction with unmatched dynamism. Pollen’s small paintings from the nineteen-sixties and seventies represent the high-water mark of the genre, reading today as deliriously camp artifacts of vintage heterosexuality. “The Notorious Woman at Beach Camp 40, Stag Magazine,” from 1967, includes a world of narrative detail: the lingerie-clad title character occupies the extreme foreground, facing an ocean horizon, as a man (also in underwear) darts from a tent with a handgun. The shenanigans in other skillfully articulated compositions range from the kind of behavior one might expect from a “Nympho Nurse” to a pitchfork duel and a meat-cleaver assault. The tricks Pollen employs to broadcast sexual suspense or to freeze action at the height of its drama are borrowed from comics, but his adherence to commercial conventions doesn’t detract from his brilliant achievement: his unflagging ability to capture cinematic sweep in a single tableau.
Includes a proof of the published cover.
Artist Information
Samson Pollen was a prolific Bronx-born artist, who died in 2018, at the age of eighty-seven, making his name illustrating men’s adventure magazines and pulp fiction, mixing cliffhanger moments and scenes of seduction with unmatched dynamism. Pollen’s small paintings from the nineteen-sixties and seventies represent the high-water mark of the genre, reading today as deliriously camp artifacts of vintage heterosexuality. “The Notorious Woman at Beach Camp 40, Stag Magazine,” from 1967, includes a world of narrative detail: the lingerie-clad title character occupies the extreme foreground, facing an ocean horizon, as a man (also in underwear) darts from a tent with a handgun. The shenanigans in other skillfully articulated compositions range from the kind of behavior one might expect from a “Nympho Nurse” to a pitchfork duel and a meat-cleaver assault. The tricks Pollen employs to broadcast sexual suspense or to freeze action at the height of its drama are borrowed from comics, but his adherence to commercial conventions doesn’t detract from his brilliant achievement: his unflagging ability to capture cinematic sweep in a single tableau.