Thursday 4 March 2010

Redheaded Venus of the Week 1: Paintings by Gil Elvgren



Agent Triple P has always had a fondness for redheaded women. Much derided as the mutants they, of course, are, many have had to deal with all sorts of vilification over the years: from insults provoked by the paleness of their skin to the often erratic texture of their hair.

Male redheads are, of course, an abomination. A BBC3 documentary a couple of years ago, with the rather assertive title Fuck off, I'm ginger!, showed a redheaded male TV presenter talking about the discrimination redheads endured. He tried to persuade a group of girls in a bar that there was nothing wrong with redheads. Despite him being on TV they all universally rejected him because of his hair colour.

A scientist was wheeled on to explain that women were programmed to reject pale skinned redheads as unhealthy looking and therefore bad breeding material. In Britain and Ireland we have a disproportionately large number of redheads of course but that means a higher than normal proportion of redheaded women.


Redheaded women fall into two camps: the vast majority, who tend to have a rather porcine aspect, and the rare but striking minority who will be the subject of our study over the coming months.




Today, as we heven't had any artwork on here for a bit, we present some paintings by pin-up artist supreme, Gil Elvgren (1914-1980). Most famous for his calendar work for Brown and Bigelow he produced over 500 oil paintings of women from the mid Thirties through to the mid Seventies.

He had an eye for an attractive redhead and a great ability to render their hair so we present a selection of his output to start our redheads collection.



The picture below sold last year for over $210,000 so there are obviously some rich redhead afficianados out there!


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