Search results for ""author dian hanson""

In 2007 TASCHEN released The New Erotic Photography, followed in 2012 by The New Erotic Photography 2. Each book featured hundreds of fresh and provocative images from the world’s most intriguing erotic talents. Now the best of both books is available in The New Erotic Photography, featuring 62 photographers from 10 countries, exploring the global variations of erotic photography, as well as the evolution of photographic media over the last decade. We see film give way to digital, while those who persist with film are as likely to use Polaroids and primitive cameras like the Lomo and Holga as traditional SLRs. The featured photographers include new names Gregory Bojorquez, Jo Schwab, Tomohide Ikeya, Frédéric Fontenoy, Andrew Pashis, and Jan Hronsky, as well as established artists Guido Argentini, Bruno Bisang, Eric Kroll, and the late Bob Carlos Clarke. Several outstanding women are also featured in this edition, including erotic film star Kimberly Kane, digital pioneer Natacha Merritt, heavy metal skateboarder Magdalena Wosinska, self-portraitist Jody Frost, and cover artist April-Lea Hutchinson. It all adds up to an awful lot of nudes for a tantalizingly low price.

Read more less

The female leg is a sexual oddity. Non-genital, and nearly identical in structure to the corresponding male body part, there is no obvious reason why it’s eroticized. Yet, through much of history, across many cultures, the female leg was hidden from sight and treated as such a taboo topic that it became an object of intense sexual obsession. In the Victorian era the word “leg” was so forbidden that it couldn’t be uttered in polite society, lest men be driven wild with lust. Even now, 100 years after women’s legs came out of hiding, their allure remains strong. In this third book of Dian Hanson’s wildly successful body parts series she explores how freeing the female leg became central to women’s liberation, beginning with the post-French Revolution cancan and ending with the 1960’s Sexual Revolution miniskirt. Over 400 photos document the first burlesque “leg shows” of the 1800s, the silk-stockinged flappers of the 1920s, the nylon-mania of the 1940s, the dawn of the stiletto heel in the 1950s, all leading to the golden age of leg magazines in the 1960s. Learn who wore the first high heels, how nylons became a weapon of war, why Betty Grable’s were the million dollar legs, where Elmer Batters got his start, and just what the deal is with feet, while enjoying great vintage photos by Irving Klaw, Batters and other masters of leg art.

Read more less

Many loved The Big Book of Legs but some found it just too darn big, weighing in at nearly seven pounds. True, it was packed with shapely legs spanning six decades, from the first shy emergence of the ankle in the 1910s, through the rolled stockings and rouged knees of the 1920s, to the Betty Grable ’40s, the stockinged and stilettoed ’50s, on into the sexually liberated ’60s and ’70s, but it could still put a dent in your own thighs if you sat reading for too long. Fortunately here at TASCHEN we listen to your groans of agony as well as your moans of ecstasy; thus, this light and portable new edition, packing over 100 of the choicest photos from the original volume, as well as 38 new photos, into a compact (and frankly adorable) package. From Betty Grable to Bettie Page, the greatest legs of the 20th Century can be found within, shot by Irving Klaw, Bunny Yeager, and the incomparable Elmer Batters, father of leg art. There are silk and nylon stockings, high heels in abundance, curvy calves, taut thighs, playful toes and towering arches—with no bothersome text to get in the way. Could leg love get any sweeter?

Read more less

From the time The Big Penis Book was published, readers anticipated The Big Book of Pussy. Granted, perhaps not the same readers, but the seed had been planted and the calls and letters began flowing in. Once they had that long-awaited book, some found themselves overwhelmed by the variety and abundance, as well as the sheer size of the book. As one reviewer wrote, “let’s give credit to Amazon for…the strength of its packaging. Who wants a 2-ton pussy book being ‘exposed’ for the mailman…?” For those who worry that there can be too much of a good thing, we’ve made a pared down, “best of” edition of The Big Book of Pussy, a petite little kitten of a book that puts those in-your-face photos in proper perspective. Now you can follow the evolution of genital exposure with ease, through 100 years of photos with one thing in common: the exhibitionistic pleasure with which the models present their feminine pulchritude. And with over 150 photos—36 new to this book—of the pet we love to pet, no bothersome text to interrupt the flow, all in a package that won’t stress the mailman’s back, we just may have produced the perfect self-gifter of the year.

Read more less

How can we pack so much big booty into such a tiny and inexpensive package? Sorry, but it’s a trade secret we can’t divulge, except to say that shoehorns and spandex were involved. The original Big Butt Book featured a great cross section of delectable rears from the 1950s to the present day. Here, since life is such an ironic deal, we decided to pare the original content down to just the biggest and the best, in-your-face phatties to which the great Sir Mix-a-Lot alluded when penning, “My anaconda don’t want none, unless you’ve got buns, hun.” Then we added in about 30 new photos, just to be generous. Now in these 150 plus photos you’ll see the big and the bountiful, then the bigger and more bountiful, in black and white and in color. The models may be largely anonymous, but their curves are legendary, and now that they’re collected in a discrete little package affordable by all in these financially trying times, why hold back? Your badonkadonk is calling.

Read more less

Some call it the American obsession, but men everywhere recognize the hypnotic allure of a large and shapely breast. In The Big Book of Breasts, Dian Hanson explores the origins of mammary madness through three decades of natural big-breasted nudes. Starting with the World War II Bosom-Mania that spawned Russ Meyer, Howard Hughes’s The Outlaw and Frederick’s of Hollywood, Dian guides you over, around, and in between the dangerous curves of infamous models including Michelle Angelo, Candy Barr, Virginia Bell, Joan Brinkman, Lorraine Burnett, Lisa De Leeuw, Uschi Digard, Candye Kane, Jennie Lee, Sylvia McFarland, Margaret Middleton, Paula Page, June Palmer, Roberta Pedon, Rosina Revelle, Candy Samples, Tempest Storm, Linda West, June Wilkinson, Julie Wills, and dozens more, including Guinness World Record holder Norma Stitz, possessor of the World`s Largest Natural Breasts. The 396 pages of this book contain the most beautiful and provocative photos ever created of these iconic women, plus nine original interviews, including the first with Tempest Storm and Uschi Digard in over a decade, and the last with Candy Barr before her untimely death in 2005. In a world where silicone is now the norm, these spectacular real women stand as testament that nature knows best.

Read more less

After the bust out success of The Big Book of Breasts TASCHEN presents the perfect companion, The Big Penis Book. When it comes to pleasure, size doesn’t matter; as we all know it’s quality, not quantity, that counts. But let’s admit it: a big penis is undeniably compelling. Big shoulders, big lapels, and big hair may come and go, but the big penis never goes out of fashion. With those possessing more than 8 inches (20 cm) making up less than 2% of the world’s population, this rare accessory will always fascinate. In The Big Penis Book we explore the centuries-old fascination with the large phallus, a fascination common to men and women alike. This hefty book is profusely illustrated with over 400 historic photos of spectacular male endowments, including rare photos of the legendary John Holmes. The majority of the photographs are from the 1970s, when the sexual revolution first freed photographers to depict the male entirely nude. Photographers include Bob Mizer of Athletic Model Guild, David Hurles of Old Reliable, Colt, Falcon, Sierra Domino, Third World, and Champion Studios, with each of these iconic photographers interviewed or profiled, along with information about each of their models. And if this isn’t enough, the book closes with a special surprise comparable to the Guinness Book of Records’ Norma Stitz featured in The Big Book of Breasts! Can you guess what body part Dian is dissecting next?

Read more less

In the late 1960s specialty bookstores selling magazines under the counter were replaced by sex shops, or “adult bookstores” in the U.S., at which point every subject, with few exceptions, was freely available. It started with Swedish Private and its shockingly explicit covers. Denmark’s Theander brothers countered with Rodox and Color Climax, with equally explicit content. Soon they were supplying most of Northern Europe, with the Netherlands pitching in. In the U.S. Reuben Sturman was hailed King of Porn, with affiliates churning out hardcore of every kind to fill his 800 bookstores. Suddenly men used to taking what was offered could be picky. Lesbian dominance? Hot housewives? Black and Asian women? Hippie nudists espousing free love and drug use? Hairy women? Shaved women? Shaved women giving hairy women enemas? It was all there. For the kinky, every fetish was represented: spanking titles Zap and Smack cuddled up to dominance titles Bitch and Aggressive Gals, and to Wet Dreams, Diapered and Dominated and Enema Pick ups. For rubberists there was quirky Atomage, and even quirkier Belly Button. Yes, Belly Button. Are you familiar with the name Edw. Wood, Jr., called the world’s worst film director? Then you’ll enjoy his little-known porn magazines, including Balling, Skin & Bones and Party Time. What a decade. Warning: everything in this volume is uncensored and for mature adults only. The photos do not represent the majority. Volume 6 features over 600 covers and photos from Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the U.S. with the usual, amusing text.

Read more less

Pubic hair appeared on the American newsstand in 1970 compliments of Penthouse magazine. Within a year it was everywhere, and in 1975 Midwest redneck Larry Flynt parted the hair and made the pink beyond the centerpiece of Hustler. In Northern Europe censorship laws fell like dominos after Berth Milton confronted Swedish parliament with hardcore photos in 1967, asking what it would do if he published them in Private magazine. The answer was nothing. Denmark followed, producing magazines for France as well. England, always lagging, finally got the knickers off, but kept its censorship laws. Japan, long suppressed, found release in bondage magazines like New Roman Porno and SM Select, though pubic hair stayed forbidden. Italy passed a law in 1975 exempting newsstand dealers from responsibility for the content of magazines; much like in Sweden hardcore was suddenly everywhere, while just five years before divorce was illegal. The Pill removed pregnancy fear and couples embraced swinging, the suburban sexual revolution, with swing magazines in the U.S. and Europe helping to hook them up. Behind much of it was politically motivated idealists and oddballs. Peter Wolff and the “Love family” made reader written magazines, bringing publishing power to the people. Al Goldstein challenged American censorship with Screw, while a Texas ad exec tried to keep tasteless hillbilly humor alive with Sex to Sexty. History of Men’s Magazines Volume 5 includes over 600 hair-raising covers and photos from Denmark, England, France, Germany, Japan, the U.S. and more, with the usual inspired text.

Read more less

Fantasy art, that colorful blend of myth, muscle and sexy maidens, took off in 1923 with the launch of Weird Tales magazine, was reinvigorated in the 1960s with The Lord of the Rings, Conan the Barbarian paperbacks with Frank Frazetta covers, and the late ’60s emergence of fantasy psychedelia. It went big in the ’70s with the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, the brilliant French magazine Métal Hurlant, and the first Star Wars film. The number of active artists peaked in that decade, but a new generation of fans discovered the genre through fantasy trading card games in the ’90s, leading to a massive interest in the art form today. Frank Frazetta’s oil paintings—when they infrequently come to market—have sold for more than $ 5 million in recent years. Fans line up at Comic-Cons to meet Boris Vallejo, Rodney Matthews, Greg Hildebrandt, Michael Whelan, and Philippe Druillet, and memorialize dead icons HR Giger, Jeffrey Catherine Jones, and Frazetta. Imagine how eagerly they’ll welcome TASCHEN’s History of Fantasy Art, including all the artists listed above and more. This monster-sized tome features original paintings, contextualized by preparatory sketches, sculptures, calendars, magazines, and paperback books for an immersive dive into this dynamic, fanciful genre. Insightful bios go beyond Wikipedia to give a more accurate and eye-opening look into the life of each artist. Complete with tipped-in chapter openers, this collection will reign as the most exquisite and informative guide to this popular subject for years to come.

Read more less

The Kama Sutra gives detailed instructions on how to spank it. Contemporary Italians touch it for luck before placing a bet. Americans are having it cosmetically enhanced at rates approaching breast enlargement surgery. The female butt, tush, culo, or derrière has always inspired awe, fantasy, and slavish devotion.Curiously, its primary purpose is functional rather than aesthetic: butts balance our bodies while running, according to biologists. But ask any pygophiliac—as fundament fans are clinically termed—and you’ll get the same answer: female hindquarters exist to please the eye, the hands, and parts south. A pert posterior causes instant arousal, as Zora Neale Hurston observed in Their Eyes Were Watching God: "The men noticed her firm buttocks like she had grape fruits in her hip pockets." Or, as rapper Sir Mix-a-lot proclaimed, "My anaconda don’t want none, unless you’ve got buns, hun."Having all but disappeared from western culture in the breast-obsessed second half of the 20th century, the fully formed fanny is currently enjoying a massive resurgence, attributed by some to American actress Jennifer Lopez, by others to the rise of booty-centric hip hop culture. Yet this rage for shapely butts is nothing new. The ancient Greeks worshipped at the temple of Aphrodite Kallipygos, Goddess of the Beautiful Buttocks, while a womanly rump has always been an object of worship in most of the southern hemisphere.The Big Butt Book explores this perennial fascination with female booty—from small and taut to large and sumptuous—in the fourth installment of Dian Hanson’s critically acclaimed body parts series. Over 400 photos from 1900 to the present day, including works by Elmer Batters, Ellen von Unwerth, Jean-Paul Goude, Ralph Gibson, Richard Kern, Jan Saudek, Ed Fox, Terry Richardson and Sante D’Orazio, of butts ranging from petite Pam Anderson’s to sumptuous Serena Williams’, are contextualized by interviews with porn icon John (Buttman) Stagliano, filmmaker Tinto Brass, artist Robert Crumb, bootylicious butt queens Buffie The Body, Coco and Brazil’s Watermelon Woman, plus Eve Howard and her life-long spanking obsession.

Read more less

Sexual revolution, civil rights, Flower Power, miniskirt, women’s liberation, The Pill, Black Panthers, hippies; all these words and phrases entered our language in the turbulent 1960s. The decade started as an extension of the domestic ’50s and ended with worldwide chaos as baby boomers reached sexual maturity. What a fun decade for men’s magazines. While Playboy’s world dominance grew, with France, Germany, England, and Italy producing “men’s lifestyle” titles, diversification spread in the U.S. The first big breast magazines debuted, with Fling, Gem and The Swinger; men’s adventure titles – with nudes – provided nostalgia for mid-life veterans; humor magazines hung on – barely – while hippie nudist titles exploited a legal loophole allowing them to show pubic hair. Italy finally joined the party with sexy fumetto photo comics and a hero named Supersex. Latin America clung to the old burlesque format, mired in religious restriction and political unrest. France retained post-war favorite Folies de Paris et de Hollywood for an older audience and launched elegant Playboy clone LUI for its sons. While the world donned miniskirts England did England, reveling in bloomer and petticoat fetishism with Spick and Span digests. But no one topped Germany, where Ulrike Meinhof edited Konkret in 1969, a magazine of sexual and political revolution, before forming Red Army Fraction with Andreas Baader to bomb, kidnap, and assassinate her way into domestic terror history. Volume 3 contains over 650 groovy covers and photos from Argentina, England, France, Germany, Italy, and The U.S., plus text.

Read more less

WWII was devastating to Europe, but the U.S. emerged with a robust economy. People who were encouraged to save every cent for the war effort now spent freely, including on magazines. The U.S. quickly came to dominate the men’s magazine market. Playboy, launched in December 1953, made a huge impact on publishing, but it was not the only American men’s magazine in the 1950s. The quirky burlesque titles Beauty Parade, Wink, Titter and Eyeful, featuring Bettie Page and covers by artist Peter Driben, inspired a spate of competing titles. Much loved WWII pin-ups, often of aspiring starlets, led to “news and nudes” titles with cover girls Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, and to more lurid titles like Shock, blending burlesque and celebrity scandal. In New York City a clandestine fetishist magazine industry, bankrolled by the mob, emerged, first with John Willie’s Bizarre, then Lenny Burtman’s female dominant Exotique. Argentina, with a strong European influence, produced sophisticated Vea (Watch), while England, suffering paper shortages, produced little magazines with big buxom models, charting a path it would maintain through the 1960s. Then came Playboy. Eschewing the strippers, Hugh Hefner offered up “the girl next door,” eroticized innocence, and espoused consumerism as the route to sexual success. This combination made Playboy the most successful men’s magazine in history, shaping international publishing for decades. Volume 2 in this series contains over 650 magazine covers and photos from the U.S., Mexico, Argentina and England, plus informative essays.

Read more less

The first commercial camera was introduced in 1839. By 1865 technology enabled ordinary men to create photographic negatives, and they immediately began taking and distributing photos of naked women. The French led the way, and it was the French who produced the first nude magazines in 1880, as souvenirs for patrons of Parisian music halls. Newsstand magazines followed, and the elegant La Vie Parisienne (Paris Life), full of sexy fiction and illustrations, debuted in 1914. It might all have stayed in Paris if not for WWI, when German and American troops carried the magazines home. American Wilford Fawcett launched Capt. Billy’s Whiz Bang (named after a WWI bomb) in 1919, helping launch the first sexual revolution of the 1920s, leading to SEX magazine from birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger. Decadent Weimar Berlin produced cabaret, fetish and free love magazines, countered by nudist titles pushing fascist politics, culminating in the 1933 Berlin book burning. The 1930s economic depression boosted demand for cheap escape, and men’s magazines delivered. There were film magazines of sexy starlets; “model study” art magazines; hardcore comics called Tijuana Bibles; “spicy” fiction digests with sexy painted covers; and detective titles of bad dames. When another world war erupted it required pinup magazines for fighting men, and after the war new men’s magazines rose from the ashes. Volume 1 of this series features over 700 covers and photos from France, Germany, the U.S., England, Turkey, Austria, Spain, Argentina and more, plus informative text.

Read more less

Fantasy art, that colorful blend of myth, muscle and sexy maidens, took off in 1923 with the launch of Weird Tales magazine, was reinvigorated in the 1960s with The Lord of the Rings, Conan the Barbarian paperbacks with Frank Frazetta covers, and the late ’60s emergence of fantasy psychedelia. It went big in the ’70s with the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, the brilliant French magazine Métal Hurlant, and the first Star Wars film. The number of active artists peaked in that decade, but a new generation of fans discovered the genre through fantasy trading card games in the ’90s, leading to a massive interest in the art form today.Frank Frazetta’s oil paintings—when they infrequently come to market—have sold for more than $ 5 million in recent years. Fans line up at Comic-Cons to meet Boris Vallejo, Rodney Matthews, Greg Hildebrandt, Michael Whelan, and Philippe Druillet, and memorialize dead icons HR Giger, Jeffrey Catherine Jones, and Frazetta. This book features original paintings, contextualized by preparatory sketches, sculptures, calendars, magazines, and paperback books, for an immersive dive into this dynamic, fanciful genre. Insightful bios go beyond Wikipedia to give a more accurate and eye-opening look into the life of each artist. This collection will reign as the most exquisite and informative guide to this popular subject for years to come.

Read more less

The Big Book of Breasts was an immediate best seller when it debuted in 2006. Its 396 pages introduced readers to the top naturally bountiful nude models of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, amazingly mammiferous beauties including Virginia Bell, Roberta Pedon, Mary Waters, Keli Stewart and many more. The one and only complaint was that there was no biographical information on these curvaceous cuties, no lists of their magazines and films to give readers a more intimate connection. We listened, and The Bigger Book of Breasts answers! Not only are there more pages with all new photos of your favorite big breast models of the ’50s through ’70s, there are also personal profiles for each and every one. Which model married comedian Richard Pryor? Who inspired Russ Meyer’s first film? Where are those free Mary Waters loops? And yes, Roberta Pedon is alive and well! Further updating the “Bigger” theme, we added the 12 most incredible, natural, and provocative breast models of today, gathered from across the world by Berlin-based photographer, Bernd Daktari Lorenz. Nadine Jansen, Luna Amor, Miosotis Claribel and the incredible Hitomi Tanaka prove breasts are bigger than ever, and bigger is beautiful, for both breasts and books. Wrap it up with stunning photos of our original cover girl Kelly Madison and The Bigger Book of Breasts is a bigger treat for all.

Read more less

“Sirs” begins the missive from our imaginary correspondent. “It’s not that I don’t love your original Big Penis Book, but that, perhaps, I love it too much. I now become anxious leaving the house without it, and long business trips are simply torture. Couldn’t you make a smaller, less obtrusive edition, still packed with men whose generative members measure over 8 inches, that doesn’t form a suspiciously large bulge in my carry-on luggage? And while you’re at it, could you make it highly affordable, since my pockets are as shallow as this premise?” Done! The Little Big Penis Book features over 150 massively endowed models from the 1940s through the ’90s, including photos by Bob Mizer of AMG, David Hurles of Old Reliable, Rip Colt of Colt Studio, Craig Calvin Anderson of Sierra Domino, Hal Roth of Filmco, Jim Jaeger of Third World Studios, Falcon Studios, Mike Arlen, Fred Bisonnes, Carlos Quiroz, and Charles Hovland in a compact and inexpensive format. Photos come not just from the original overstuffed 384-page edition, but from subsequent Big Penis Calendars, meaning that 30% of the content is unique to this edition. Add a reduced text to make more room for the stunning black-and-white and color photos and how could anyone—big, small, or just right—ask for a better deal?

Read more less

The Little Big Book of Breasts features over 150 celebrated big breast models from the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, including Michelle Angelo, Virginia Bell, Roxanne Brewer, Joan Brinkman, Lorraine Burnett, Lisa DeLeeuw, Uschi Digard, Sylvia McFarland, Chesty Morgan, Roberta Pedon, Rosina Revelle, Janie Reynolds, Candy Samples, Tempest Storm, Mary Waters, June Wilkinson, and Julie Wills, plus Guinness Book of World Records bra-buster Norma Stitz in a compact and inexpensive format. Photos come not just from the original 398-page edition, but from subsequent Big Breast Calendars, meaning that 40% of the content is unique to this edition. Add reduced text to make more room for the stunning black-and-white and color photos and how could anyone—big, small, or in-between—ask for a better deal?

Read more less

First, The Big Book of Breasts, then The Big Penis Book, The Big Book of Legs, and the weighty Big Butt Book. What could follow but an in-depth exploration of the female pudendum, that coveted orifice man spends nine months trying to escape, and a lifetime attempting to reenter? The Big Book of Pussy, not to be confused with a book of big pussy, closes out this popular series with an offering sure to be as controversial as it is popular. As in previous volumes, editor Dian Hanson delves into the historical significance of this humble os, to show how the yoni has been coveted, feared, reviled, and worshipped by civilizations worldwide, from New Guinea to old Ireland. The text is supported by playful photographs of women exposing their vulvas, from 1900 to the present day. Because depiction of this body part has long been wrapped in unwarranted shame, The Big Book of Pussy reframes the subject, featuring models who expose their most private part enthusiastically, happily, with smiles spread wide as… well, you get the picture. And with 400+ photos the point is made emphatically, in images both naturally furry and stylishly groomed. Included are interviews with the auteur known as Pussyman, the ex-cop who turned masturbation into millions with a toy called the Fleshlight, Vanessa del Rio, squirter Flower Tucci, vaginal performance artist Mouse, and the singular Buck Angel. Contemporary photographers Terry Richardson, Richard Kern, Ralph Gibson, Jan Saudek, Guido Argentini, Ed Fox and others share their favorite pussy photos, so that by page 368 even the shiest reader will be calling, “Here, kitty, kitty!”

Read more less

Ren Hang, who took his life February 23, 2017, was an unlikely rebel. Slight of build, shy by nature, prone to fits of depression, the 29-year-old Beijing photographer was nonetheless at the forefront Chinese artists’ battle for creative freedom. Like his champion Ai Weiwei, Ren was controversial in his homeland and wildly popular in the rest of the world. He said, “I don’t really view my work as taboo, because I don’t think so much in cultural context, or political context. I don’t intentionally push boundaries, I just do what I do.” Why? Because his models, friends, and in his last years, fans, are naked, often outdoors, high in the trees or on the terrifyingly vertiginous rooftops of Beijing, stacked like building blocks, heads wrapped in octopi, body cavities sprouting phone cords and flowers, whatever entered his mind at the moment. He denied his intentions were sexual, and there is a clean detachment about even his most extreme images: the urine, the insertions, the many, many erections. In a 2013 interview VICE magazine asked, “there are a lot of dicks … do you just like dicks?” Ren responded, “It’s not just dicks I’m interested in, I like to portray every organ in a fresh, vivid and emotional way.” True though that may be, the penises Ren photographed were not just fresh and vivid, but unusually large, making one wonder just where he met his friends. In the same piece, Hang also stated, “Gender isn’t important when I’m taking pictures, it only matters to me when I’m having sex,” making him a pioneer of gender inclusiveness. Young fans still eagerly flock to his website and Facebook, Instagram, and Flickr accounts. His photographs, all produced on film, have been the subject of over 20 solo and 70 group shows in his brief six-year career, in cities as disparate as Tokyo, Athens, Paris, New York, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Vienna, and yes, even Beijing. He self-published 16 monographs, in tiny print runs, that now sell for up to $ 600. TASCHEN’s Ren Hang is his only international collection, covering his entire career, with well-loved favorites and many never-before-seen photos of men, women, Beijing, and those many, many erections. We take solace remembering Ren’s joy when he first held the book, shared by his long-time partner Jiaqi, featured on the cover.

Read more less

In 1953 Marlon Brando donned a black leather Perfecto motorcycle jacket, military cap, denim jeans, and engineer boots to portray Johnny, sneering leader of the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, in The Wild One. In 1954 Tom of Finland abandoned brown leather in his artwork to create his own wild ones: muscular, hyper-masculine, black leather-clad rebels with powerful engines between their legs. The look was adopted by the Satyrs Motorcycle Club, the first gay outlaw club, that same year, making Tom’s fantasy world reality. Of course, being Tom, he soon customized his new gay icons, adding leather jodhpurs, knee high boots and leather caps, and every motorcycle bore the brand name “Tom” on the gas tank. Tom’s bikers first appeared as two “Motorcycle Boys” in Physique Pictorial, Winter 1958. Another made the cover of the April 1960 issue. Bikers dominated his PP content from then on, as a nod to its American readership as much as his growing obsession. When he sought an ongoing character, a personal avatar, in 1968, he created Kake as the ultimate biker leatherman, and elaborated on his riding adventures – of every kind - through 26-panel stories. Tom adopted Kake’s gear as his own, presenting in black leather jacket, white t-shirt, jeans, and high boots to the end of his life. The Little Book of Tom: Bikers includes Tom’s earliest images for Physique Pictorial, Kake in motorcycle gear, biker panel stories, and sizzling single drawings, all packed into 192 pages of sexy, masculine men enjoying other masculine men in black leather, blue jeans, and high black boots. On bikes.

Read more less

In 1965, Tom of Finland began flirting with the idea of an ongoing character for his panel stories, the ultimate Tom’s Man. He tried out a blond named Vicky—a common male name in Finland—followed by a Tarzan-inspired Jack. Then in 1968 Tom settled on Kake, a dark-haired, mustached leatherman who often wore a tight white T-shirt bearing the motto “Fucker.” Kake lived up to this moniker, a sort of post-Stonewall, hyper-masculine Johnny Appleseed traveling the world on his motorcycle to spread the seeds of liberated, mutually satisfying, ecstatically explicit gay sex. Tom lived out many of his most personal fantasies through Kake, and Kake’s international fans made him the template for what came to be known as the gay clone look of the 1970s. Between 1968 and 1986, Tom published 26 episodes of Kake adventures, most as 20-page booklets.Tom of Finland – The Complete Kake Comics collects all of these stories in one volume. Return with Kake to the days when men were men, sex was carefree, and everyone wore a big thick mustache.

Read more less

Tom’s taste for police officers and felons—and for sexual tension between the two—developed late in his career. “I’ve never been to prison,” he told a class at the California Institute of the Arts in 1985, “but I hear it’s a closed world where there are different roles and people behave different from when they walk free. It fascinates me. It is another subject I come back to again and again.” By which he meant fantasized about again and again, since only those subjects that aroused him sexually made it into his art. The uniforms of the California Highway Patrol motorcyclists were his favorite: tan and tight, with high boots and soft black leather gauntlet gloves. He created his own uniform variants as well, a cross between military and civilian police gear, and invented suitably butch criminals for his cops to apprehend, though once apprehended the power struggle could go either way. Tom was determined to show top and bottom as equally masculine roles, and his cops were as likely to end up happily speared by criminal cock as delivering corrective coitus. Though criticized by some for what appeared to be a glorification of power, Tom was always quick to remind that the world he created was a fantasy world, where anything was possible, and everything was consensual—even in prison. The Little Book of Tom: Cops & Robbers explores Tom’s fascination with criminal justice through a mixture of multi-panel comics and single-panel drawings and paintings, all in a compact and affordable 192 pages. Historic film stills and posters, personal photos of Tom, sketches, and Tom’s own reference photos make this far more than another Tom’s Comics re-tread.

Read more less

When we think Tom of Finland we first picture muscular, macho young men in military gear. Tom’s vision of masculine perfection was formed during his service as an officer during World War II. Though he served in the Finnish air force, it was the German troops, stationed in Finland to help the country repel invading Russian forces, which served as inspiration. After all, only the Germans had uniforms created by Hugo Boss, tightly tailored, replete with designer touches, and complimented by high, shiny black leather boots. Tom, at 19, was smitten, an obsession that deepened following his first sexual experiences with German officers in the blackout streets of Helsinki. Tom began putting his military fantasies on paper in 1945 to memorialize his thrilling nighttime encounters when the war ended. At first the Hugo Boss uniforms dominated, but as the years and then decades passed he included American naval uniforms as well, and then his own hybridized designs of black leather, jodhpurs, boots, and peaked caps, with military insignia replaced by Tom’s Men patches. As Tom attracted an army of loyal fans, he created, with pencil, pen and gouache, an army of free, proud, masculine fantasy men committed to pleasure and male camaraderie. The Little Book of Tom: Military Men explores Tom’s fascination with militaria through a mixture of multi-panel comics and single-panel drawings and paintings, all in a compact and affordable 192 pages. Historic film stills and posters, personal photos of Tom, sketches, and Tom’s own reference images explore the cultural context and private inspirations behind the ultimate Tom of Finland hero.

Read more less

Since TASCHEN released The Great American Pin-up, international interest in this distinctly American art form has increased exponentially. Paintings by leading artists such as Alberto Vargas, George Petty, and Gil Elvgren that sold for $ 2,000 in 1996 are going for $ 200,000 and more today. Pin-up—drawings, paintings, and pastels of an idealized female face and figure intended for public display—was produced between 1920 and 1970 for calendars, magazine covers, and centerfolds. The majority of original paintings were discarded by publishers and calendar companies after printing, making the surviving art that much more precious. Based on the formidably sized Art of Pin-up, this accessible edition gathers nearly 100 artists alongside in-depth showcases of the top 10 names in the game. Each chapter opens with a reproduction of an original calendar or magazine cover by that artist. The reproduction quality of the paintings, pastels, and preparatory sketches that follow—largely sourced from the original art—invites the viewer to trace the brushstrokes, while the exquisite period calendars, vintage prints, and original model photos document the artists’ creative process. Much of these ephemera were photographed on-site at the historic Brown & Bigelow Company, home to the world’s largest archive of vintage pin-up calendars. In addition to the chapters on the 10 featured artists, the book includes bios and art of 85 painters, the most complete compendium of pin-up artists ever compiled. All this adds up to a hard-to-beat book on this popular subject.

Read more less

Frank Frazetta has reigned as the undisputed king of fantasy art for 50 years, his fame only growing in the 12 years since his death. With his paintings now breaking auction records (Egyptian Queen sold for $ 5.4 million in 2019) he’s long overdue for this ultimate monograph. Born to a Sicilian immigrant family in Brooklyn, 1928, Frazetta was a minor league athlete, petty criminal and serial seducer with movie star looks and phenomenal talent. He claimed to only make art when there was nothing better to do – he preferred playing baseball - yet began his professional career in comics at age 16. Strip work led him to the infamous EC Comics, then to oils for Tarzan and Conan pulp covers. Both characters were interpreted by many before him, but as he explained in the 1970s, “I’m very physical minded. In Brooklyn, I knew Conan, I knew guys just like him,” and he used this first-hand knowledge of muscle and macho to redefine fantasy heroes as more massive, more menacing, more testosterone-fueled than anything seen before. As counterbalance he created a new breed of women, nude as censorship allowed, with pixie faces and multiparous bodies: thick thighed, heavy buttocked, breasts cantilevered out to there, yet still, with their soft bellies and hints of cellulite, believably real. Add in the action, the creatures, the twilit worlds of haunting shadow and Frazetta’s art is addictive as potato chips. This monograph is the most complete ever produced on the artist, done in collaboration with the Frazetta family. It won the 2023 Eisner Award for Best Archival Collection.

Read more less

As a boy, Tom’s first crush was a strapping young farmhand who worked the fields around his family home. Finland is a land of tough physical men, catching fish in the icy sea; cutting logs in the endless forests; threshing oats, rye, and barley on the farms. Tom, a more sensitive boy, admired these rough men and their distinctive clothing, designed for protection and utility. He later said, “When I was young, leather was worn by people who worked outside because it was warm. All the men who wore leather, they were the type of men which I adored.” When he began to draw he celebrated these early idols, improving their wardrobes with tight jeans, faded T-shirts, and thigh-high beak-toed Lappish boots. It was a young logger in this gear who appeared on the spring 1957 cover of Physique Pictorial, introducing Tom to the world. In the decades to follow Tom added truckers, repairmen, construction workers, circus roustabouts, and the American cowboy to his roster of working-class heroes. Though just sexual fantasies for him, his portrayal of blue-collar lovers helped working class gays accept their true selves. The Little Book of Tom: Blue Collar traces Tom’s fascination with working men in one compact and affordable package. A brawny lineup of multi-panel comics and single-panel drawings and paintings is set alongside archival and contextual material, including historic film stills and posters, personal photos of Tom, sketches, and Tom’s own reference photos.

Read more less