Art that pushes the envelope: sensational, colorful and slightly suggestive, the eye-popping pulp art of the 1920s through the 1950s has become a hot collector's item - Pulp Art

At a time when the public's interest in Americana is at a record high, art relating to our national past is experiencing a boom. Images of picturesque homes and farms, American flag in sight, are striking a nostalgic chord with audiences. At the same time, images of a completely different nature--gangsters and thugs, robots and cowboys, heroes and monsters and damsels in distress--are also making their way back into the public's consciousness. Heralding back to the early 20th century, these melodramatic and sometimes racy images aren't from some Hollywood film. Instead, they come from old pulp magazine covers.

Long before the rise of paperback novels and television, pulp magazines were the chief source of entertainment in the U.S. Printed on cheap, coarse wood paper called pulp, these inexpensive 7- by 10-inch publications were geared to a mass market interested in mystery, romance, western, science fiction, detective and horror stories, among other genres. Their sales soared from the 1890s to the 1940s when they sold for a dime and readers numbered in the tens of millions. Many famous stories, such as The Maltese Falcon, Tarzan of the Apes and Zorro, were originally published in these all-fiction magazines.

While pulp magazines have been collected for decades, only during the past few years has there been a growing interest in collecting the dynamic art of the pulps. Today, original pulp art paintings are being sold at premium prices, as high as $30,000. Once seen as throw-away items and on the verge of obscurity, original pulp art has become a hot collector's item as an increasing number of galleries hold shows, auction houses put them out to bid and print publishers invest in publishing reproductions. Even art museums, which historically have turned up their noses when it comes to illustrative art, are beginning to notice their value.

The Story of the Pulp

During the 1990s, the word "pulp" slowly re-entered the public's consciousness: for one thing, Quentin Tarantino's movie Pulp Fiction helped put the word back into people's vocabulary. People began using the word "pulp" to refer to all sorts of things--to men's magazines, paperbacks, true crime magazines, film noir.

But it's the "pulp" of the 1920s, '30s and '40s--the original pulp magazine--which is causing the biggest stir, especially in art circles. Since pulps were sold mainly at newsstands, publishers relied on the vivid and sensationalist artwork on pulp covers to lure the public to choose one magazine over another. Before long, the cover art proved to be more important than the magazine's contents in determining sales.

The heyday of pulps occurred during the Depression when jobs were scarce, forcing many well-trained artists like N.C. Wyeth and Joseph Leyendecker--who created illustrations for higher-brow magazines like the Saturday Evening Post and Collier's--to create covers for pulps with titles like Doc Savage, Black Mask, The Shadow, Weird Tales, The All-Story and The Argosy. Other noted pulp artists include Rudolph Belarsky, Hannes Bok, Margaret Brundage, Virgil Finlay, Robert G. Harris, John Newton Howitt, Frank R. Paul, Norman Saunders, Gloria Stoll and H.J. Ward. These artists shared the ability to successfully capture a single, dramatic moment in time, bound only by the limits of their imaginations.

The Appeal of Pulp Cover Art

Over the last few years, pulp art has experienced a resurgence of interest from the art-buying community. Whether the subject matter is spooky or saucy, Western or exotic, these action-packed images capture the interest of collectors for a number of reasons.

"This kind of art has always intrigued me, because it taps into the great subconscious of popular culture" said Roger Reed of Manhattan's Illustration House, a leading gallery for illustrative art. "Also, there has been a trend in the last 20 years toward collecting images from popular culture. And these paintings are so vivid and lurid that most people immediately get them." He added. "The last time we held a gallery show on pulp art we sold more than ever before."

"People love the rawness and honesty found in these paintings," commented Kent Whipple of the Meyer Gallery in Scottsdale, Ariz. "There's an element of nostalgia to them. A lot of people now are connecting with the past, when times were `simpler.' And, of course, the pure quality of the paintings attracts people."

For dealer, collector and author Robert Weinberg of Chicago, the rareness of pulp paintings is a big draw. "This is all one-of-a-kind art. Interesting and nice to look at, but also rare, which makes it collectible" he said. "I first saw original pulp paintings back in `72 at the first Pulp Con convention where a bunch were up for auction, and I thought they were terrific. I had never given much thought before to the art of the pulps--I had always collected the books without really noticing. But this changed my whole focus." From that point on, Weinberg began collecting pulp art and has since amassed a collection of 475 pulp paintings and black-and-white interior artwork.