•
Outlines, sureness and originality in overlapping
•
Compositional freshness across a two page spread
•
Stripes and to a lesser extent, pattern fields that switch
archly between flatness and the illusions of depth. No-one has ever
introduced so many tassles to the termination of textiles.
•
Layers of textures and transparent glazes, hard and
soft, opaque and transparent, see through and peek-a-boo
•
Armpits, often an anatomical feature avoided by many American
illustrators of this period. Du Maurier memorably called them "armpit
flesh folds" and
was clearly revolted
•
the range of rhetorical expression in women's glances from behind
the hanging curtians of hair (Veronica Lake) coupled with the mobile
armoury of eye-brow,
MY
FAVOURITE FEATURES
COVER
January 1952; the space between shawl and fender; the striped column as
fulcrum
COVER March 1961; ignoring the anonymous bundle babies,
the Nurse as Pin-Up
COVER October 1955 tassles and gloves
MARCH
1958,the witty pyjama jacket sleeve and the turned down sheet
TAKE ME TO HOLLYWOOD the highlight on the belt; the peek-a-boo
bang (appearing from behind her own hair) ; the finest armpit you could
ever see
THE
GIRL HE JILTED, look at the collar with its high illusion safety
pin contrasting with flat dusty spots on her dress, and here is
one of his best lower lips EVER
SLAP
ME, tension in the composition, different paint handling for moths
and the sailor top, cute this?
ONE WOMAN'S DREAM, a personal gallery of contrasting painting
styles, Uncle Herman in a German turn of the century impasted style (Lovis
Corinth?)
THE
CRITICAL YOUNG MAN, his most exciting composition, full of charming
contrasts and puzzles, the lattice leg table and so many great
games with the mirror reflection
SECOND
CLASS MARRIAGE the ardour of the embrace sure, but don't ignore
the deployment of auto fittings, metallic bits floating free against
the inner colour of the fabric. All
around you see the paraphernalia of locking and unlocking in the
car, closing and opening, yet her hands are clearly locking up
her sex, albeit provisionally
TIME
FOR COURTSHIP exercises in Vuillard for Sixties America
LADT
IN BLUE a Fantin-Latour still life as a foil to her dress
LOVE
COMES TO MISS LUCAS, a double page of downpour, notice how she
is interfering with the strap on his Kodak. How forward can a girl
get?
HEAT
OF DYING, rhythms of slat and lattice, fretwork illuminated by
a strange oblique light, curious bleeding of paint handling back
onto the left hand page
BEACH
SCENE, amusing games with beach umbrellas
His
form games are not purely for their own sake, but record the minutiae of
the smart life of the time, and the ways in which men and women
collide for mutual pleasure. If Degas wanted to document the ways
in which Hats were Doffed, it is no great claim that Whitmore was
chronicling the codification of the Great Flirt. Somebody had to
do it.
DEDICATED TO REBECCA MARY WILSON