Isaac
Paul Rader Checklist
At Midwood | Other
Artists | Other Publishers
| Magazine Work
Cover Proof: Midwood F212
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As mentioned
above, this is the first draft of a work in progress. You are welcome
to agree or disagree with my assessments. Many of the Midwood covers
are signed, either with his distinctive Rader or with
a capital R. In those cases where the artists
signature is absent, I have relied on my own eye, and the opinions
of a panel of Rader collectors. Sometimes we disagreed,
and I have tried to indicate such disagreements as they occurred.
I do not pretend to be an art expert. Mistakes will be made. Corrections
and emendations will appear on future catalogs. Raders first
paperback cover was probably a Gold Medal, but since the greatest
body of his work was at Midwood we have chosen to list all the Midwoods
first. We will show when Rader reused Midwood art for other publishers
like Bee-line where we can. Other paperback publishers will follow
Midwood and the final section will offer a sampling of Raders
magazine work, much of which remains undiscovered in dusty back
issue magazines.
In
the introduction to their excellent coffee-table book THE GREAT
AMERICAN PIN-UP (Taschen, 1996), Charles G. Martignette and Louis
K. Meisel show that the grand tradition of pin-up art continued
on in other art forms, such as advertising illustration and paperback
covers. To illustrate their point they show a handful of paperbacks,
and one of them is TEACHERS PET, a Midwood with a cover
by Paul Rader. They include a photo of Raders original art,
and there is absolutely no difference between that painting and
all of the great pin-ups that appear throughout their book. For
Raders Midwoods are much more like the pin-ups of his favorites
Petty and Vargas than the paperback book covers of many of his
contemporaries. Although Martignette and Meisel spell his name
wrong (the common misspelling Radar), and give the wrong year
for TEACHERS PET and perhaps jump the gun by labeling him
pin-up artist Paul Rader (if Rader ever did straight
pin-up art Ive yet to find it), they must be commended for
making this crucial connection. Hundreds of pieces by Elvgren
and Earl Moran and Petty and many others are then shown, but Rader
is never mentioned again. I did not find Rader mentioned in any
other books on pin-ups or on the great 20th Century American art
of illustration. This catalog is an attempt to correct that oversight,
and to place Paul Rader in his rightful place, as the 1960s
heir to the American art form of Gibson, Petty and Vargas.
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