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<TITLE>Joaquin Alberto Vargas y Chavez Biography</TITLE>
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<img src="images/vargas_sig.gif" WIDTH="103" HEIGHT="150" VALIGN="0" HALIGN="0" HSPACE="5" VSPACE="5" BORDER="0" ALIGN="LEFT" ><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE="2" FACE="HELVETICA,ARIAL"> <font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">In
1944, Peruvian-born artist <b>Joaquin Alberto Vargas y Chavez (1896-1982)</b>
completed 49 illustrations while working for an annual base salary of
$12,000; in 1995, a single portrait by the artist sold at auction for
almost three times that amount. These figures emphasize the dramatic contrast
between the mediocre sums collected by the artist during his lifetime
and the modern acceptance of his worth as a painstaking watercolorist
and airbrush pioneer who earned a place in the visual history of the American
twentieth century, particularly during World War II. Recent figures also
accord with his patrons' position and power, since they were the upper
echelon of the country's print and entertainment world at the time: William
Randolph Hearst, Florenz Siegfeld, the heads of every major film studio,
the publishers of <i>Esquire</i> and <i>Playboy.</i><BR>
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Vargas (also known as "Varga", a pseudonym assigned to him by the editor
of <i>Esquire</i>) specialized in women, albeit from a highly formularized
and editorially constricted perspective. Although he was an ineffective
businessman, his pictures in reproduction helped sell millions of magazines,
ads, calendars and other products worldwide. At the height of his career,
it was said a calendar adorned with his "faultless" American girls hung
in every barbershop in the country and every barracks in the armed forces.<BR>
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It is difficult now to look past the male-oriented eroticism or the "overtones
of campy humor" and then appreciate Vargas' meticulous technique, which
he spent decades perfecting. It may be hard to conceive that this man,
when asked by Hugh Hefner to paint a full frontal nude, was palpably uncomfortable
with the assignment. But we must accept that his images spoke clearly
to and for a specific era, and that his choices and ideosyncracies - his
love of Ingres and Flint, his driving need to please his editors professionally,
his naïve intentions in contradiction to his suggestive images, his
goal of achieving universal recognition - alchemically mixed to render
his work memorable and unmistakeable. -J. P.<BR>
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<B>[watercolor 15 x 21.75", ca. 1947]</B></font><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE="2" FACE="HELVETICA,ARIAL"><BR>
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