Wanton by Night

Pulp magazines publishers and their post war pulp Men's Magazine successors used down and dirty, action packed illustrations to command attention and to make their titles instantly jump off the newsstands populating American cities streets. During the depression-era heyday of the pulps and into the postwar era of consumerism when men’s magazines and paperback books proliferated, competition to push the boundaries of what was legal in a heavily-censored marketplace led art directors on a search for increasingly deviant and outlandish portrayals of sex, violence, and perilous escapes from danger. Today, these artworks have been re-examined contextually and resonate with popular culture historians and art collectors. The original cover paintings are exceedingly scarce, as most examples were lost when the fly-by-night publishing houses which commissioned them went out of business, or destroyed so the completed paintings could not be reused by competing titles.