Hot Girls. Hot Cars. Blue Sports Car Arnolt Bristol - Playboy Cartoon, 1957 - Ben Denison

The punchline on many of these 1950s cartoons fades, but the visuals more than hold up - they shine.
The sleek, graphic style of painting with flat, broad areas of color shows that Ben Denison, along with a few other illustrators of the time, invented a new style that endures and may have inspired many ultra-contemporary artists who refer back to them for inspiration. It's a quintessentially Mid-American look. Denison crafts a narrative with clean lines, flat shapes, and a bright, contrasting color palette, distilling it into simple visual forms. Moreover, the work serves as a time capsule of an aspirational life that Playboy magazine presented to its predominantly male readers. An urbane, handsome young man sits in his cool sports car at Lover's Lane with a hot blond in his lap. How can life be better?
Signed lower right: Denison
The present work is published for "Denison's Sports Cars" on page 25 in the August 1957 issue of Playboy with the caption: "I'm tired of sneaking around like this. Just what does your husband have against me anyway?" The work also appears on page 13 of Playboy 50 Years: The Cartoons by Hugh Hefner (Chronicle Books, 2004).

Framed under glass in a new high-end metal frame. Frame size 21.75 x 18.25
Ben Denison, American, 1926–2008
Gouache on Illustration Board
US$18,000