Who is Enoch Bolles?
While he has achieved a laudable amount of latter-day fame, Enoch Bolles = remains largely a figure of mystery. He apparently ended his days in an i= nsane asylum, where he “improved” on his wonderful canvases by adding suc= h touches as jagged jewelry and hovering phalluses. It’s more pleasant to peruse Francis Smilby’s wonderful book Stolen Sweet= s (1981, Playboy Press), and Robert A. Brown’s two Spiry card sets (Kitch= en Sink Press), all of which brim with wonderful images of exuberant Boll= es girls. Sleek, naughty, these flapper-style dolls, with their bee-stung lips and = voluptuous figures, lounge in lingerie and other unlikely forms of sex-fa= ntasy dress-up as – exemplified by this blonde in fur coat and bathing su= it. Bolles was a genius, and his oils reveal an artistry second to none i= n the pin-up genre. After Alberto Vargas and George Petty, Enoch Bolles was the best known of= the Deco-era pin-up artists, mostly because of the massive exposure his = images received on
