As a result, certain pieces -- cover art, in particular -- can draw relatively breathtaking prices. Asked to appraise an oil painting that graced the cover of Crackup in Suburbia, a racy paperback from the early '60s, Whipple told a local gallery owner the piece was worth somewhere between $5,000 and $6,000.
"Up until very recently, illustration has always been seen as the poor stepchild to fine art," reports Robert Weinberg, a national used-magazine dealer in Chicago. "That's slowly changing, but most of these guys who worked for the magazines labored in anonymity. A few made the leap -- like N.C. Wyeth -- but most of these people's names are totally unknown outside collector's circles."
That darn gat: From model photos to the printed page, Baer exhibit shows evolution of art for a Mickey Spillane potboiler.
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Charles G. Martignette, a Hallandale, Florida, dealer who boasts the world's largest collection of illustrative magazine art, agrees that the genre in which Baer worked "has really begun to create a substantial niche in the whole umbrella of American illustration."
But please don't use the "p" word.
"Pulp art died in the late '40s, early '50s," he says emphatically. "Anything after that is simply not pulp."
Call it what you will, but Martignette includes cheap magazine illustrations in a broader context of what he calls "the real art of America."
"Cereal boxes, newspaper advertising art, subway posters, billboards -- this is the art that touched people's everyday lives," says Martignette. "As such, it's now being recognized as having been a very important part of the American scene. Most people, even in the '50s and '60s, had never been in a museum. For the majority of people, this art was the only real art they ever saw."
Perhaps that's why it's not surprising to learn that the biggest crowd-pleaser in the history of the Phoenix Art Museum is a current celebration of magazine art, albeit the work of the genre's best-known practitioner, Norman Rockwell.
At first blush, the two Normans' work could hardly seem less alike: Rockwell offered up an idyllic view of small-town America, while Baer graphically depicted what was going on out in the city's back alleys and seedier points.
But look beyond the disparate subject matter -- and the glaring difference in their levels of fame -- and it becomes apparent the two artists share more than a first name.
"Critics can't abide Norman Rockwell," says Baer, in defense of his much-maligned contemporary. "But nothing is ever said about the composition of his work; it's composition just like a piece of music." Pause. "Most people can't get past the sentimentality -- they just see the pretty pictures."
Pretty pictures?
That's one criticism that will never be leveled over Norman Baer's exquisitely executed dead bodies.
