Ticklish Situation 1957

Gil Elvgren made this cheeky painting, Ticklish Situation, with oils on canvas, and it fizzes with such an extraordinary sense of life. Elvgren was painting pinups and advertising art at a time when the divide between illustration and fine art was more pronounced than it is now, and he manages to sneak some painterly flourishes into commercial images. I imagine him in his studio, carefully layering the paint to achieve that smooth, almost photographic finish, but then adding some looser brushstrokes for the scattered feathers. The way he captures the model's expression, the playful chaos of the pillow fight, and the dog chewing on what looks like a feather-filled dart, all suggest a kind of mischievous glee. You can tell that he has looked at artists like Norman Rockwell, but he's doing his own thing. It reminds me that as artists, we are always referencing and responding to one another, building on each other's ideas and experiments across time.