Investigating gender, crime, and other social issues in the United States, this installation explores pulp magazine and paperback cover art of the 1920s–1950s. Designed to appeal to male readers, the glossy cover illustrations of pulp featured stereotypical, often lurid, images of stereotypical gun-wielding gangsters, tough detectives, seductive or vulnerable women, and foreign enemies.
Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.
Whether or not you go, Pulp Culture: The Art of Fiction Magazines covers almost six decades of slinking sleuths, galloping ghouls, nitty-gritty gals, and invincible warriors, the pulp magazine transported readers to new frontiers of the mind. The proving ground for scores of writers and illustrators who went on to achieve great fame, these publications helped popularize authors such as Dashiell Hammett, Ray Bradbury, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Taken collectively, they now provide a panorama of some sixty years of illustration and social commentary. Hailed as "lush" by the New York Times, this is the most comprehensive compilation ever published on the subject. Winner of the "Pop Culture Book of the Year" by the Independent Publisher's Association, it is a must for graphic artists, fiction lovers, and anyone who appreciates the art of pulp fiction's golden age.
Pulp Culture: The Art of Fiction Magazines
