Vargas Revisited

The Human Body has appeared throughout modern times in the visual arts primarily in abstract forms. Some avow that representational art is now on its way back; but it seems hung up for the moment on soup cans, soft watches, plaster of Paris and pseudo-psychedelic effects. Which makes the continuing career of Alberto Vargas all the more remarkable: Over the past five decades, his straightforward renderings have unflinchingly asserted the natural beauty of the human figure--specifically, the female. Vargas' women have always been irresistibly real, from the desirable, dissolute flappers he painted in 1920 to the liberated lovelies he portrays today. The life story of the Peruvian-born painter is by now familiar: He honed his skills during 15 years of painting posters with painstakingly wrought impressions of Flo Ziegfeld's showgirls, an abbreviated stint as a star sketcher in Hollywood and an especially productive period--cut short by legal hassles--as a regular contributor to "Esquire" before his work first adorned these pages in March 1957. It didn't take long for Vargas and Playboy to realize their mutual admiration, and the artist's relationship with the magazine quickly became a permanent one. Now in his eighth decade--like the turbulent century to which he has given a small but valuable note of stability--Vargas shows no signs of slackening production; and as the accompanying illustrations, which span the past decade, indicate, he remains as sure-handed as ever.