Art: Paris Pin-Up

• Share

The most heavily official and fashionable of all art shows—the spring Salon—opened last week in Paris' Right Bank Palais de New York. Ten thousand people, led by the President of France, Vincent Auriol, jammed through the halls on opening day. Some of them found their neighbors' gowns more attractive than the pictures. The acres of art on exhibition (2,000 paintings, 200 pieces of sculpture) were almost uniformly slick, deft and academic.

One painting received more attention than all the others put together. It was a frothy bit by pink-cheeked, prosperous Jean-Gabriel Domergue. France's fashionable painter of the moment, Domergue has created a type of nude (tall, slim, boyish, with tiny, upturned breasts) that is as stylized as the Petty girl.

Domergue's Black Widow was the same cute trick who made him famous. "I have been painting this girl for 25 years," said Domergue happily. "Of course when I started she wasn't called a pinup, but she has developed into one. Now this particular painting I have been thinking of for ten years; one day it suddenly came to me. It is the eternal drama of the man pursuing the woman. He is successful in the end, but, as in so many cases, he is spiritually killed by her.''