Playboy's Vargas Girls
(1972 - Playboy Press) 
160 pages here - almost all of it a selection of the paintings he did for Playboy magazine. Unfortunately, 61 of those pages are either longer pieces turned sideways or double-page spreads oriented sideways as well. That leaves only 95 pages of horizontal pin-ups (along with the 2 pages dominated by text). More bad news, 52 of those 'good' pages are used to present double-page spreads, all of which are poorly served by the book's central gutter. Nudity abounds, and would be acceptable, if just the art was presented, but the Playboy presentations were as gags, or pseudo-cartoons, and it is many of those captions that seem salacious and incline me to keep the book put away from children. I mean, the captions are a lot of fun, but a young reader cannot fail to detect some kind of double-entendre is at play, and is going to ask for an explanation . . . Anyway, these reproductions are bright, crisp, clear & colorful and my particular copy, purchased recently, seems to be holding together just fine. This site recommends getting VARGA (red & blue), VARGA-THE ESQUIRE YEARS-A CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ, THE LITTLE BOOK OF PIN-UP: VARGAS, ALBERTO VARGAS-WORKS FROM THE MAX VARGAS COLLECTION, VARGAS 20s-50s, and VARGAS GIRLS-PIN-UPS 1-&-2 before this one, but this book still has 35 'well-presented' paintings displayed not found in them.
Related Books
Varga - The Esquire Years - A Catalogue Raisonné
Alberto Vargas - Works From The Max Vargas Collection
Vargas Girls - Pin-Ups books 1 & 2
Varga Girls I & II (Artist Archives) [BELOW THE LINE]
SEND US A COMMENT (goes via e-mail - all info kept anonymous, but comment itself may be shared . . .)