This Ought to Make a Good Shot 1948

Gil Elvgren made "This Ought to Make a Good Shot" as a pin-up, we think. The colors are so smooth and creamy, it looks like he wanted to make you feel like you could just dive right in. The way he handles the paint, so slick and yet so… suggestive, it is as if he isn’t trying to paint the real world at all, but more like a dream of it. He paints the camera so meticulously that it almost feels more 'real' than the human figure, and I love how the textures play off each other – the soft fabric of the skirt against the hard, cold metal of the camera. All that detail makes me wonder what his studio was like. There’s something about the way Elvgren celebrates this ambiguity, this space of not-knowing, that connects him to artists like Lisa Yuskavage. They both suggest that maybe the most important thing isn't what we see, but how we see it.