Bedtime 

Gil Elvgren painted "Bedtime" with oil on canvas as a commercial pin-up, sometime in the mid-20th century. The image presents a coyly sexualized woman in negligee, posed in bed with one hand suggestively on a bedside lamp. The setting is domestic, connoting the nuclear family promoted after the Second World War and the associated idealization of home life. Elvgren's pin-ups were specifically created for advertising, calendars, and magazines. The images played into the male gaze and embodied the restrictive gender roles of the era. The post-war period saw a surge in consumer culture, and these images were commodities designed to appeal to the tastes of a predominantly male audience. An understanding of the historical context – the prevailing social norms, the rise of advertising, and the male-dominated art institutions – informs our reading of Elvgren's work. Accessing these social structures through archives, advertisements, and institutional records helps the art historian to reconstruct the world that produced it.