‘Bizarre Life: The Art of Elmer Batters and Eric Stanton’: Benedikt Taschen Puts Racy Artwork on Sale at New Gallery

Chris Gardner writes: The new Taschen Gallery on Beverly Boulevard currently features nudity and fetishism in photos and comics from two late underground artists.

“Over the years, we got requests all the time to buy their works. We wanted to do a great show first, because that’s what I owe these true artists and pioneers. Their life stories, by the way, are 100 percent Hollywood drama — a mix of Goodfellas, Boogie Nights, Ed Wood and, of course, Pulp Fiction.”

“Bizarre Life: The Art of Elmer Batters and Eric Stanton,” the gallery’s second show since opening in December, is on view with more than 200 works, some for sale from the private collection of head honcho Benedikt Taschen, who tells THR that he’s parting with the racy pieces out of respect….(read more)

Hollywood Reporter

Press Release

If not for the moral chaos of World War II, Eric Stanton and Elmer Batters might have sublimated their indecent obsessions and spent lives illustrating catalogs, or photographing weddings. But after the clarifying effect of near death, each embraced his difference, and returned home to hack a heroic creative path through contemptuous and villainous publishers, multiple arrests, loss of family, and occasionally, freedom, to be who he had to be.

TASCHEN Gallery announces the opening of Bizarre Life – The Art of Elmer Batters & Eric Stanton, a controversial and essential exhibit that traces the artistic struggle of these two pioneers of fetish art, from the gritty post-war streets of Times Square to their position today as cultural icons.

Eric Stanton known as The Rembrandt of Pulp Culture, was an inspiration for artists such as Richard Lindner, Allen Jones and Helmut Newton. He created thrilling panel stories and colorful pulp fiction covers of voluptuous, demanding women overpowering uppity males. Today, his work is defined as female empowerment, and as caricature of female-dominance fantasy – a dichotomy that delights contemporary culture, but initially forced him into abusive underworld partnerships in a pre-feminist society averse to female strength. “A woman has to be strong. The bigger the better,” was his motto.
Elmer Batters was dubbed the Dean of Leg Art for his unique approach to photographing women’s legs and feet, but while his work brought solace to legions of foot fetishists, the courts called it dangerously perverse and hounded him his whole life. “I felt that people almost saw me as un-American for not mooning over large mammaries,” he said. Read the rest of this entry »