Board_Advisors_etc 3..5

Nude Woman Wearing Meat-Packer’s Gloves, 1937,
with its implications of masochistic self-mutilation as
a woman digs at her cropped, nude torso with sharp,
metal-tipped gloves.
Perhaps surprisingly—given their vastly divergent
subject matter and purposes—Outerbridge’s artistic
and commercial work from this period share his
careful choice and arrangement of objects, as well
as an attentive and sometimes shocking juxtaposi-
tion of textures and colors. Even in so banal a com-
mission asToilet Paper Advertisement,c.1938,the
roll of tissue unwinds like a fine, wispy fabric float-
ing on a sea of heavy, fleshy flowers, transforming
basic hygiene into a matter of sensuous refinement.
In 1943, as the demand for color printing collapsed
with World War II and his nude work failed to
impress gallery owners, Outerbridge sold his house
and headed to Hollywood. Too independent for the
collaborative exigencies of the film industry, he
finally settled in the coastal town of Laguna Beach,
where he briefly opened a portrait studio and started
a fashion design company—‘‘Lois-Paul Originals’’—
with his second wife, Lois Weir. Though he traveled
as far as South America and Europe on occasional
magazine photo assignments, by the early 1950s he
had essentially retired from serious photography,
writing a technical column forU.S. Cameramagazine
and struggling to sell his prints at local art fairs. He
died in 1958, leaving behind an uncertain artistic
reputation, and it was not until the early 1980s—as
new questions of gender and sexuality entered art
historical discourse—that serious interest in his
work would be renewed. The importance of his legacy
has since emerged in its relevance to the work of
photographers who emerged at the end of the century
as varied as Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman,
and Pierre et Gilles.

StephenMonteiro

Seealso:Conde ́Nast; Erotic Photography; History
of Photography: Twentieth-Century Developments;
History of Photography: Twentieth-Century Pio-
neers; Hoyningen-Huene, George; Nude Photogra-
phy; Pictorialism; Portraiture; Steichen, Edward;
Strand, Paul; White, Clarence

Biography

Born in New York City, 15 August 1896. Studied life draw-
ing and aesthetics at the Art Students League, photo-
graphy at the Clarence H. White School of Photography.
Staff photographer for Vogue, Paris, France, 1925;
columnist,U.S. Camera, 1954–1957. Honorary member-
ship, Royal Photographic Society, 1925; medal recipient,
11th Annual Exhibition of Advertising Art, 1931. Died
in Laguna Beach, California, 17 October 1958.

Individual Exhibitions

1923 Art Center; New York, New York

1959 Smithsonian Institution; Washington, D.C.

1977 G. Ray Hawkins Gallery; Los Angeles

1977 Corcoran Gallery of Art; Washington, D.C.

1979 G. Ray Hawkins Gallery; Los Angeles, California

1981 G. Ray Hawkins Gallery; Los Angeles, California

1982 Laguna Beach Museum of Art; Laguna Beach, Cali-

fornia, and traveling

Group Exhibitions

1923 John Wanamaker Gallery; New York, New York

1923 Society of Independent Artists; New York, New York

1924 First International Salon; Pictorial Photographers of

America, New York, New York

1924 Society of Independent Artists; New York, New York

1928 First Independent Salon of Photography; Salon de

l’Escalier, Paris, France

1929 Film und Foto: Internationale Ausstellung des

Deutschen Werkbundes; Ausstellungshallen und Ko ̈nig-

baulichtspiele, Stuttgart, Germany

1931 Albright Museum; Buffalo, New York

1931 Eleventh Annual Exhibition of Advertising Art; Art

Center, New York, New York

1932 Brooklyn Museum; Brooklyn, New York

1937 The History of Photography from 1839 to the Present

Day; Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York

1940 Photographic Society of America Invitational Salon;

World’s Fair, New York, New York

1951 Los Angeles County Fair; Los Angeles, California

1978 Rotterdamse Kunststichting; Rotterdam, Netherlands

1978 Tyler Museum of Art; Tyler, Texas

1997 The Sex Show: Sex & Eroticism in 20th Century Photo-

graphy; Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York, New York

2003 American Vision: Photographers from the East;

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

Selected Works

Ide Collar, 1922

Saltine Box, 1922

Telephone, c. 1922

Self-portrait, c. 1927

Images de Deauville, c. 1936

Nude with Mask and Hat, c. 1936

Kandinsky, 1937

Nude Woman Wearing Meat-Packer’s Gloves, 1937 (alter-

nate title:Woman with Claws)

Dutch Girl, c. 1938

Toilet Paper Advertisement, c. 1938

Woman with Snake, c. 1938

Further Reading

Dines, Elaine, ed.Paul Outerbridge, A Singular Aesthetic.

Laguna Beach, CA: Laguna Beach Museum of Art, 1981.

Fiedler, Jeannine. Paul Outerbridge Jr.: Photographien.

Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 1993.

Heiting, Manfred, ed.Paul Outerbridge 1896–1958. London

and New York: Taschen, 1999.

Howe, Graham.Paul Outerbridge, Jr. Los Angeles: The Los

Angeles Center for Photographic Studies, 1976.

OUTERBRIDGE JR., PAUL