One of the little noted trends in the book world has been the demise of the major art book publishing houses. Under pressure from lower priced competitors like Benedict Taschen, most top drawer U.S. art book publishers have drastically curtailed their output of pricey 'coffee table' books. For pop culture retailers this represents a loss of potential profit since Abbeville, Abrams, and the like used to pump out 1-3 books a year based on comic or fantasy art, animation, or genre movies and TV series. But, in a manner that demonstrates, if nothing else, at least the flexibility of the capitalist system, Collector's Press has emerged to help fill the void left by the retreat of the major art book houses. Best of all, everything in the Collector's Press line is geared for pop culture retailers (see 'A Bumper Crop of Retro Art Books'), who don't have to wade through descriptions of monographs on Marsden Hartley or Artemsia Gentileschi to find the books they need. Collector's Press has a strong list of seven new titles for spring 2002 including four Pin-Ups collections from its Artist Archives series.
Priced at $11.95 per 32-page volume, the trade paperback Artist Archives series presents classic good girl art in a generous 10' x 12' format. Each book contains 14 examples of the best in Pin-Up art from the 1940s and 50s. New for spring are four themed volumes including Patriotic Pin-Ups, Cowgirl Pin-Ups, Playful Pin-Ups, and Pin-Up Nudes II.
The patriotic theme carries over to another of Collectors Press' spring offerings, United We Stand!, a 128-page collection of the inspirational art that helped win WWII. United We Stand! includes over 300 full color illustrations in its 8' x 8.5' hardcover format and carries a cover price of $19.95 . A portion of the proceeds from the sales of this book will go to benefit the American Red Cross.
Equally nostalgic is Retro Ride, a deluxe compilation covering five decades of advertising art created to sell the American automobile. From the 1920s through the 1960s, this 176-page, 10' x 13' hardcover provides hundreds of visual examples of the importance of the auto in twentieth century American culture. Written by Tony Swan, editor of Car & Driver, Retro Ride chronicles a major portion of the American dream for a cover price of just $39.95.
